Good Evening,
I first want to take a moment and say thank you for giving me this opportunity for which I am truly grateful. I am looking forward to the next year to help further advance your Homebuilders Association of Vancouver.
I do need to extend a special thank you to Ron Rapp not only for his leadership for this past year as the Chair of the HAVAN but also for his guidance over the past several years. Along the same vein thanks need to be extended to entire board of directors for their support with special kudos going to Blake Huedema and Lynn Harrison who I continue to learn from every time I sit with them. Without these individuals I know I would not be standing here today before you.
And I would be remiss if I also did not acknowledge Bod de Wit and his entire staff at the HAVAN offices, for their support and all the hard work that they do keeping this ship rolling.
I know in the upcoming year I am going to want to see all the great work that has happened over the past few years continue,
• The resurgence and synergy of our local chapter with both the provincial and national organizations giving us all a stronger voice.
• The work of the Government Relations group lead by Ron Rapp, including the G2G studies which help the industry benchmark best practises.
• The Education and Training committees who will play a vital role in allowing our membership to keep up with the newly implement Home Builders legislation around licensing.
• The Renovation Council and their work around the Reno Mark and “Get it Writing” campaigns.
Those are just to name a few as there is so much exciting work going on throughout our association it would be too difficult to list them all.
Now for me in coming into this role I believe I am sitting in a very unique situation that will allow me to aid in the growth and strengthening of the HAVAN over the next year.
Two parts to this unique situation:
Part 1 –
At Dick’s Lumber we are and have built our business around the HAVAN.
Our focus has been the home building industry and the backbone of the company has been the support of the HAVAN.
Many of you may be aware of the fact that Dick’s Lumber is a founding member of HAVAN showing our support going back 40 plus years, and I am excited at the thought that in all those years no one within Dick’s Lumber, Curtis Lumber or our parent company RONA has ever held this seat.
Why I bring this up? I am not here to promote Dick’s Lumber, I am here to support and promote you and the entire HAVAN association. But why this is exciting for me is that in my role as Sales Manager at Dick’s Lumber I am given the opportunity to work with not only all of our home builders from a Polygon to a Larry Clay Construction but also a good majority of suppliers to the industry such as the All Weather Windows or Metrie.
I do not personally know all the past chairs, but I do believe anyone who has sat in this chair up and till now were never in a situation where literally through their day to day business practises had a chance to reach out and touch the vast majority of our membership, whereas I do.
Part 2 –
Many of you, may not know my own personal work history, but for those that do know that I have volunteered on multiple boards and organizations both locally, nationally and internationally in previous lifes.
My experience from these past endeavours has shown me that strong associations or group survive and get stronger with new ideas and a continuance of growth of people.
I believe combining these two parts leads me to a natural mission or mandate for my upcoming years as Chair of the association – ENGAGEMENT!
I know it is a fantastic situation where we are now 850 members strong – WOW!
But if we want to continue to be strong and have our voice heard, we need to have an engaged membership.
Now I know, speaking to you here tonight I am preaching to the choir you are here you are engaged and see value to our organization. Thank you!
But looking the across the audience at best we have maybe 150, probably less, of 850 companies represented. I am not saying we need all 850 companies out tonight, although it would be nice. What we need is to make sure we are engaged and calling upon our membership to participate at some level or another. We need to show them value, we need to show the membership we are working for them.
In turn through our membership we will be sure to find new ideas and new blood. People who will be able to fill our shoes and continue our legacy when we look to take a step back from the business. When I speak of legacy this is not only for the association but for our members own companies as they develop their own people and their own businesses.
So again I hope to bring to you a combination of my past work history with my current role to lead this charge and strengthen our association from within by having more and more of our membership engage through 2015 and 16.
Thanks you again for your support in nominating me for this role, I truly am looking forward to having the membership be proud of our efforts in the upcoming year.
In closing just a couple of thoughts,
The first one is one I have always tried to encompass throughout my work life.
The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. By Charles Dickens
And the second thought is more around the fact that I just spent a good part of the last couple of weeks traveling through Denmark, and did stop in to see the home of Hans Christian Andersen so from Mr. Andersen –
Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. By Hans Christian Andersen
Thank you and I look forward to meeting with you over the next year.
