The SiteVisit

Beyond Conventional Construction with Chris Hill, President at B Collective

• James Faulkner • Season 6 • Episode 169

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Chris Hill takes us behind the scenes of B Collective, a pioneering company dedicated to transforming the construction industry through innovative off-site fabrication.

At the heart of our conversation is an in-depth look at the closed panel wall system concept. Unlike conventional construction, this approach integrates sheathing on the interior side, creating a seamless air and moisture barrier filled with dense-pack cellulose insulation. The result? Exceptional airtightness achieved with remarkable efficiency. Chris walks us through how these precision-manufactured components arrive on-site, ready for rapid assembly—enabling his team to complete an entire duplex in just five days, from foundation to finish.

Listen as Chris examines the building resilience crisis we face today. The everyday vulnerabilities of traditional construction—whether from bathroom flooding or drywall damage caused by children at play—highlight the need for a fundamental shift in how we design living spaces. From 3D printing and composite materials to innovative wood products, the future of construction promises buildings that are not only faster and more cost-effective to build but also more durable and environmentally sustainable.

Ready to explore how off-site construction could transform your next project? Tune in now.

PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
the Site Visit on Buzzsprout: https://thesitevisit.buzzsprout.com/269424
the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
the Site Visit on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5cp4qJE5ExZmO3EwldN1HH

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Site. Visit Podcast Leadership and perspective from construction with your host, James Faulkner.

Speaker 2:

Recorded live from the show floor at BuildX Vancouver 2025.

Speaker 1:

Alright, Mr Chris Hill, how are you doing today? I'm doing great BC Collective. Yep. I got a question for you. How'd you come up with the name?

Speaker 2:

B Collective is actually a merger of four companies, so B Collective.

Speaker 1:

B Collective. Oh yeah, you know what Do?

Speaker 2:

people say that a lot, every single person that's ever said it says BC Collective. But why is that? Is it because the C is right next to the B and it's capitalized? I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes we played with extending it and maybe do you know what's something, though I, because I used to do naming my old job and people kind of like, see things like the word collective. Collective sounds like something governmental, as in like it's like a you know? Uh, what do you call that? A consortium of like groups, a collective? Um, because you hear words like collective bargaining. Yep, okay, so be collective. Was that's not the intention at all, right? So what is the? What was the sort of?

Speaker 2:

I mean it's not far off that probably lose the like governance and snobbiness of that, but it was for four companies. Well, three companies coming together um to do good and okay and be collective. So we were sort of we wanted to collaborate together.

Speaker 2:

So what were those three silos then uh, we had a. It was myself uh focused on high performance custom homes, um, and that progressive area with, also with an accounting designation. Yeah, uh, john van dargen was running a good construction company, similar size, um, but he was really uh into business development, uh, growing his business, the marketing side of it, yeah. And then dax is uh was our director of construction and really focused on the execution of work and he'd be our skilled trade.

Speaker 2:

Okay, cool piece of it, yeah so it was a group that we thought we could come together and really it'd free me up to go expand our company into different areas. I see.

Speaker 1:

Alright, so let's just talk about this. So the term off-site construction, so also known as aka prefab-ish kind of stuff, so are you manufacturing this stuff? We are Okay, and you were saying you have an office near Science World. That's not where you're making the stuff too, is it?

Speaker 2:

No, that's actually where we have a small shop.

Speaker 1:

Okay, cool. So whereabouts is that it's?

Speaker 2:

literally like Science World main and terminal or Kitty Quarter. There's a small industrial area there. Yeah, this is an old steel building, 6,000 square feet, 7,000 square foot yard that we've got a nice little lease on. Yeah. And we're able to manufacture there.

Speaker 1:

Like behind the Mr Lube there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah, you're right on point. There's a bunch of RVs around us. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:

We're right in there, okay, cool, yeah, okay. So you guys are. So what are you making in in in your manufacturing facility that you're getting ready, like the off-site materials and components?

