With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/813780
2008: Citing national security concerns, the Conser- vative government of Stephen Harper blocks the sale of Macdonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. to U.S. firm Alliant Techsystems Inc. in 2008. Through a series of stealth moves over the next few years, however, Richmond-based MDA–Canada's largest space company–is now American in all but name, with the bulk of employees, including presi- dent and CEO Howard Lance, based south of the border. with "passive house," a building standard that is only now gaining traction in B.C. Although neither is a new idea, combining them allows swift construction of highly energy-efficient homes. Unlike traditional construction firms, Britco pre- assembles its buildings offsite, in a climate-controlled factory. "The benefits are higher quality control, greater speed and greater accuracy," says Craig Mitchell, director of innovative solutions. On average, modular construction is 30 per cent faster, Mitchell adds; projects typically produce less than five per cent waste, versus up to 30 per cent on a construction site. Passive house, an international certification that originated in Germany in the late 1980s, requires meeting a series of metrics based on features such as building-envelope airtightness and energy gain from sunlight. The resulting structures use up to 90 per cent less energy for heating and cooling than their conven- tional counterparts, according to Victoria-based non- profit Passive House Canada. Switching to passive could have a major environ- mental impact, given that buildings consume as much as 40 per cent of the world's energy and produce up to 30 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. Beyond the environmental benefits, passive houses have excellent indoor air quality and maintain a pleasant tempera- ture in all seasons. Passive makes a good fit with modular because meeting the standard is easier in a factory than on a job site, Mitchell explains. So far, Britco has completed two modular/passive projects. The first was a six-unit townhome development in Bella Bella that the com- pany delivered to client Vancouver Coastal Health in just seven months, despite the remote location. The average passive house in Vancouver takes two years to build, Mitchell estimates. In March, Britco was bidding on a 50-unit passive house project in Fort St. John for BC Housing. Although passive can deliver big savings on heating in a northern B.C. climate, the case is less compelling on the South Coast, where energy costs are relatively low, Mitchell says. But as he points out, the City of Vancou- ver is pushing passive as the new standard for rezon- ing applications. As for modular alone, Mitchell says large building industry players are looking to Britco to help speed up construction in a busy market. "Getting projects built within a shorter time period and turned over to the owner faster is an attraction, and that's why we're seeing a lot more pickup in the areas of afford- able housing and multifamily developments." —N.R. Bank Shot Kevin Sandhu's fintech startup, Grow Financial, works behind the scenes to raise the banking industry's digital game anks and credit unions look to 33-year-old Kevin Sandhu to help them keep pace with changing consumer demands. "We're really the tech in fintech—that's the problem, at the end of the day, I think we're solving," says the boyish founder and CEO of Grow Financial Inc. at his com- pany's bright, sparsely furnished offices in Vancouver. Grow, which specializes in white-label digital bank- ing services, belongs to a cluster of local financial tech- nology companies that Sandhu puts at more than 20. Last year it was the only B.C. name to make the Fintech 100, an annual global ranking compiled by Australian investment firm H2 Ventures and KPMG LLP. A lifelong entrepreneur who started his first busi- ness at age 12, Vancouver native Sandhu knows the financial industry well. Before founding Grow as Grouplend in 2014, he spent several years on Bay Street, working in 2008: Online book- seller Abebooks of Victoria is sold to Amazon.com in 2008 for around $100 million. Abebooks was an early Canadian success story in e-commerce and put co-founder Boris Wertz–principal of Vancouver-based Version One Ventures, and one of North America's top early-stage investors–on the map. 2008: Riding the wave of social media, Ryan Holmes launches Hootsuite Media Inc. as a B2B platform for companies to manage their various social channels, from Twitter to Facebook to LinkedIn. The Vancouver tech darling now counts 1,000-plus employees and 14 million users worldwide; a much-delayed initial public offering is expected in 2017, with some estimates pegging it at $1 billion (and don't tell Holmes otherwise!). RIGHT: TANYA GOEHRING MAY 2017 BCBUSINESS 39