carbon further back towards the start of the
design processes,” said Damien Canning,
head of technical sustainability at Costain
Group and industry specialist for carbon
management for CITT.
The project is running for three years
and the research will focus on carbon ac-counting
methodologies, stakeholder
engagement and social barriers to tool
adoption, collaborative frameworks for ef-ficient
supply chain management, and de-cision
analytics for project design under
uncertainty. As the research is undertak-en
it will feed back into the development
of the tool.
There will be close collaboration be-tween
the researchers and the construc-tion
industry and live tests have been set up
with real infrastructure projects. These will
take place throughout the project.
“The way to really drive this is to devel-op
something with as much input from the
industry as possible. This will help to raise
standards significantly, and ensure consis-tency
across the industry,” said Canning.
After the project is finished, the open
source tool will be publicly available and
free to use to enhance the possibility for it
to be used by as many as possible.
“The key is to get the industry to use this
tool. Therefore it has to be accessible and
easy to understand. You can develop the
best tool in the world but if the stakehold-ers
don’t want to use it, it’s not going to have
much impact,” said Brander.
CCA pleased with
continued infrastructure
commitment
The Canadian Construction Association
(CCA) sees the federal government’s Budget
2017 announcement as a reiteration of pre-vious
commitments made to the renewal of
Canada’s infrastructure.
“While we expected to see greater detail
regarding the Canada Infrastructure Bank
and Phase II of the Federal program, CCA is
pleased with the high priority it continues
to attach to the renewal of Canada’s critical
infrastructure,” said Michael Atkinson, pres-ident
of CCA. “We look forward to receiv-ing
additional details in the coming months
and working with the government on a
seamless transition from Phase I to the next
phase of the Federal infrastructure plan.”
Also included in this year’s budget were
some positive proposed changes to enhance
the Federal Temporary Foreign Worker
Program, as well as changes to Canada’s
building codes to improve energy efficiency
and reduce building emissions by promot-ing
retrofits and net-zero construction.
“As the national association represent-ing
the Canadian construction industry, we
will continue to support all efforts to see in-vestment
in infrastructure rolled out in a
timely and efficient manner,” said Atkinson.
“While short on details, this budget repre-sents
another positive step forward in the
national effort to improve our competitive-ness
through the modernization of our na-tion’s
infrastructure. The priority attached
to trade infrastructure through the cre-ation
of the National Trade Corridor Fund
was welcomed and we see it as another pos-itive
step forward in the modernization of
our trade infrastructure, which are critical
to enhancing the ability of Canadian busi-nesses
to compete internationally.”
NEWS FROM THE FIELD
ART BABYCH / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the House of Commons just before presenting the
government’s 2017 budget
Continued on page 16
14 Think BIG | Quarter 2 2017 | saskheavy.ca
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