< PreviousWritten by Jessica FerlainoThe construction industry has historically been slow to evolve, drawn to tradition over technol-ogy. As the industry is in a state of rapid innovation and advancement, organi-zations like the Toronto Construction Association (TCA) are working tirelessly to build strong member businesses that won’t fall behind. “It’s about helping out members in an industry that has and will continue to have lots of challenges,” said TCA President and CEO John Mollenhauer. “Our goal has always been to help member companies build better businesses, to do everything in our power to help the industry and the practitioners in it.” TCA is the oldest association in Canada. Founded in 1867, the same year as Confederation, the organization com-prises over 1,800 member companies and 300,000 industry practitioners that represent all facets of construction from owners to manufacturers, con-tractors, suppliers, service providers and allied professionals. Members benefit from the organization’s advocacy work, its provision of resources and information, education, professional and business development opportuni-ties, and the camaraderie of a network of peers who face the same challenges daily. “We spend a lot of time helping members with procurement-related challenges, unfair tendering practices and transfer of risk. We’re focused on education, both formal and informal. We have the Construction Institute of Canada and we offer several courses, including some JUNE 201910Written by Jessica FerlainoGold Seal Certified courses that are well-attended to help practitioners stay current and stay ahead of the curve. One of the most pressing issues for members over the last several years has been prompt payment and related cash flow issues, and for nearly two decades, TCA has advocated for members, lobbying the government to ensure con-tractors are paid on a timely basis. As an industry, TCA worked collaborative-ly to advance Bill 142, now known as the Ontario Construction Act, which looks to modernize the Ontario Construction Lien Act with a series of changes that have already been introduced as well as prompt payment and adjudication leg-islation to expedite payment processing. The prompt payment and adjudication piece is expected to come into effect in October 2019.Mollenhauer noted that the Ontario Construction Act will have “a profound impact” on the industry, resolving disputes in real time offering a form of “rough justice” that has experienced great success in the UK and Australia. Bill 142 was a great success for the organiza-tion, though it is certain to take some time to be fully implemented as many projects, including public projects, will be grandfathered. As TCA worked tirelessly to resolve the issues pertaining to prompt payment, another major issue emerged that started to have serious implications for TCA members and the industry: a shortage of skilled labour. TCA Christmas Luncheon11CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS BuildForce Canada, a national industry-led organization that provides information and resources to the construction industry, is forecasting that over the next decade, there will be a skilled labour shortage of upwards of 300 000 workers in Canada. A labour shortage will not only impact profitability; timelines will be crunched, existing labour will become increasingly dear and quality and safety can be threatened.“We’ve been talking as an industry about a labour shortage for many years and it has, in recent months, become real,” Mollenhauer explained. “If those numbers are to be believed – and I think that’s as reliable a forecast as anybody produces in Canada – it points to a serious problem that will become worse,” he shared.“We will, at a minimum, become more creative as a way of coping with the skilled labour shortage,” said Mollenhauer, be it through education or technology. Education can serve the industry by developing the next generation of talent while technology can help to streamline efficiency, eliminating some previously manual, time-consuming activities with faster, more effective tools, technologies and methodologies. “Our industry has historically been slow to evolve and there hasn’t been enough innovation. Our industry doesn’t really embrace new technology and things are changing so rapidly that employers in our sector are overwhelmed with the volume of change,” Mollenhauer explained. An important part of TCA’s role will be to help its members understand the new technologies available and help them make decisions that result in the adoption of technology that is most likely to be relevant to their operations. The same can be said about safety. “A lot of things have happened in Ontario in recent years that are focused on improving safety protocols and ensuring our work-force gets home safety after work each day,” said Mollenhauer, and this is a shared priority that is high on all Ontario employers’ priority lists. Best practices are readily shared, even amongst competitors who know that a collaborative approach to safety improves competitiveness. For Mollenhauer, “We’re beginning to realize that doing some-thing safely is more productive and efficient, so the benefits are many-fold.” Safety is number one for the industry and has been a priority for some time. In fact, he credits the Greater Toronto Area with having a safety culture unlike anything he has seen anywhere in the world. “You can pass legislation around safety and that has an effect: it forces people who might not otherwise attach enough impor-tance to be tracked and monitored. It’s the safety culture that is changing and what’s having the biggest difference. That’s why employers are willingly sharing their protocols and best practices: