Author: Jordan Bateman

Are you looking to gain an understanding on how to interpret and read documentation that relates to the Municipal Infrastructure? We have the course for you! Check our Municipal Map Reading workshop in Burnaby November 27.

Participants will learn the related Regulations, Acts and Master Municipal Construction Documents as well as blueprint reading symbols, legend and design specifications for local cities, municipalities and townships.

You will also review BC One Call documentation, utility owner’s roles and responsibilities, ground disturbers’ roles and responsibilities, and safe utility locating practices.

After completing this course, students will get a better understanding of how to read and interpret municipal Construction Drawings.

Here are the course objectives:

• Reviewing Utility information and hazards
• Understanding Workers Compensation Act & WorksafeBC Regulations
• Utility Safety Awareness
• Review BC One Call Documentation
• Blue Print Map Reading Group Activities
• Review on Locating Underground infrastructure
• Understanding Safety Procedures and Practices
• Knowing the Emergency Response for Utility Owners

Plus, you’ll earn 7.5 CPD Points from BC Housing!

You can register for this workshop and any of our other training courses at www.icba.ca/courses.

Jordan and Maclean talk about the impending transit strike in Greater Vancouver; John Horgan’s non-apology for name-calling construction workers; the new Trudeau cabinet; and make a bet on the Grey Cup.

How are your skills as a supervisor and manager? Could they be better? Our Supervisory and Management Skills workshop in Kamloops December 5 to 6 is just what you need.

Participants will improve their skills in leadership, management and supervision of staff, and learn skills to enhance their ability to build a collaborative team culture with their staff and on job sites.

Here’s what you’ll be able to do by the end of this two-day course:

• Understand the differences between leadership, management and supervision;
• Identify different leadership styles and approaches;
• Apply different leadership styles to deal with various situations;
• Understand motivational theories – Mazlow, Herzberg, MARS;
• Enhance individual and group performance and engagement;
• Understand different personality styles and how to communicate appropriately
• Effectively manage time
• Understand stress and how to manage it at work
• Understand substance abuse, recognition and prevention
• Conduct a successful toolbox talk
• Appropriately discipline and/or terminate staff
• Apply various negotiating skills
• Deal with difficult people, conflict and confrontation
• Use collaborative decision-making skills
• Understand a systems approach to management of construction companies

Plus, you’ll earn 5 Gold Seal Credits and 32 CPD Points from BC Housing!

This course will also take place in Burnaby on February 6 and 7, 2020. Check out www.icba.ca/courses for more information and to register for this or any of our other upcoming courses.

Microsoft Excel is an integral part of most offices; let us teach you to use it!

Our Microsoft Excel for Business course will teach you to use Excel to create budgets, track costs, generate quotes and more. Participants will even a very basic knowledge of Excel will progress quickly to creating basic databases, budgets, graphs, reports and equations. Here are some of the skills you’ll learn:

• Customize excel options and views
• Create and manipulate tables
• Filter and sort data
• Apply formulas
• Use the correct syntax to insert functions
• Create and format cells and ranges
• Order and group cells and ranges
• Apply cell ranges and references in formulas and functions
• Summarize data with functions
• Apply conditional logic in functions
• Format and modify text with functions
• Create and format charts and objects

This course offers 1 Gold Seal Credit.

And if you’re looking to build on your skills, we have a Microsoft Excel Advanced course! You’ll learn to use advanced functions such as lookup and reference, conditional logic and conditional summary, and work with shared workbooks and worksheets. You’ll also earn 1 Gold Seal Credit for this course.

Interested? Our next Excel for Business course is in Burnaby December 3 and Victoria December 10. Our next Excel Advanced course is in Burnaby December 4, and Victoria December 11!

Register for these or any of our other upcoming workshops at www.icba.ca/courses.

The December 2019 edition of ICBA’s Construction Monitor looks at the status of major projects, including Site C, LNG Canada, Woodfibre LNG, the Massey Tunnel replacement, and the TransMountain pipeline expansion. Plus a look at what’s slowing business here: union monopolies and ridiculous red tape.

