CLF 2023 D2E1 | Decarbonization in Buildings and Construction with George Benson (Vancouver Economic Commission) | EP83 (Part 1)

Day 2 Episode 1 | In this episode, from the conference floor at the VRCA Construction Leadership Forum 2023, James and Christian are joined by George Benson, Senior Manager of Economic Transformation at the Vancouver Economic Commission.


EPISODE LINKS:
George Benson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gprbenson/
Vancouver Economic Commission Website: https://vancouvereconomic.com/

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the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
the Site Visit on Buzzsprout: https://thesitevisit.buzzsprout.com/269424
the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Alright, well, day one was fantastic. Now we're here in day two at the construction leadership forum whistler. And like you said, yeah, yesterday was awesome yesterday.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Okay. What a great group. I said they're very controlled when they have to be, and uh when they want to let loose, they find the appropriate place to do that. And they sure did.

SPEAKER_04 1:10

Yeah, there were a couple late uh last night was a late night, and uh uh I would assume that um uh people uh there's a good crowd already that has uh jumped in for the morning here as we've seen. And so we've got three interviews today on day two. I'm gonna rattle them up again, and again we'll have timestamps and bookmarks. We can jump straight to these in the second episode of the construction leaders reform. We had the first one, this was awesome, about decarbonization. We had George Benson from the Vancouver Economic Commission joining us. Uh and then we asked uh had the uh the auctioneer extraordinaire and the MC for the event, Adam Timmler, who is in charge of business development at the metal building group, join, and that was a fantastic conversation. And he did a bang job of the auction before he should uh do that for her. He nailed it. Yeah, they they they brought in some good money for a good cause, and then finally we had Donna Grant, the president of the Vancouver Regional Construction Association. She put on the whole event with an incredible team. Shout out to Craig, Christian, and and and a bunch of the other team that really nailed it.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Yeah, they did. They did a really great job.

SPEAKER_04 2:19

So things summed up really well. Enjoy day two, these three episodes from the Construction Leadership Forum.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Welcome to the Site Visit Podcast. Leadership and Perspective from Construction with your hosts, James Faulkner and Christian Hammond.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Let's get down to it.

SPEAKER_04 3:28

We've got George Benson from the Vancouver Economic Council. Commission. Commission.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Commission.

SPEAKER_04 3:33

Well, sounds good. So there's no commission. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_05 3:36

Don't we won't take it personally.

SPEAKER_04 3:38

Well, it was a great chat, and the video that you had was awesome. And we're going to dig into that a little bit, but why don't you give our audience just a little bit of a Coles note on who George is and a little bit of the things that you've been working on around the theme from today's topic, uh speech.

SPEAKER_05 3:52

Yeah, thanks. So uh I I have the privilege to be the senior manager of economic transformation at VEC. So we're the city of Vancouver's economic development agency. And I like to think of myself as a kind of recovering policy person. So I'm trained as an urban planner, but I've had the privilege to work in partnership with folks in the construction sector for the past four years. And it's been just a blast. Like to see the passion enthusiasm in this sector is inspiring. And uh, you know, it's it's a healthy dialogue back and forth about what we should do, what the best approach is, but it's just been it's fun every day. And and uh that's a big part of the work that I get to do is ask folks how can we help you? What do you need? What how can we bring supports to you? And uh things like the trip to Copenhagen are kind of one of those outputs.

SPEAKER_04 4:30

No, that's really cool. And we'll dig into that trip to Copenhagen because um that was kind of the the focal point of the talk that you just gave and the video that you guys created. Again, awesome and very informative. You said you you've been enjoying getting to work with construction. It is pretty, I mean, we're construction, construction podcasts is a construction conference, but there is something quite practical when you bring solutions and and or issues that need to have resolution to them or or change your innovation. But you know, construction men and women are pretty uh pragmatic, practical, and they're like, okay, well, tell us what's going on, and uh let's figure out how we can change something or innovate. So why don't you tell us a little bit there's a about the different types of kids? There's a carbon decarbonization. This is a talk that this was on, the different types. There's a uh you were talking about embodied carbon. Maybe get into all this just to frame a little bit about what we're talking about here.

