Episode 75: Skilled to Build-The Education Equation

HAVAN CEO Wendy McNeil sits down with Guido Wimmers, Dean of BCIT’s School of Construction and the Environment, to explore the pivotal role education plays in equipping the people and resources needed to build the homes our communities urgently require. Tune in — you might be surprised by Guido’s eye-opening insights.

Listen to “Episode 75: Skilled to Build. The Education Equation.” on Spreaker.

You will also find “Measure Twice, Cut Once” on iTunes, Spotify,, and on HAVAN’s YouTube channel.

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Guido Wimmers, Dean, BCIT School of Construction and the Environment

Guido Wimmers is the Dean of BCIT’s School of Construction and the Environment, bringing extensive international experience in building science, sustainability, and energy-efficient construction. With a PhD in architectural engineering from the University of Innsbruck, Guido has worked across several countries, developing expertise in sustainable design, renewable energy, modern wood construction, and prefabrication. A recognized leader in advancing innovative building solutions, he is dedicated to shaping the future of sustainable development through education and practice.

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Episode 75: Skilled to Build-The Education Equation

Transcript

INTRO

0:00

BODY

0:00:30
(Wendy)
Guido, thank you very much for joining us today. My name is Wendy McNeil. I’m the acting CEO with HAVAN, the Homebuilders Association of Vancouver. And it’s my pleasure to welcome you here today. I’m looking forward to a great conversation about trades and BCIT’s role in supporting the BC trades movement.

So why don’t we start and talk a little bit about yourself, like where you’re from and what was your passion to get into the trade side of things and as well as BCIT.

0:00:61
(Guido)
All right. Well, thanks, Wendy, first of all, for the invitation. So really a pleasure to be here. My background, most people who know me or anyone who listens to this will hear that right away. So, I’m German by birth and grew up, I went to Mies van der Rohe High School. For the architects amongst our listeners, they would know who that is. And my dad was the director of a nuclear power plant. So, if you put these two things together, there was the influence of architecture, the built environment, at the same time, energy, energy efficiency, what to do with energy or maybe what not to do with energy. So and so that was one of the biggest influences in my youth and then I started to study architecture, I have a master’s in architecture. Later on, I started to realize that I don’t really know what I’m building, how that really works. I went back and got a PhD in engineering. Passion was always energy-efficient buildings. That led me in 2006. I met a gentleman from here, from at the time I was living in Austria. So, I traveled a bit in Europe, worked and lived in various places there. And then I met a gentleman from the BC Government, and they were talking about the first green Olympics ever and that intrigued us. And so, a friend of mine and I came up with the idea very naively at the time, hey, we can contribute. We built you the Austria house.

0:02:31
(Wendy)
Yes.

0:02:32
(Guido)
And so that was my initial project, me over 2007. I moved to Vancouver. The idea was for a year. Just as an adventure with my family. And my oldest son at the time was 12. And he was speaking in deepest rolling dialect a month in, and he says, Papa, you will never home. Basically saying, Dad, I don’t want to go home.

0:02:58
(Wendy)
Okay. So, he decided this is the place. This is the place where he wants to be. Wow.

0:03:03
(Guido)
And so we started to figure out, okay, if that’s it, then let’s see how we can Make it happen. Make it work here. And obviously we love the place. So, we, we lived the first few years here in Vancouver and really liked this. Built the Austria House, which was the first CLT DLT, so mass timber application, the first passive house, many firsts for North America at the time.

0:03:24
(Wendy)
I actually went to visit at the Austria House just before the 2010 Olympics so I might have you know brushed the same crows with you and stuff so and a lot of the same crows with you and stuff. And a lot of the athletes were there too as part of that kind of open house which is really beautiful.

0:03:40
(Guido)
No, it was a fun time and then I worked in engineering companies and in architecture companies since I have both degrees. And then in 2014 I went up to UNBC in Prince George, moved up north and became the chair of engineering. And so created a new program in timber engineering. And yeah, long story short in now one and a half years ago, I came down to BCIT.