Speaker 2:

so you're basically lego-izing construction as much as possible yeah, that'd be the dream I, I think, in truth, what we're doing, I mean, everything's custom still, uh, every part that rolls through there is unique, and that's probably the problem that we're trying to solve, right.

Speaker 1:

And I'd love to say we'd solve it. You want some?

Speaker 2:

repeatability be nice. Industrial process let's pump this stuff out. Yeah, and I've been on. I mean we can dig into that too. I'm part of the 10 standardized designs from the province yeah, there's a bunch of and find repeatability Okay, and it doesn't have to be cookie cutter. The shop today they are building a closed panel, so they're building a light wood frame. It will be the one. Today is for a single family house. It's a custom house.

Speaker 1:

Okay, a closed panel. Take a double click on that.

Speaker 2:

We are going to move our sheathing, so exterior sheathing comes to the inside. Yeah, we use it as our air barrier, moisture barrier and our structure.

Speaker 2:

We're then going to fill the rest of it. So the cavity that's created from the 2x4 structure, we fill it with dense pack cellulose and then we have an exterior sheathing. On this one we're using a cross-trap 2x4 with rock, wool, mineral board and that holds the cellulose in. We put the WRB on and then our rain screen and that's what we're shipping out. So what comes to site is you don't visually see the structural two-by-fours.

Speaker 1:

Right On the outside it's closed.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you don't see it at all.

Speaker 1:

On the inside Either.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's all hidden.

Speaker 1:

Oh crazy. Okay, so what is the inside finish? I'm obviously doing a quick drywall on that, because typically you're drywalling on the studs, right yeah?

Speaker 2:

So what does it? Look like now It'd be a plywood surface Plywood okay, it looks like plywood. You can see the sheathing and nailing for sign-off on that. Right, okay. And then we'll on-site do a mechanical cavity where needed.

Speaker 1:

So what thickness of plywood is that? Half an inch, half an inch, same as normal.

Speaker 2:

Okay, crazy, okay, reversing conventional construction in that regard, and what it allows us to do is have a very precision panel and all of our air tightness and air barriers to the inside, and so we're, with that system, hitting very, very low levels of air tightness with relative ease.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and then electrical conduit. How does that all work?

Speaker 2:

We just fur out the inside wall. Okay. So you just put an inch and a half where it's needed. We used to put it in in the factory. Uh, we've slowed that down. Uh, because what we're finding is the electric. We can do it after the electrician or mechanical to go to town. Here's a blank canvas. How much faster is that? And then we just all it's doing is holding drywall so we can just block it out where needed okay, so you guys do that on your end before they get there.

Speaker 2:

Depends on the scope and the project. But we're finding now that backframing is pretty easy. Anybody can do that, so they don't need anything specialized. So when it leaves the factory, because we're no longer a general contractor, we're now solely focused on off-site construction, so our scope for us to come back and do that later is too expensive.

Speaker 1:

So we'll just keep it open. It's easy for someone else to do. Someone's just thinking like if someone who wants a new electrical outlet, like in the past, you'd be pounding through drywall and then there's nothing behind that. You've got plywood behind you.

Speaker 2:

And as a building scientist not a building scientist, but someone that understands airflow, moisture flow my bigger concern is that renovation you're doing to that wall for a picture frame, an electrical outlet or whatever. Yeah, you're puncturing your air barrier and your moisture barrier.

Speaker 1:

I see.

Speaker 2:

A one centimeter square hole with air drive brings in like a liter of water. I forget what the rate is. I can call it a day, it might even be an hour, right, and that's where you get mold. That's where you get mold, that's where you get rot. That's where you get pretty significant issues. The performance of your hose dramatically drops.

Speaker 1:

It's like giving a flat tire to your car Right Cool. So these panels, this is like a kind of proprietary sort of mix that you put together of materials. That is, do you have that spinning on your website?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's that way, but we've taken an interesting choice. We removed the word proprietary, so it's open source. So the idea is that we were going to grow the industry as a whole and let everybody produce that, so it's widely available. We're working with. A lot of the consulting I do is with our large organizations BC Housing, Metro Vancouver, lots of contractors, lots of other manufacturers that are already building walls like this and then just refining that assembly to meet their manufacturing spec and what's needed for the project or projects. So it's widely available.