SPEAKER_05 5:20

Yeah, sure, sure, sure. So um, I mean, at the end of the day, all this stuff is about how we spend our resources in different ways and what comes out of it at the other end. So when we talk about carbon emissions or carbon pollution, we're talking about all of the energy and the other stuff that it takes to make a thing. And what one of the ways I like to frame it is uh when we talk about carbon in the holistic sense, we're talking about carbon end-to-end. So if I'm scooping something out of the ground to build, you know, I'm gonna build something at the end, what does it take to scoop it out of the ground? What does it take to put it into the factory? What does it take to put it on the truck and get it to the site and build? And then when we're done with it, what happens to it afterwards? That end-to-end carbon we call embodied carbon. It's the stuff that's living inside that material. Um, when we talk about operational carbon, we're talking about, I like to say the stuff that comes out of the smokestack. So, you know, you've you've got all your end-to-end, that's all been done. But once the, in this case, a building is built, it's gonna run, right? It's gonna operate, it's gonna live. So what's coming out of the smokestack metaphorically or literally on that site? So that's the operational carbon. And in our world, in the policy world, we're trying to make sure we're addressing both of those and always looking for cost efficiencies and and profit along the way as we're as we're reducing ultimately what's waste.

SPEAKER_04 6:31

No, that's really cool. And you you threw up some graphics on there right at the beginning where you said, oh, you know, construction kind of got lumped in with the real estate one. So we're looking at the embodied carbon and the operational carbon. Right? Yeah. But I like that. That that that's a good clear distinction to give um the listeners uh and oh, myself too, um, a bit of uh uh some definition around how that goes. Um when we're dealing with uh well, why don't you actually tell talk a little bit about the Denmark, the video, the trip, the the whole Copenhagen experience, and what's going on with that.

SPEAKER_05 7:02

So, I mean, like I said in my presentation in the video, Vancouver is not an island. Like we're on this climate journey, just like a whole bunch of other places in the world. And what's what's cool and it gets me really excited is that in a lot of cases it's cities that are leading the way. And when I say cities, I don't just mean, you know, mayor and council, pass a decree, da-da-da-da. It's that there's a there's a community of practice that's emerging across the public and private sector where we're saying we think all this stuff is important, we're we see opportunities for competitiveness or profit along the way, and we want to collaborate and figure out how that how that's going. Now, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that that's always perfect. I think there's plenty of disagreements that happen, but I I gen when I look at the sort of industry support for some of what the city of Vancouver is doing, it tends to be fairly high because we have these tables, we spend a lot of time collaboratively building solutions. Um but like I say, we're not an island, so we can get we can get really myopic and buried in our own stuff. But what we at the commission try to do and others try to do is say, well, hold on, how are we are we off base? Are we like headed in the same direction as some folks? Are we are we doing our own thing? And Copenhagen is is renowned for a whole bunch of reasons for what they do. Um and so when we you know, we've we've done our research, we looked at them and said, we need to learn a little bit more. Like we need to like actually sort of brush up, dig into the numbers, see, touch, taste, smell all of these things that are going on. And so we chose Denmark because we saw them as a leader, but we wanted to prove it. And so this whole trip we did, we took 17 public and private sector leaders from across BC there. And uh in uh I think it's 18 tour, site tours, presentations, visits, we just dug into it. We got to literally kick the tires on a whole bunch of different projects and say, but does it really perform? Like, is this is this for real or is this marketing? You know, and and we got the good, the bad, and the ugly of that. So that's why we chose them, and and they continue to really impress us in a bunch of ways, but they're not perfect. And I was, you know, I mentioned at the end, you know, they've got huge problems with overheating. That's something we're actually much better at than they are. Um, we're thinking about salvaging and deconstruction. I don't know if you guys have ever met Unbuilders, for example. They are coming on the podcast next week. Okay, so we work with Unbuilders for years, and like we think that you know the the methodologies they're they're um they're taking on are really great. And just one other plug I can make there. We did a project with Unbuilders a few years ago looking at the value of demolition, what is currently demolition waste. Yeah, if you just took single family homes in the metro region, um, if you took a sort of um a conservative slice of those every year and the salvageable timber that's in them, you're looking at anywhere from 250 to 300 million dollars of material we currently throw away. Right. So we get excited as economic developers, we get excited about that profitability too. And I don't think Copenhagen's quite got there yet.