All over these years, I’ve been in contact with BCIT as a guest lecturer in many different functions. And now I became the dean of the School of Construction and the Environment there.

0:04:18
(Wendy)
That’s incredible. I think it seems like your life is always kind of shaped around, as you said, a passion for environmental study in the built environment. And it’s just kind of really, I think, having your presence now at BCIT is such I wouldn’t say a win, but it’s such a great leg up, I think, for that school because the built environment is such an important piece, always has been, but I think even more so now with just the growing economy and housing is such a priority for everybody. So, it’s really interesting to see your tenure there and having the future of housing under your belt there. I think what we should kind of talk about is really the skilled trades in BC. Just some stats here just for our audience.

Construction is the number one employer in BC goods sector. The construction industry also accounts for 27 billion or 10.3% of the province’s GDP. About 229,000 people in BC rely directly on the BC’s construction sector for a paycheck. And the number of workers in trade jobs, which is 167,000, which is actually an increase of 3,400 since fall of 2023. But overall, if we’re looking at like a five-year trend, we’re seeing a bit of a dip of 7%. So, as we talked about, BCIT has a really robust programming and especially in the School of Construction and the environment. Can we talk about a little bit about what do you find as BCIT’s role in kind of supporting BC trades?

0:05:46
(Guido)
BCIT is unique in several different ways. It’s a polytechnical institution, and that’s the only one of its kind in BC. And the consequences thereof is that we have the technologies. So, we have the architects, the engineers, various different types of engineering, et cetera, those type of programs. So, the rather a little bit more academic programs.

And at the same time, we have all the trades. And this is all in one institution. So that makes us a little bit unique. Plus, that we are by far the biggest trade school in BC. So, in average, when you look at construction sites, more than 50% of anyone who has a trade degree in BC went through the School of Construction and the Environment at BCIT. That is a huge contribution and is also a huge liability in the sense that we have to deliver and our influence on the construction industry is fairly large.

0:06:44
(Wendy)
Just kind of speaking about that, so with the construction industry continues to kind of evolve and new building science requirements and new codes and stuff. How do you keep on top of what the trends are, what the industry needs to ensure that your students are getting the education they need? Especially with a 50% graduate from BCIT, like what do you guys do and how do you keep pulse of what’s happening in the industry?

0:07:10
(Guido)
That is a very good question because it’s tricky. It’s not easy. Traditionally, the construction industry didn’t really move or change fast. In fact, had the reputation of being basically that glacial speed kind of thing. If we compare ourself to transportation, to communication, to other types of industries, then we’ve been very, very slow moving. That has changed, I would argue, roughly speaking over the last 10 years. So quite a bit of movement came into the construction industry. New processes have started to evolve, pre-fabrication, but also the BIM and AI and other tools coming now into play, which we haven’t had 10 years ago, and they’re really radically changing. Basically, the requirements, both on the technology side for our engineers, architects, et cetera, but also for the trades. So currently we are, with my team, when I came into my new role, which is now about one and a half years ago, first thing we did was several, I think we had five days of full brainstorming and strategy sessions. What does it mean? What does the surrounding environment, the changes of the environment, the changes of the industry really mean? And how can we serve best? So, reaching out directly to industry, always on all levels from CEO to trade worker and everything in between, having open conversations and communication with them, seeing what’s going to happen. Study carefully in terms of what’s happening in other countries. That gives us a rough idea where we might go so that we can not necessarily predict the future but to some degree have an idea what’s going to come ahead of us and so start to really update and upgrade our degrees and our curricula in the right direction so that we, a student with who enters today BCIT depending on the type of program they might leave in two or four years. So, we want to make sure that when they leave, it’s still top-notch what they get and hopefully also the next five, ten years into the future.

0:09:24
(Wendy)
Yeah, as you said, it’s been changing so much, especially in the last ten years, and if a student’s in a two to four-year program, you don’t want their skills to be already out of date by the time they come out and master that. So, you talked a little bit about looking to other countries for a kind of inspiration of kind of where we will be potentially. Can you share some of the other nations that you find have a good system in place or education programming for the trades that you kind of look to for inspiration, I guess?