Speaker 1:

I'd like to come and see this. Can I see it one day? Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'd like to come by. They're banging nails for the next couple of weeks. It's pretty fun.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay, that's cool. So you've got the wall panel. What other components are you building? You said a lot of the time it's like custom, because it's obviously you're getting an order that's for a particular size.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean right now, a lot of what we're working on. So the problem is right now is every single house, every single project is a one-off, unique piece, and it's where AEC, the architectural housing process, is. So we're doing a lot of work to standardize that we also the other product we produce quite a bit of would be an open panel for all your internal walls, your sheer walls. We do floor cassettes, which is TGIs and plywood. Don't overthink it, it's pretty simple but it does we then when?

Speaker 2:

because we have a crane on site, it's speed right. So we assembled a duplex in january, in five days wow crazy, yeah, from foundation dance floor on backfilled.

Speaker 2:

So then we took over the site crane. Our panels flow in. They do a floor a day, if not a little faster. I guess that one was a bit slower on my math on five days and two floors but they rolled through it pretty quick. So first floor walls, second floor floors, so that floor cassette's a eight foot to 10 foot by 20 foot, even 24 foot piece, yeah. So if you start to understand those components and the lego blocks that you're building with really well, you start to value up, optimize it, the Lego blocks that you're building with really well, you start to value, optimize it.

Speaker 2:

And what we're doing right now is we're just taking every single existing house and building the way we always have and site built construction, stick built. We do it really really well. In North America we have very much a pickup truck culture, yeah, and our project I've been in construction for 15 years. We were great at buying two-by-fours at the last minute at 7 am, every single one of my guys would go to the store, buy what they need for the day, show up and build something or take a delivery, and there is an efficiency in that, for sure, but it's also just incredibly inefficient Weather time delays, site conditions, sending six people to a site with no hot lunch. It's ridiculous. Where that's what in the factory? You bring all that into the factory and you start to gain these pieces.

Speaker 1:

So, as you see your business evolving, what is the type of business that you are aspiring, that you want? What line of work are you trying to get Like? If you do, you get those pillow thoughts when you're trying to get to sleep at night and you're like, if I could only just crack this.

Speaker 2:

That's what I'm laughing about, right now, okay, smiling, you've got you've like nailed. Nailed it is. I spend a lot of time at night figuring that out. Right now we're're focused on sort of the cutting edge, the research development. We call what we're doing in the shop more of a sandbox. We have zero interest in competing with the big production. We're in downtown Vancouver. It's a pain in the butt to get a semi-truck to our shop. It's never going to compete on a high-volume piece.

Speaker 1:

Do you want that to get to that point though?

Speaker 2:

Do you want to move out to the valley and get some large production? I want to dial in the digital side and the process and then have multiple manufacturers supporting that across the province.

Speaker 1:

I got you yeah.

Speaker 2:

We've been doing a lot of work with indigenous groups.

Speaker 1:

So you want to create the brain? Yeah, okay. So what does the brain look like?

Speaker 2:

The brain is a digital system that's processing a lot of data. That takes all the way from design iterations all the way to the exact steps needed to produce in various types of factories.

Speaker 1:

I see so would that look like a BIM model? And then that BIM model is essentially their basic. I'm going to call it drawing, but it's not drawing, so it's a bin model, but their basic CAD file. That is the project, however large the project is, and then you have some kind of a plugin that's like apply your components.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean that exists today, so in the app stack that's totally available. It was on it there.

Speaker 1:

But you have all of your stuff in there. What can apply to that particular?

Speaker 2:

model. Yeah, you have different iterations and so you would optimize to the different product and the reality of being able to be manufactured. You've got to produce everything from a laneway house, adu all the way up to a six-story or even, arguably. What we're looking at now is some mass timber components and parts. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Like the wall system. So we're talking a very broad spectrum of building types and I think the yes, there's the project-based thinking and plugging those pieces in optimizing your parts using the Lego blocks effectively, but you have various iterations. Someone said it to me today earlier Like you go to the Lego blocks effectively, but you have various iterations Someone said it to me today earlier you go to the Lego website, you can select different iterations of all those different blocks to make it work for what you want to build. So I think that's what it needs to get to, but it also has to core tie into the production schedule.