SPEAKER_04 9:31

You know, there's so much to unpack in all this and the whole unbuilders conversation. And the examples that you guys showed, there's a project in Australia, but then there was also the project downtown Vancouver, where Sears was and now Nordstrom or was formerly Nordstrom Rip. Yeah, totally. But um, and even like the post building as well, right? Yeah, that's that's a great example of one for Amazon. But utilizing existing buildings, of course, retrofits are expensive, right? And they're technical and they come with lots of challenges. But when you talk, as the example you said about the the the dollar value of waste and the impact of that waste, to be able to reuse uh an existing structure, it's cool, but it also when you break it down practically, it's good you could to see the tangible aspects of that, it helps. And I'll admittedly, you know, when I hear decarbonization or you know, electric this electric that I kind of and this kind of goes to the end of what we can um at uh towards the end of our conversation of is it really making a difference? Right. But when you see these things laid out practically, it's it's good, it makes it more tangible and easier to digest.

SPEAKER_05 10:36

Well, if I can pick up so the it's the the project that we referenced in the video is the key quarter tower uh in uh in Sydney, Australia. Yeah, yeah. And and one of the things that's actually really exciting about this, and we had some developers and builders on our on our tour, they asked right away, they're like, okay, turkey, let's talk it. How much?

SPEAKER_03 10:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 10:52

And and I apologize, I can't remember the number, but they noted uh in the tens of millions in savings from hauling costs, because that tower is in the middle of downtown Sydney. Right. If you think of the the twin towers and how long it took to clear the material out of the middle of Manhattan, it took years. Yeah, yeah. And that's what that Sydney project would have also meant. And so there's a practicality dimension to that of like, wait, wait, wait, hold on. How and and this is you know, you get creative people in a room and you say, forget all the must-do's and thou shalt. Hold on. Sure. How do we maximize for all the things we want to do? You guys want to make money, you want to save money, we want good product, we want to reduce carbon. What's the way to do that? And this design team, they floored everyone by being the kind of conveners and the relationship builders there to get to that.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Cool, yeah. I got a question for you, and just in terms of like, um, do you have um sort of uh an influence dial that you guys have uh some kind of a sense of from the hangover or the or the influence of US politics to the sentiment of carbon reduction? So you have you know the different political sides who you have some that say climate change is not something to worry about. So you have these competing narratives. So with your organizations, you know, do you hear things in the news as a group and you're like, oh god, why'd they say that? And like, oh, it's just making our job harder. I mean, what's the what's the what's the influence there from, you know, because what do they say? Like when the US has a cold, you know, Canada sneezes or whatever that is.

SPEAKER_05 12:27

Yeah, yeah. You know what's interesting? It it new the the news cycle when it comes to like the the big capital P politics in the US is just so tedious and so tired. It just, you know, round and round it goes. When you get down, let's let's go back to the practical dimension here. Yeah. When you get down to the nuts and bolts in the construction industry in the US, in the sort of municipal and state politics in the US, things are happening. Like real things are happening. The Democrats and Republicans can fight it out at the presidential level all they want. It bores me to tears. Yeah. Because there are actual companies and actual policymakers at the local level getting, pardon my language, but getting real shit done. Yeah. And it doesn't really make much difference to me again. It it can at a at a political level every now and again, but like I point to Texas. Yeah. You know who's building more renewable energy than anywhere else in the United States? Texas. Texas. Yeah. You know who's actually building some of the coolest mass timber buildings in the United States? Texas. It doesn't matter because they see the practicality on the ground. They may, they may not call it what we're calling it here, and I couldn't care less. If they do great work, let's celebrate it.