0:09:50
(Guido)
I mean, we look at all kinds of different countries, but yeah, not just because that’s where my roots are. But Central Europe is a good one to look at in terms of how they dealt with construction industry and also how it was advanced and how the education was adjusted. The driving force is really productivity. If we look into the productivity of our industry compared to others, it doesn’t look great. So, it makes sense to look into countries who have a far higher productivity in that sector and then try to learn from them.

0:10:54
(Wendy)
Interesting. Do you feel like sectors like the prefab housing and that kind of technology, do you think that, I know Europe has been an inspiration even for the association in general, our national organization has done tours and I think Austria and Germany to look at those factory built housing to help eliminate, not eliminate but create more efficiency and productivity in that so I’m assuming that then you would be bringing some of that information and learnings to, to your student base as well.

0:10:58
(Guido)
Yes, we do. And we can see that currently that our industry is changing too. And when I came to Canada and was walking through the streets of Vancouver, I started to realize that all the construction, at least the smaller one, and any building, mostly residential, was built on-site. And that was new to me, because professionally speaking, I grew up with prefabrication. I hardly ever saw anything which was built on-site. It’s always in a factory, in a facility, and then you ship the components to the site, and that reduces obviously your time on site. That’s true. And so, at some point I started to ask these folks, why is it that you build on site? Why wouldn’t you do off-site construction? And essentially, I always got the same answer. It’s just way too expensive.

0:11:46
(Wendy)
Yeah.

0:11:46
(Guido)
We can’t afford that. And so that was a little bit puzzling because only knowing at that time prefabrication, any time I came back into my old environment, I asked my colleagues, so why exactly is it that we do prefab all the time? Why don’t we do offsite, onsite construction? And I got the same answer. It’s way too expensive. We can’t afford that.

0:12:08
(Wendy)
So grass is always greener on the other side, I guess, is kind of what the response was.

0:12:12
(Guido)
So it took a while to figure out what the real reasons are, because obviously you have to assume none of the two is stupid. They have good reasons to do what they do. And at the end, I’m oversimplifying here, but the really simple answer are the energy efficiency requirements in the coat. Once you start to increase the thickness of your walls, once you start to add potentially continuous layer of insulation on the outside. You add the absence of thermal bridging or the air tightness or more levels of quality to a building. It’s just simply not viable to do it on site anymore. It’s still technically possible, but it’s not viable. And now with the step codes, we basically triggered that. And now we have a map where we know, we even know basically from which step it’s more viable to do offsite construction versus onsite construction. And since most central European energy efficiency codes are at least 20 years ahead of what we do here, that gives us a little bit of a roadmap. We can see how things probably will develop here too.

0:13:16
(Wendy)
That’s interesting. It’s good to like looking ahead to kind of what the future could bring is a good way to prepare your students and the other. Even I think with the current people in the trades, I’m sure do you have a lot of returning students coming or maybe new students, maybe more mature students who are looking to upgrade their skills, so that they are also more adept to be able to handle the other pieces of the trades business, like you said, AI and BIM and other components that are now an integral part of being a trades person, I think.

0:13:52
(Guido)
I would argue we have probably three different types of returning students. We have one large group who has a degree from another institution, so they’re not exactly returning to us, but they’re returning back into the educational environment because they want to have a more hands-on experience. And that’s what you get with BCIT, where everything is much more focusing on the applied fields and making our students industry ready. So, preparing this for them. The next type is any kind of professional out there who needs additional
skill set. And this is where we have micro-credentials and all kinds of different other very highly specialized courses where we react directly to the needs of the industry. So those are BCIT credited courses, but they are extremely specific for very specific target audiences. And then the third group, and that goes always a little bit in waves too, are trades students who are coming in for apprenticeship one or two and at some point, you know, they are busy, they have a good job and then potentially when the economy isn’t that great, they decide to come back and do their apprenticeship three or four. So that always goes a little bit in waves depending on the economy too.