Click HERE for the full Monitor.

Workplace Safety is a team effort – and ICBA is again going to award one team member with a weekend in Las Vegas in recognition of their safe work practices!

The submission deadline for ICBA’s annual Safety Merits Contest is noon Pacific, Thursday, December 19, 2019. Don’t miss your chance to submit the names of your company’s safest workers.

Entrants must be employed below the superintendent level (office staff are not eligible) and must have worked a minimum of 2,500 hours without any time lost due to an accident.

The construction industry recognizes that a safe workplace is the responsibility of management and of the workers on site. The industry realizes that those individuals who have taken great care to avoid injury to themselves and others are invaluable to their firm and an example for all workers.

The purpose of the Safety Merits Contest is for the industry to recognize these individuals, draw attention to their achievement and encourage others to follow their example.

CONTEST RULES

1) All entrants must be employed by an ICBA member company.

2) Entrants must be employed below the superintendent level. Office staff are not eligible.

3) Entrants must have worked a minimum of 2,500 hours for one employer without any time lost due to an accident as of November 30, 2019. Proof of hours may have to be submitted and verified. Note: The required hours need not have been worked consecutively with that one firm.

4) Names of those who meet the above criteria are to be submitted to the ICBA office by the employer to ally@icba.ca (Excel spreadsheet preferred) no later than noon Pacific time, Thursday, December 19, 2019.

5) Names of employees submitted in previous Safety Merits Contests may be submitted again.

6) One name will be drawn at random.

PRIZE: A 3-day trip to Las Vegas, Nevada. Return airfare to Las Vegas, hotel accommodations, and transportation from Las Vegas airport to the hotel. (Maximum value $1500, including taxes.)

VANCOUVER – The Independent Contractors and Businesses Association (ICBA) filed papers in BC Supreme Court yesterday (Wednesday), seeking to intervene in Beedie (Keefer Street) Holdings Ltd.’s case against the City of Vancouver over the City’s refusal to issue a development permit for Beedie’s project at 105 Keefer Street.

“As a construction association representing the men and women who would build this project, we are deeply concerned about Vancouver’s increasing red tape and shifting regulatory goalposts,” said Chris Gardner, ICBA president. “This project should have gotten done, but the City flouted its own process and killed a great plan.”

Beedie’s 105 Keefer application met all the City’s zoning criteria, but Vancouver’s Development Permit Board killed the project anyway – the first time the Board has done so in more than decade.

“Homebuyers are facing a housing affordability crisis in Vancouver and decisions like this make the situation worse,” said Gardner.  “We are in a place now where it takes longer to approve and permit a housing project than to build it.”

Last year, the CD Howe Institute issued a report titled, “Through the Roof: The High Cost of Barriers to Building New Housing in Canadian Municipalities.” It calculated that red tape, delays and fees imposed by City Hall increases the cost of building new housing up to $300 per square foot in Vancouver, or up to $600,000 on the price of new homes.

“It’s vital that the City give prospective builders a clear understanding at the outset of a project the criteria to be applied to any given development application, and that if they meet that criteria, the project will be approved. That’s no longer the case in Vancouver and as a result, confidence in the City acting fairly and in an open and transparent fashion has significantly eroded.”

ICBA’s application to intervene is built on several points:

1. The City is creating regulatory uncertainty for builders
2. Builders are losing confidence that the development approval process is fair, transparent, and principled
3. The City’s red tape is a major contributor to the affordability crisis facing homebuyers in Vancouver
4. Refusing to approve projects that meet the zoning requirements contributes to the shortage of affordable homes
5. The City’s red tape is preventing construction workers from pursuing jobs and negatively impacting the local economy

“The men and women working in construction and homebuyers and builders in the City of Vancouver deserve better answers and greater accountability from City Hall,” said Gardner.

ICBA’s full application for intervenor status can be found HERE. An affidavit from Chris Gardner can be found HERE.