SPEAKER_04 13:28

Okay, this is a bit of a crazy unpacking of this. And a lot of these 15-minute conversations have led to okay, come in studio, let's do a full breakout. And we'll need to, because there's a lot to unpack in this. But I just cued in on something. And I remember I said, okay, honest moment. I'm the practical construction guy, build stuff. I'm like, tell me how this makes a difference. Come on. But like, there's a lot of practicality in there. I like cost-benefit analysis. When you said the whole Sydney project, you know, outweighs this hauling cost, et cetera, whatever. And you go, okay, if you can actually make a dent on something like this, which does, you know, improve the conditions of something for where we are, and the cost is in line or close or whatever it is, it's like, okay, it's making sense to me. When you were bringing up the whole politics and you're saying boards it's it's brutal, it's super polarizing. But what it influences is that it influences my mind and caring. Exactly. Yeah, right. That's the point. But now when you start throwing practical things at us and and not throwing, but like presenting and showing it, it's like and the approach you're taking, even like letting us know about Texas, because a lot of people at high level again go, Texas is bad, right? But like, no, yeah, that's awesome. Oh, thanks. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_05 14:36

And again, it comes down like I arose by any other name. Like, if people do good work, they don't have to call it what I call it.

SPEAKER_04 14:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:42

But like, you know, I want people to like I want to be able to engage with someone and say, like, oh, that's really cool. Like, well, no, no, no, we don't we don't do what you do in BC or something. Like, I'd say that's pretty rare. Every now and again it happens. But like when you get get down to the nuts and bolts of, okay, you want to make money, great. You want to do right by your staff, great. You want to do right by your customers, great. And you're gonna follow the law, great. We're probably all living somewhere in that, in that, in that sphere, right? And when you ask then people, how do you do that? How do you get there? Then you start to have really interesting conversations. So I think like it does bore me, it's frustrating, but it just means that I I try to have money more conversations like this than worry about that big picture stuff.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

Totally. Now, in in uh in Vancouver, for instance, you know, we have uh, you know, clearly uh house affordability or a home affordability crisis and all that kind of stuff. Um how does this play into that? Is there are there savings that you can present that that will lower the cost of living? Or is it like buildings are now more expensive to build and that gets passed on to the potential homeowner? Right. That's a great question.

SPEAKER_05 15:46

Um I think there's a few dimensions to it that I like to think of. One of them is that as we start to ask these questions about what that ideal practical pathway is, if you take a wide view, like if you if you have like a what I would call a widget first mindset where you're like, okay, we you know, we're gonna take the boilers out, we're gonna put in heat pumps, and that's we're it, we're done. That's great. Yeah, you're gonna miss a lot of opportunity. But if we take the embodied carbon conversation, we say, now hold on a second. What where's the most concrete go? If you've got, you know, concrete podium and five or six stories of stick on top, where's all the carbon? It's in your underground parking.

SPEAKER_03 16:20

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:21

And if we are mandating, if we as the government are telling you thou shalt build a crap load of underground parking, we're telling you to put more carbon into your building. So if we take that wider view and start to touch some areas, like some policy areas that have previously been like, ooh, okay, we're not gonna talk about that, then you get to interesting solutions where you can build a building for a hell of a lot cheaper.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

So does that mean no parking? Yeah, where does parking go?

SPEAKER_05 16:41

Here's what I love let the market decide. Right now we tell you to build a certain amount of parking. Developers are smart people. Let them do the market analysis themselves and ask, how much do we think this site actually needs? Does a site next to the SkyTrain really need six stores, six six stories underneath of underground parking? Sure.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, there's like what goes under like for a tower, infrastructure wise. I mean, how many stories do they need to go down for the vertical vertical integrity of the building?

SPEAKER_05 17:09

We've got a perfect example. The Synac development, the Squamish are doing.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:12

You know how much parking's in that?