0:15:08
(Wendy)
That’s a good point. It kind of segues really well in talking about interest in the trades too. I think one of the things that I think that we’ve experienced is that it needs a bit of a culture shift perhaps or a perception of the trades. I think maybe traditionally it’s, you know, you go university bound and then you get maybe a different degree in that route. But I think as you mentioned in Europe, some of the interest in supporting the trades is that they’re highly respected as an option, as a first pathway forward to your career. So maybe we can talk a little bit about what are you seeing in terms of interest in trades as a first-choice career or even a second-choice career, not a second choice, but a second career for a lot of professionals. So, what are you seeing? Is the attitude shift or is it continuing as it is? What are your thoughts on that?

0:16:05
(Guido)
So far, I think, yeah, it hurts a little bit to say, but the way I see it, it’s still continuing as, I don’t see a real shift here. We need that shift. We need more people in trades for sure, but I just don’t see it in larger numbers. It might be a percent here or percent there, but nothing significant. You’re right. There is this very interesting group who comes in as a trade, as a second choice, and those are typically highly dedicated and really know what they want to do. And you have, when we think about young kids in high schools or even in elementary schools, you start to develop certain passions, you start to develop skills with your hands, with your brain, whatever it is, right? And I think in our society we still have this, traits are not seen equal to any kind of university degree or something like this. And so, parents in the best interest push their kids rather to a higher degree than going for traits. If that’s truly in their best interest remains remains to be seen, because I think some individuals would be far better in trades. And from a monetary point of view, yeah, you can really make good money in trades. So, there is, from my perspective, zero guarantee, the higher degree that you get more money out of it later on. I don’t think that’s a misconception.

0:17:31
(Wendy)
Yeah, it’s interesting. I know there’s a lot of effort on industry in combination with schools like yourself that is really trying to shift the narrative around what does it mean to have a life in the trades. And you think it’s very physically hard labor, it’s dark days in the winter under the snow or the rain and I think what the perception should shift a little bit is like you said, I think parents have a lot of influence on their kids and what they view as a great career path but you can come into a position in your 20s and make some excellent money, be able to kind of jump into the housing market potentially, much earlier than paying off student debt for years and years. But I remember when I was in high school, they had metalwork, they had woodwork, they had those trays to kind of give you an opportunity to kind of dabble into that. And I don’t know if that’s still in place, but I feel like if it’s been removed, it kind of does a disservice to the future of the trades industry, because that’s where you develop that interest, that like, that spark, that hopefully a lot of students will move towards that, because they’re just more, they prefer the physical, they don’t want to be stuck behind a desk, it allows a bit more freedom that way. So, it’s hopefully that’s still supported, but I think there’s probably, just kind of going back, sorry, to the support of the industry, like we’re trying to do more. Is there more that, you know, as an industry, can we help in creating that interest into a career in the trades or just the home building industry in general? Like, is there thoughts on what we can do more?

0:19:07
(Guido)
Yeah, I think we can. I think there are various different things we can do. So, we teamed up, we have a gracious donor who allowed us to work with five different high schools to implement welding camps, for example. And we have similar programs in other trades as well, where we reach out and build up partnerships with various different high schools to make sure that they do, the students have that exposure. And so, they get already almost foundation level kind of training throughout their high school years. So that’s one way. And we need just a little bit more support, also financial support from industry to make these things work. The other thing is, I think that the change we are currently seeing in construction industry itself. So, over the last five years we’ve seen essentially prefab companies almost popping up like mushrooms, which is a good thing. Of course, many of them will not survive, that’s the sad truth, but there is a wider understanding that this is coming and now we have to figure out how exactly we’re going to do it. So, if you think
about a prefab environment that is very different from what you just described, this exposed to weather and hard labor and this kind of stuff, that is essentially eliminated. So, you are in a warm, cozy place at all times. Everything is ergonomically optimized as good as it’s possible. It’s a very safe environment. It’s the safe workplace. It takes maybe a little bit out the nostalgia of what some trades jobs have been in the past. It creates a new environment. But I think super important for us is also that now it opens us up to essentially the other 50% of our population. Because women and trades is still very, very low numbers. So, with this change in industry, it makes it also far more attractive because the surrounding area, the workplace, is so different from what it was traditionally.