Speaker 2:

So these shops, the manufacturing shops, live and die by the volume they pump out and the efficiency of that and as soon as you have any capitalization in a shop or your op costs and you have a week or a day shut down, it's dramatic to your bottom line. So I actually think it really stems from that production schedule is the digital brain and the process. Our AAC process is also like that the design development we're working on some grants and some working right now of taking that manufacturing knowledge, those Lego blocks and assigning best practices to educate the early due diligence, concept, phase process and schematic drawings so that you're using those principles and rules and guides very early on in your building development. Because the McKenzie curve or McLean curve, the further we go down the road, the decision change gets more and more expensive.

Speaker 2:

I see yeah, and so with so many of these decisions, the system that you're using to build a home for these projects and buildings it started and engaged on in the very early process and once you've gone sort of down those road, that track, you can't turn and you're committed to that. And sometimes that's where we're seeing offsite construction fail because cost overruns, it wasn't designed properly for that system and it's very difficult to pivot and change. And so I think that's where education, knowledge, gap, really understanding where this change is occurring and like changes the market, we just can't do it the way we always have been is a big part of that brain, of using that tool all the way through. So I think it's a pretty big digital platform is the truth to make that all work.

Speaker 1:

Well, I would say. I mean, you're clearly not the only people on the planet doing this. What countries, what cities are like pioneering this kind of process?

Speaker 2:

I mean, we're way behind Europe. Switzerland, Austria, germany are like light years ahead of us.

Speaker 1:

So what kind of things are they excelling at that you could take some knowledge from?

Speaker 2:

They there is no stick frame. Even thinking so, their big battle there is to convince people to get away from brick or concrete and use timber frame. Okay, and they're using quite large timber to do that. I mean, we have a very exist like our most. A lot of our buildings are pre-used wood right, so it's a different argument.

Speaker 2:

they are they're using very advanced systems. Within that regard, they're the automation in their factories. The capital scale in their factories is significant. The universities, the courses, the education, but just the breadth of knowledge that is is held by every individual. Yeah, um, I think there's also a um, an outlook that's different. Fundamentally, their investment cycles in these large capital factories have come from generations. So David Ringley, ringley Helms he's third generation and they've just invested some obscene number like $500 million into a new factory in Germany, their Swiss company, and that's his generation's big move and each generation has done that big move and he's doing that big move for 30, 40 years down the road, whereas our investment cycle in buildings we're really short. The investors over here are like what's my return in two years? And he's just not going to get that In this housing cycle, the construction cycle, the time these things take to build. That basic outlook is different.

Speaker 1:

But coming from the Swiss and the Germans. I mean, isn't it like the prefab business in the elevator business has been around for years, years? That's what I mean and that's the perfect model. That's the one. They've been doing that forever, yeah, and the building's different every time, things different every time, and they have probably just minor differences on a myriad of the same model.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you'd be surprised they still like even those companies have, for the most part, produce a lot of typologies. It surprised me. I thought they'd sort of like have one really focused one and just pump it out yeah um, but you'd be even for their production schedules to be filled and to really work it.

Speaker 2:

They are definitely diversified and flexibility is built into their processing system to be able to survive. Code changes, product changes, innovation in what is being built is constant, but their processing ability to execute what is it about the Swiss and the Germans?

Speaker 1:

Why does he go to this stuff? Tick, tick, tick. They're process-driven. Is that what it is? I think so. Or is it a culture?