SPEAKER_02 17:13

No, I don't know. Like tiny. Oh, is it?

SPEAKER_05 17:15

Like it has probably like a tenth or a twelfth of the amount of parking for towers of that size anywhere else in the region. They're embarrassing the rest of the governments, honestly, because they said, look, it's a rental tower, it's pretty close to transit, it's right next to downtown. Why the hell would we make you drill 12 stories down and build all this extra parking? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

I'm picking an easy example. It's actually I I would I would say that that is absolutely not close to transit. That's like besides biking across the bridge, they're the SkyTrain or the Canada line is way too far away.

SPEAKER_05 17:46

Well, I mean, you've got to keep like the Broadway line going in there too, and there's there's because they're building that there, they're they've got the transit connectivity that'll that'll link up as it goes in. Yeah. So it's not perfect, but I think it's got it's got a enough ability.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

It's close to transit for the right type of people.

SPEAKER_04 18:00

Yeah, but no, but but but the the the hypothesis that you're making or the that you're proposing in that, yes. I mean of course a building has to have a foundation that's a certain size for the structural integrity of the project. However high it goes, it determines how deep it's got to go or whatever is built into that. But the whole concept of yeah, I mean, what determines uh why we, you know, and I get the whole thing, like you know, it does encourage people to find alternative solutions for community um commuting and all that kind of stuff. So totally get that.

SPEAKER_05 18:28

If I could just put a bow on that. So I'm using, I'm picking on parking because it's an easy example. Yeah, but I think in from my perspective, it's a lot of the design mandates that we put forward. The tech, the tech is usually not the big cost ad, right? Like a heat pump for a boiler as a residential example, that's that's within the margin of it. Like we can work with that pretty competitively and we're getting better and better at it. But a lot of the design considerations where, quite frankly, it's some fussy aesthetic stuff, and and I'm not picking on any city in particular, but I think in general there's a lot of that, where it's like, no, let the folks decide. Like, does it, do we really need to spend, do I do I need to hire an architect for a city to say, well, I don't like this facade, I'd like to see some more articulation there. Like that there's an overreach there that I think we can really push past. So things like that are gonna be big. And then the nuts and bolts of it, you know, the building materials, otherwise, we're generally within margin of error. Like we're talking one to three percent in most cases from the research that we've seen. Um, and it's only getting better over time, especially as we look to, you know, to leverage this, these environmental mandates for greater efficiencies off-site, modular prefab, whatever the whatever the solution is, not to prejudge it, we think that there's more cost efficiency to be found.

SPEAKER_03 19:32

Cool. That's pretty sweet. It is, and maybe this is a good way to just tidy up this quick conversation. Can I just ask one thing? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

Yeah, just in terms of uh concrete itself and off-gassing and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I you know, uh is there um you know different technologies that are coming out that you're aware of that maybe you could share of in terms of you know concrete being you know, emitting less.

SPEAKER_05 19:55

Yeah. One of the ones I get most excited about because it's Canadian, is there's a great outfit out of Calgary called Carbon Cure. Okay. And they have a technology that sucks carbon out of the air, and especially you do that at like a power plant or an oil and gas facility. Okay. Suck it out of the air, turn it into a chemical additive, inject it into your concrete, and now you're getting stronger concrete.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 20:14

And it's either low, zero, or carbon negative because it sucked it out of the air. So things like that are great examples. And then um, you know, all of the all the chemical additives, the coal for the gen for like for the for the firing process and stuff, there's a ton of innovations going on there as well. So like I really don't think we're that far out. It's more expensive right now. That's the reality. But when you start stacking in things like carbon offsets, there's there's a there's all kinds of financial ways to approach that. And I think the IRA and the states, especially, they're putting a just a buttload of money into this. I think that technology is really around, like we know it exists already, the cost effectiveness is around the corner.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

The the um just one other thing. Um, in terms of uh carbon, you know, when I think of the word business in carbon and you don't think of the building uh, you know, or construction, I always thought of these um companies that I always kind of thought were a bit, you know, like a fogazi kind of thing, where they're like selling carbon credits, you know, and they're saying, well, we're planting X amount of trees, so you can go and do whatever you want to offset that. Yeah. But what's your what's your take on does that give initiatives like you're trying to do a bit of a weird reputation? It can. It can.