0:21:14
(Wendy)
Yeah, we have a women’s council, part of HAVAN, and part of its support is really empowering women in the trades and supporting each other as a network. But they also support BCIT’s ACE program, which you mentioned, I think, as kind of maybe a bridge between high school and with the industry and higher learning. So, can you talk a little bit about ACE?

0:21:40
(Guido)
ACE is a program, Architecture, Construction, Engineering. So essentially, students in high school level can apply for it. And there is a kind of a selection process where we partner up again with these high schools. Essentially this is open for students who know that they want to go in the construction industry but they’re not entirely sure what exactly. Do they want to do architecture, engineering, project management or anything in between and it allows them first off getting some credits at BCIT. So they get actually a fair amount of credits, five courses in total through a one-year process and then also two long internships with two different types of companies, paid internships, actually nicely paid for the students. So, they have the chance to really get into the work environment in at least two different locations or types of jobs and that helps them to decide which one they really want to go for. I think we it’s a bit more tricky but we would love to do the same thing for trades as well and there is a short program just a few weeks where we have something similar for traits. Maybe we have to expand that and get more time. So have students exposed a little bit longer for various different types of traits.

0:23:06
(Wendy)
I think that’s such a brilliant idea. It’s a chance to similar to like shop studies in high school, it gives them a chance to actually, not play around with it, really kind of dig into it and just feel like, is this the path for me? I love this part of it. And really explore where they could be. Because I think with trades, it’s such a huge variety of opportunity there for you, whether you want to go into the architecture, engineering, or the construction side, or if you want to go to the trades, whether it’s HVAC or electrical trades or carpentry. There’s such a huge variety. I hope our listeners are understanding that it’s not just about being on site to hammer nails. There’s such a huge variety of opportunity there that they should definitely explore it and encourage those who are thinking about it. Or maybe you have a son or daughter or a child who’s like, I’m not sure where I want to be, but I love working with my hands. I love seeing things that I create coming to life. Like this is such a great path forward, I think for a lot of them.

0:24:07
(Guido)
Definitely. And it’s very rewarding working with your hands and when you actually create something. So, it’s sometimes a little bit difficult when you’re sitting in the office to see the actual value of your work, yes.

0:24:16
(Wendy)
Yeah, like you can drive around neighborhoods. I’m sure a lot of people who’ve been on these sites and the housing and the buildings that they’ve constructed or be part of have such a legacy feel to it because they have part of that built environment in Vancouver, which is exciting.

0:24:28
(Wendy)
So I want to talk a little bit about ConnectHER. So, there’s an interesting stat here about the number of women in construction trades, which numbers only about 5.7%, so a number of about 9,500. There’s an increase of over 21 since fall 2023 and a five-year trend increase of 24%, but still, it’s quite a low percentage. And we had talked about that previously. So maybe talk a little bit more ConnectHER and what that is, what it’s about and what it’s hoping to do.

0:24:55
(Guido)
Right. I mean, yes, the total number of females in trades jobs is very low and that has to deal with our society, et cetera. There are bigger factors so that not too many actually show up in training at BCIT. But the one thing we wanted to make sure is that every woman who comes to any kind of trades training gets the best support we can offer. And that’s where the individual, so the leader of this is Anna Leary. She came up with the idea to run a so-called ConnectHerHub. The idea of this program is to have 100 mentors from industry. So, these are women in trades who have trades education. Some of them are CEOs, some of them running shops or whatever it is, but in leading positions. They are now becoming the mentors of 100 female trade students in our school and guide them over a longer period of time through their education and through their first steps in career and from there on. So, it has been overwhelmingly a positive respond to this. Anna was very quick in finding 100 individuals who wanted to become mentors. And obviously it was not difficult to find the mentees because every woman in trades is eager to get that support. So that’s running since September and so far, very successful. We will see where that leads us.