everybody wants to do the right thing for the greater good of the industry,” he said. Student Bid CompetitionJUNE 201912In Ontario, Safety Group Programs, one of which is run by TCA, and COR™ certification have gained a lot of traction in recent years and according to Mollenhauer, “COR™ in particular is fast becoming a standard, it’s fast becoming a requirement, but there are more and more companies that are doing it proac-tively before it becomes a requirement. People are doing it because they want to, not because they have to.” Mollenhauer and employers across Ontario share the view that when it comes to safety, “It will never be enough. It’s a process and not an event,” which means that in order to promote and protect safety and a safety culture the industry will need to remain ever vigilant and continue to identify areas of improve-ment proactively to ensure worker safety on worksites every-where. In an effort to support and promote safety TCA has dedicated the entire month of May as #TCASafetyMonth. All month long, TCA shares social content that is aimed at pro-moting a strong safety culture and best practices. For more on #TCASafetyMonth you can follow TCA @TCA_Connect. “The market, when you look at total construction, 2018 was just a tiny bit slower than 2017 – obviously both extraordinary years. In 2016, I think we had 12 billion in building permits and that went to 14.7 billion in 2017. In 2018, it was around the 13.6 billion range, so a tiny bit slower than 2017, but still one of the busiest construction markets in the world. That it continues to be a super-heated market is an understatement,” explained Mollenhauer. Where potential is boundless, challenges are many. Changing legislation at the various levels of government, efforts from municipalities to reduce construction-related noise and con-gestion – two by-products of an industry that is necessary to build the cities we call home – and labour- and market-related issues don’t make it easy to remain competitive, which makes organizations like TCA more relevant than ever. Members are glad to have the support and resources of the TCA to ensure the hard problems are being addressed. One change that members can expect is an overhaul of TCA’s electronic plans room platform, a platform that is offered to members to simplify the bidding process. Already a great resource, the orga-nization is looking to improve it further to make it even more user-friendly. The organization continues to advocate for its members, assist-ing them while they navigate the many hurdles and opportuni-ties in the market to drive competitiveness, success and longev-ity, and the strength of the industry and the greater economy. TCA Members Day 201913CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS JUNE 201914AGF Group Inc. produces 530 400 tonnes of rebar annually and has provided rebar services for over 35 000 projects in the fields of civil engineering, commercial, industrial, residential, and institutional construction.15CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS When reinforced steel bars, known as rebar, and post-tensioning systems are installed in concrete struc-tures, they are invisible, and no one admires them. However, rebar is truly the unsung hero of the concrete con-struction industry, deserving of recognition, because it is what keeps bridges and buildings from collapsing. “We have no glamour in rebar because it’s hidden in the concrete, but we’re happy to live with that,” says Maxime Gendron, President of AGF Rebar Inc., Markham, Ontario. “It’s the high quality and technical aspect of its installation that sustains the bridge or the building, and that is why integrity is one of our core values.” From its corporate headquarters in Longueuil, Quebec, it employs close to 2,700 people worldwide. It maintains offices and facilities in six Canadian provinces, including the divisions in Ontario and Alberta, led by Maxime, which employ four hundred people. It also has divisions in six U.S. states; in eight countries in Central and South America and the West Indies; and in five countries in the Middle East and Europe. AGF offers significant advantages to clients. It maintains a sub-stantial inventory ensuring projects will not be delayed, and because work is not subcontracted, company experts can suggest innovative solutions aimed at lowering costs without sacrificing quality. Written by Margaret Patricia EatonPerhaps most significant of all is the code of ethics of the owners that influences how the company does business. “My father, (Serge Gendron, AGF Group CEO) would say being an owner is not about making money; it’s about being a good citizen. The company is a tool, and you need to make it as socially strong as you can,” says Maxime. Integrity has been at the core of the company since its founding, seventy-one years ago by his grandfather, Laurent Gendron, who upon graduating as an engineer from Polytechnique de Montréal, recognized the potential for rebar specialization. “In those days, consulting engineers were procuring the rebar themselves, leaving the general contractors installing it,” Maxime explained, “and he could see a conflict of interest. A lot of waste was generated. Even engineers were not clear as to who should do what, because it wasn’t a specialized trade, so this is what my grandfather decided to do.” Maxime notes his grandfather was ahead of his time in terms of material choice, because rebar and concrete are fully recyclable, greatly decreasing the carbon footprint of any construction project. That was not a concern then, but it certainly is one now. With a loan from his former professor, which he quickly repaid, Laurent founded Acier Gendron Ltd. in 1948, just in time to take