SPEAKER_05 21:23

And I I think like the the the so-called the voluntary carbon offset markets um are troubling. And there's been a number of big reports out in the past year or two there. I think the one I worry a lot about is forestry. It's such a complicated, like, you know, we barely know how to measure carbon in soil. It's a it's a really tough one. Yeah. But if you're talking about something tangible, like, you know, the the easy like the some of the ones we're working on in social housing is I know one big developer or one um big um property owner group, instead of instead of buying trees somewhere in the world that may or may not exist, they're talking to a social housing provider and saying, Well, we were gonna spend 150 grand to offset our emissions. Why don't we just give that to you and you buy Heat pumps for all your units. That's the kind of offsetting that I get really excited about because it's real and it's changeable.

SPEAKER_04 22:06

And you you guys basically hit on exactly what I was going to say at the end of the video. Um there was the talk of uh mitigation versus innovation. So like actually taking something out versus, hey, well, why don't the things that go in we just innovate on? Right? You hear that conversation a lot about renewable energy versus fossil fuels, and like where can we just find ways to innovate with existing solutions and stuff like that, right? So there's always a conversation there that you guys have talked about, you know, heat pumps, switching certain things out, getting to that. Um so I don't know if you have anything to add on that aspect of things, mitigation, innovation.

SPEAKER_05 22:38

I think I mean it's it's we're we're like at the city, it's not always perfect, but we really try to live in a performance-based regulatory regime. Like one of my colleagues on the private sector side says, Look, if you can show us that you can meet all the safety requirements uh and the energy performance in a sort of abstract concept, we'll listen to if you say you can do it with spray foam and chicken wire. We're gonna want to do a lot of tests on that, but like we're interested because we want to see that same innovation push forward. And so, you know, I am dead set against, and I think the city's been very intelligent in this way, of uh thou shalt use this technology or thou shalt do this particular design solution. There are exceptions to that, but I think the general sense is it's way better when we set up set a number and say, tell us how you want to get there.

SPEAKER_04 23:23

Right, nice, right. It involves everybody in the solution, right? It does. Yeah, that's really good. All right, so we're here up in Whistler, the construction leaders form with the BRCA. We have been asking all of our guests, based on uh, you know, the topic and the sentiments of their um their session with our group, what's one nugget that you would want to leave with our audience or the industry, anyone listening to this from this topic, or just something that's you're really caring about right now?

SPEAKER_05 23:49

Ooh, that's so many juicy ones here. I think about workforce. I think workforce is one, it just came up in the questions for my session, and it's a it's a real passion of mine. Companies that can tell the story of the why they're involved in these sustainability issues, or they're doing equity work, you know, they're they're really trying to hire more women, they're trying to bring indigenous folks, whatever that may be. If you can tell that why, man, oh man, are you gonna have an easier time bringing people into your company? And it it kind of blows, it makes me actually really sad because I meet so many companies every day that are doing such incredible work, and they're kind of shy about it in this crazy way. Totally. It's like, why not scream it from the rooftops? Because it's not bullshit, it's actually real. And a lot of people don't. And so I'm always encouraging them like tell your story of why you do this work, lead with the why, and you'll be amazed at who's gonna come and want to work with you.

SPEAKER_04 24:38

Well, that's a really good thing to end on. The why and not the you've mentioned a few times, the zet the thou shalt, right? It's like you will do this. I think that's fantastic. It's a great way to end it. George Oku said it's we got to get you back on for a full episode, but this was a fantastic conversation. Um, and we are glad you joined us. Thank you. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_05 24:57

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

Well, that does it for another episode of The Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter at SiteMaxSystems.com slash TheStype Visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips, and everything you need to know about the Site Visit Podcast and Site Visit, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. SiteMax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.