0:26:30
(Wendy)
I think that’s such a great program. I think part of the whole trades movement and especially with women and inviting women into the trades and understand that they have a place there is about seeing where it could be or looking to mentors to help you through that process and I think that’s such an innovative way through the school to be able to maybe look to industry in that way to be able to to be able to support women who are choosing a career in the trades. And then you said, it’s not just about the education portion, it’s about how do you get your first steps into the career? What are some of the challenges they had to navigate and just giving them a better, I guess, a foundation on pursuing that career path, which is really, really interesting. Is there, you said, this is the first year into it. Do you, do you maybe perhaps see that it could be a more, another reoccurring type of program?

0:27:25
(Guido)
I hope so. I mean, this is a pilot and we will see where that leads us. But of course, the hope is to have this reoccurring and basically for every new cohort or for every year having new mentors coming in and teaming up with our mentees.

0:27:40
(Wendy)
So kind of talking about the attitude changes and seeing, hopefully in the future, a shift towards the attitudes in the careers as a tradesperson. What are some of the exciting things that you’ve been seeing with the trades? I know you talked a little bit about BIM and AI. Are there other things that you thought would be interesting to the listeners about what is evolving with the construction trades and programming?

0:28:06
(Guido)
I think exactly the things you mentioned with BIM and AI; we’ve had huge progress in the office part of any kind of operation. But we haven’t found the same level of modernization in the practical part in the actual manufacturing of something. And that’s the part which is still missing. So basically, they move forward at a different speed. So, the discrepancy between the two and the difficulties to understand each other became potentially even larger than it was ten or twenty years ago. So, the disconnect might be even larger.

So now it’s really the time to get the manufacturing under control, increasing the productivity and having processes in place where we can be competitive again and that would certainly also reduce the construction costs themselves. So that will, any form of, typically it’s called off-site construction, prefabrication or anything like this, doesn’t really matter. It’s in a controlled environment where you produce components of a building. And of course you can add any level of automation to it if you like so, not mandatory, but you could, which means robotics and any form of automation included. So that would increase further the productivity as well. These are the big changes we will see over the next 10 years in our industry.

0:29:35
(Wendy)
Do you feel like that change is, or maybe who’s responsible for that change, do you feel like this is just a response to other things that are happening around globally, or do you feel like it’s just the need for where building is going? Like, what do you feel is the catalyst to that shift forward?

0:29:50
(Guido)
There are several pressures. So, cost pressure is clearly one of them. Looking at our construction industry, I think we have to face it. It’s not productive. It’s the worst out of the G7 if it comes down to the actual productivity, at least on an annual basis. On an hourly basis, it’s a tricky one because Japan is hypothetically even worse, but then they work so many more hours. But bottom line is our productivity is not great. So, I think optimizing processes to get the productivity up will make things much easier, will reduce the costs. Will obviously also play into this this once in a while you hear these numbers of skilled workers how many are we missing now how many are gonna we gonna miss in five or ten years or something. And I’m not disputing that there is a pressure from that end but at the same time if we’re able to increase the productivity then maybe we’re not missing anyone. Maybe we’re going to be fine. So, I think it’s very important to not forget about this, that we can optimize our processes and increase productivity. So, cost and labor availability are probably the two largest forces pushing us in this direction.

0:31:11
(Wendy)
I find it in talking about processes and efficiency and just productivity, maybe we’ll just kind of foyer into the tariff situation. And I think one of the interesting things that have resulted from the tariff threat, currently it changes daily, but it has made Canadians, I think, look inward and BC’ers look inward. What can we do to make our economy more resilient? Just everything that we do, can we look to homegrown talent, whether it’s trades or otherwise? So, what are your thoughts on perhaps, what do you think, will there be any positive movement with looking at the trades and looking at processes and really building up our economy, whether it is having factories that can do more prefab in BC? Do you think that will have, or hopefully do you think there will be an effect of that positively in BC?

