Canada’s Building Trades Unions (CBTU) has put forward recommendations to a federal parliamentary committee reviewing the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) that support the use of foreign nationals in highly-skilled construction occupations.Read more
Lego has long been lauded by architecture geeks as a childhood gateway drug into the world of designing and building. Now, the UK wants to use a similar idea to hook teens on the fun of construction management. The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) has developed a four-part construction curriculum played within Minecraft—the wildly popular […]
Architects, designers and engineers are learning what “gamers” have known for some time: Virtual Reality (VR) has a place in the modern world. Read more
A team of researchers at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University is testing a substance made from pig manure to use as an asphalt binder to replace petroleum-based products, according to a report by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Read more
Researchers from the University of Freiburg’s Plant Biomechanics Group are looking at the tropical fruit to find better ways of constructing buildings that can withstand earthquakes. Read more
An Australian company is bringing a handheld soil scanner to North America which can detect total petroleum hydrocarbon contamination at levels as low as 68 ppm in 20 seconds. Read more
Over five years a Kelowna contractor spent $300,000 to invent a system that prevents birds from drilling holes into buildings. Using his 15 years of experience as a stucco contractor, Keith Eisenkrein took his new technique and launched EIFS (exterior insulation and finishing system) Armour. His patent-pending, licensed product has already been applied to almost […]
Helen Goodland, Brantwood Consulting principal, and an advisor to the BC Construction Association on innovation and sustainability, says the increasing use of work place technology will bring more change to the Canadian construction industry. Read more
New construction technologies and materials and new ways of working together can make the design and construction process faster and more efficient for project owners, designers and contractors, say experts. Read more
Canada’s biggest pension funds are prepared to finance the construction of major new federal government infrastructure projects, according to senior fund sources, marking a shift from their traditional strategy of avoiding development risk. Read more