advantage of some large-scale projects happening in Quebec. Maxime GendronPresident of AGF Rebar Inc.Serge GendronMaxime’s Father, CEO AGF GroupJUNE 201916“The company also had good years with Expo ’67 and the Olympics (Summer Olympics of 1976), but then we had a slump in the 1980s, and we were producing rebar only for Montreal and the suburbs,” Maxime continues. In 1981 Laurent’s son, Serge, also an engineering graduate of Polytechnique de Montréal, assumed the presidency and began looking for ways to grow the company. Nine years later, a huge project requiring 105 000 tonnes of steel to build the Hibernia Oil Platform in Newfoundland and Labrador presented just the opportunity. The Hibernia Project “is the largest-ever gravity-based structure for an offshore oil platform in the world,” according to the company, “and can resist the impact of icebergs that are common in the spring in this area.”“Hibernia,” says Maxime, “was a milestone for us.” When the four-year project was completed in 1996, he recalls his father saying that the company was “‘as good as any of them’, and this is when he started thinking, ‘if we’re as good as them, we will grow and build,’ and so we started doing acquisitions.”In 1999, the company became AGF Steel Inc. when it merged with Fertek Inc. and then grew internationally through acquisitions and constructing new plants, which, in 2007, led to the creation of the AGF Group, with Serge as Chief Executive Officer.Being the son of the Chief Executive Officer and a professional engineer who had graduated from Sherbrooke University did not guarantee that Maxime would automatically move into a leadership role when he began working for the company in 2003. First, he had to learn and prove himself, and he had to do it at a time in Quebec when highways and bridges were crumbling.On September 30, 2006, a bridge in Laval, in the north end of Montreal, collapsed, killing five and injuring six others. Quebec Premier Jean Charest ordered an investigation, appointing Pierre-Marc Johnson, a lawyer who had served as premier in the 1980s, to lead it. The Johnson Commission findings, released a year later, pointed to “improper rebar support for the design which caused a ‘plane of weakness’ where cracks eventually appeared; improper rebar “Company experts can suggest innovative solutions aimed at lowering costs without sacrificing quality.”installation at the time the overpass was constructed in 1970, and the use of low-quality materials.” (CBC News website, Oct 18, 2007). Acier Gendron Ltd. had no involvement in this project.The two-hundred-page report also pointed to bad govern-ment inspection practices in the years since construction, and made seventeen recommendations including that the Quebec government spend $500 million a year for ten years on bridge and overpass repair and construction, and that there be a full review of the legal framework for bridge design and supervi-sion of the construction work. “That meant, in future, the engineer from the company provid-ing the rebar needed to approve its installation, and that was my baptism by fire,” Maxime says, referring to his role from 2008 to 2011 as the on-site engineer for the extension of Highway 25. Next, he was appointed on-site project manager for the com-pletion of Highway 30, a huge divided highway project on the “Rebar and concrete are fully recyclable, greatly decreasing the carbon footprint of any construction project.” south shore of Montreal, involving three bridges, one tunnel, and twenty-seven overpasses.“On this project, I had my own team of three engineers, and it was a great learning experience because I was able to under-stand what is happening in the company, everything from the sales department to the detailers, fabricators, shippers, and installers to developing relationships with clients. It was very interesting to me, as I am curious by nature, and I learned a lot about the people who work here and what they do. It was a real eye-opener. I loved being on the job site because there is so much energy there.” Meanwhile, AGF Group had been acquiring facilities in Ontario. Although these all produced rebar, the values and cultures varied, and it soon became obvious that to provide better service to clients, they needed to be blended, a role Maxime took on in 2015. Today the Scarborough, Kitchener, London, and Val Caron branches have been amalgamated as AGF Rebar, with the Ottawa facility joining the Eastern Canada division. “This allows us to serve our clients much better and provide better communication because you don’t have two or three different messages going out. It also means we can work on bigger projects in Ontario.”Amalgamation he explains is also a way of dealing with reten-tion. “We want to be world-class, and so we needed to inte-grate training to be given to everyone because that’s essential for retention. A lot of our training involves teaching managers how to be people managers, how to improve communication, and how to improve the accountability of our people.” The amalgamation process has resulted in the opportunity to motivate employees by giving them room to grow and flourish. “Through centralizing, there are opportunities for people to move to other branches, to have all the tools they need, and for older, experienced managers to act as coaches and mentors,” he says. “We want everyone to feel they are involved in growing the company.”Recent and current projects for AGF Rebar include three Eglinton Crosstown LRT stations, residential and commercial buildings, reconstruction of the parking garage at Yonge and “We needed to integrate so training can be given to everyone because that’s essential.”19CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS Next >