0:32:06
(Guido)
I truly hope so. And I think that the time is obviously overdue to do these kinds of things. I mean, we’re still shipping raw logs to countries instead of adding value to products and having engineered wood products or anything like this. And that’s basically true for any other part of the construction industry as well. So, we were too long too reliant on our southern neighbor or on other imports. So, it’s I think it’s really time that we try to, it’s never going to be 100%. And I’m not going to say, you know, globalization is over, it’s dead. But it obviously it’s much more limited now than it was a few years ago. So, we have to learn to make the best out of what we got and become competitive in whatever we produce.

0:32:56
(Wendy)
Yeah, I agree. I think what it’s kind of elected to fire in, I think everybody in the politics side is, you know, are we doing enough? Are we doing enough to make sure that we can continue moving forward? Are we doing enough to be somewhat resilient? Are we doing enough to be able to really be an investment country for other foreign investment or just in our own people? So, I think it’s going to be interesting to see what happens over the next four years, if not tomorrow, just to see, hopefully there’s a shift there. I think there’s such a great opportunity to support the workers in our country. But I would just kind of narrow the focus to BC and by investing in students who can do technology, if you’re investing in economies and businesses that will help sustain BC, I think it’d be really interesting to see, I hope there is that, maybe that’s that spark that kind of maybe moves things forward, like COVID did for online communications, and that maybe this is what we need to make that move forward.

0:33:58
(Guido)
Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. And I think the pressure is there already. The tariffs are just accelerating a little bit. But the pressure was there before. That we have to become a little bit more independent and generate more value in our country.

0:34:13
(Wendy)
Yeah, interesting. All right. So, we’ll take away a bit from that. And you know, we talked about the skilled labor shortage, and you talked a little bit about the retiring population. I think there’s a lot of messaging out there that with the retirement level and not enough trades coming in, is there, I think one of the stats here I have is the number of construction jobs in BC that would be unfilled due to labor shortages by 2033 is about 6,600, which is an increase of 600 compared to previous forecasts. So, I know we talked a little bit about that in terms of maybe the efficiency factor might be the way to kind of counterbalance that a bit. Is there more that we can look at, maybe from the BCIT perspective on supporting more skilled trade growth? Is there more that we can do to really encourage and maybe from the education side? I know we talked a lot about industry, but is there more that we should, we didn’t touch on that?

0:35:16
(Guido)
I mean, just processing these numbers. So, we have 230,000 people living in construction industry and we’re going to miss 6,600 in eight years from now. That’s only 3% of the 230,000. So, if we couldn’t increase our productivity over the next eight years by three percent, then we are really in trouble. So, in other words, of course BCIT is in the business to educate and have more people out there. That’s not the question. But at the same time, I think all these dooms number we hear of how many people are going to be missing in whatever industry it is. Again, we just have to increase the productivity, which should be relatively easy, because it’s not great. So, if we can increase our efficiency in the processes we do, then I think the 6,600 in 2033 shouldn’t be concerning at all. But yeah, so from both trades as well as technologies point of view, obviously BCIT would love to increase their student count. And we have been steadily increasing, slowly but steadily, and that’s a good thing. As I mentioned earlier, there is always a little bit of a wave with the economy. If the economy is really high from a construction perspective, then slightly less people will end up in any kind of education because they have a good job. Once the economy isn’t that great, then typically those numbers go up again. So, we have that fluctuation anyway. And we are currently in the process of trying to increase the number of classrooms and obviously then instructors and everything else and labs for electricians because we have very long waiting lists. We have some other programs as well with very long waiting lists. We’re trying to optimize this.

0:37:15
(Wendy)
What kind of waiting list are you looking at? Like a year or two or what’s the timeline?

0:37:21
(Guido)
Depends always. Depends on foundation level one, two, three, four. It’s different length, but rule of thumb, the earlier you want to get in, the longer the waiting list. If you already have level three and you want to go for level four then there’s probably very little waiting list. But for electrical foundation, 630 people are on the waiting list and I think that’s that results to about two years. Obviously, those students were trying to get in somewhere else but then our electrical program is by far the biggest in the province over 50%. So, chances to get in somewhere else aren’t that great either. So, we have to increase capacity. And that’s something we’re currently working on. It’s always multiple facets to move to make that work. One of the big ones is we know the pressure is there with trades, but we also know, depending on the trade, that the financial contribution of our government towards trade education hasn’t changed since 15 to 25 years, depending on the type of trade. So, if you factor in increased cost inflation for salaries, for maintenance, for materials, for all of this, as a simple rule of thumb, we can say we get roughly half the money as we got 20 years ago.

0:38:37
(Wendy)
Yeah, which is detrimental, I think.

0:38:40
(Guido)
We have to, many trades are substituted by other programs and cross-financed, which is, and that’s for any educational institution in this field. That’s not ideal. So, we really need to put an emphasis on putting the financial support towards trades so that they can get properly trained.

0:38:56
(Wendy)
I think the BC budget was dropped on the fourth. And I know, obviously, we expected it to focus more on the tariff response, but I think it’s disappointing to see that, like you said, that the trade support and that crucial piece for our economy health, economic health, I don’t think was really even mentioned in there. Other than what is…

0:39:24
(Guido)
And it wasn’t addressed over many, many years prior where we had a good run. So obviously, if you don’t do it then, then it bites you even harder once you are a little bit in trouble.

0:39:36
(Wendy)
Yeah, and then you’re always paying catch up, I think, at that point almost, right?

0:39:39
(Guido)
Yeah.

0:39:40
(Wendy)
Yeah. Well, it’s definitely something that I think, as an industry, it would be part of, I think, the conversation and encouraging that. Because I think the home building industry, as we mentioned, is such an important piece to the GDP, especially for BC. And it doesn’t just start with the housing, you have to go back and having the trades to come in who are skilled, who have the training, who access to the classrooms that places like BCIT offer, and then move them through the system and then to the career and then kind of it’s like a full circle, right? So, I think we have to encourage as an industry ourselves on the importance of supporting post-secondary education programs and schools that do such an

0:40:23
(Guido)
important job to funnel the future. The other alternative would be to increase tuition, which I mean, legally we weren’t allowed to do anyway, that’s a 2% increase per year. But also, morally I think that’s a very wrong thing to do. So that’s not really going to help the industry because less people will be able to afford it. So, I think you’re right. If we don’t get it from a government point of view, then we have to talk to industry and figure out if there is any kind of will to support the next generation of their workers.

0:40:57
(Wendy)
I think there definitely is a lot of interest. I think a lot of industry have seen that there’s only so many resources to go around and unfortunately not enough for our skills, trades. So I think that we have to do more where we can to support it, whether just helping to shift the thought on trades as an important, as a career path, as you mentioned before, but also the resources that it takes to run a school, to run classrooms with actual practical training. It’s such an important piece. So, I think that, you know, as a homebuilder’s association, we’ll do what we can to also support that as well.

0:41:33
(Guido)
And also the equipment needed for that education becomes more complex and therefore also more expensive. Again, example, electricians. Now, I don’t even know how many, but quite a few robots are in the classrooms, etc., because that becomes part of the education. And those machines are not cheap, right? So, 20 years ago, the materials and the equipment you needed was very different than what we are now dealing with.

0:42:00
(Wendy)
But you know what, if you’re into working with robots and stuff, you may not even realize that that’s going to be part of the training. So maybe it sparks some interest to those who are listening today. So, we had a great conversation today, Guido. Thank you so much. I know we could talk for hours on this, on this important issue, but it’s such a pleasure to have you here today. And HAVAN, as you know, is a home builders association of Vancouver. We have 1100 member companies in the residential space. We build about 65% of the homes. So, we’re, we have a huge gamut of members who are passionate about this industry and looking to the future and supporting the next generation of builders, architects, tradespeople. So, we look forward to continuing the conversation.

0:42:42
(Guido)
Thank you, Wendy. Thank you so much.

0:42:44
(Wendy)
All right. I’m Wendy McNeil, and I look forward to bringing more conversations to you about exploring solutions to help the residential construction industry. Special thanks to our sponsors BC Hydro, BC Housing, FortisBC and Trail Appliances. For more information and links from today’s episode please go to havan.ca/measuretwicecutonce and thank you for joining us.