Speaker 2:

thing. I mean I'd say it's both, like the culture drives that process, thinking of just really quality execution. Yeah, let's be honest, the look at their buildings and what they're building compared to here, it's dramatically different. And even our wood. One of the problems we're having with mass timber right now is that our ability as a BC forestry industry produced lumber is second to none in the world. We pump out commodity spaghetti 2x4, 2x6 like nobody else, but it's not not, it's too, it's too rough, it's too. It's not a great quality of material that gets used. Uh, for like for the mass timber, you need a more precision piece. So you have vertically integrated companies like kleznikoff that own their own forest plant, their own forest, process their own wood. Yeah, processing it to a much higher tolerance for their clt yeah, I I have to admit.

Speaker 1:

I mean, you know, I went and got some solid white oak. I think it was like 1x2. And it's a ganjo. None of it's straight. I'm like what is this? And that should be straight. I mean it's not like I'm buying plywood.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's like a high-end hardwood, like imagine buying SPF number two and better. It's like a spaghetti, but it's like.

Speaker 1:

It's all over the place. Yeah, I just don't understand why that is Would that be like that in Switzerland?

Speaker 2:

They use a different. They use much more of a timber-based system, so it's more of like timber framing. So they're using metric, but they would be using like 4x4s and 6x6s for the most part. And the answer is no. I mean we also got to understand that we're primarily an export market. We literally see some ridiculously no number like don't quote me on this, but like 2% or 5% of our product ends up in our houses. Here we are exporting everything. Um, so there's j grade, like japan grade is a high end, like all of our high end would go to the top, highest dollar can you excuse me for one second?

Speaker 1:

yeah, I'm knocking everything over here. Sorry about that. No worries, ping pong is getting, it's getting action. Yeah, yeah, it's getting. You don't want the extreme ping pong. That's why we have the slow ball. Yeah, the slow ball.

Speaker 2:

Slow ball. You need a wiffle ball. Ping pong.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's cool, yeah, so I. So what do you think Is? Are materials going to be driving this innovation specifically? I mean, like right now you guys are putting components together at your shop that are basically it's off-site construction. It's the stuff you would, besides your panels, the stuff you would be doing on-site, you're doing off-site, and shipping to-site. Construction is the stuff you would, besides your panels, the stuff you would be doing on-site, you're doing off-site, and shipping to site and assembling pretty quick, correct, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:

But, you're using lots of wood screws nails same stuff.

Speaker 2:

Right, all the same stuff.

Speaker 1:

I guess what I'm getting at is that at what point is there off-site composite 3D printing? Let's go there. I got you when this stuff is just being made. Precision You're not nailing stuff together, because it's actually formed together. Yep, large build plates.

Speaker 2:

I think it's a necessity and I got to be careful with a whole whack of NDAs with 3D printed companies, robotic companies and that level of automation, yeah. But yeah, that's where it's going. If we need to build faster, cheaper and better, we can't do it the same way we've been doing it. No.

Speaker 2:

You need a seismic shift and I think it will be material-driven. But don't ask me to bet on what material right now, because I think there's a lot of like. There's an opportunity in wood and I think it changes region by region. Cold form steel is getting a lot of action right now for a lot of good reasons, but I think it's also a little short-sighted in what they're trying to do there and it won't ultimately win it because it's not the right level of sustainability. The impact of that material is tough.

Speaker 2:

Wood I said I was lumber broker at the start of this, really on Wood I said I was a lumber broker at the start of this, early on Wood, I think is a critical piece the mass timber elements and really it's still such a micro part of our like. All this conversation is such in its infancy, but you're going to have something that comes in and breaks it and disrupts properly, and it's a matter of time in my opinion. I'm not a huge fan of the 3D printing where a big printer shows up and CNC's a house out of a nozzle.

Speaker 1:

That's kind of weird, like the whole thing that looks like icing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, and not to hit on the technology like I think down in Texas in certain regions it makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2:

In our wet coast it's just not viable in my opinion, unless something dramatically changes in the material and it's an overuse of concrete and blah, blah blah. That being said, I'm having conversations with 3D printed panels. So we've got this panel that we can really panelize. We know how the trucking works, we know how to install it really well, so let's play with that. What can we do in a wet environment in Vancouver that we know we're going to be flying these through the rain, in a wet environment in Vancouver that we know we're going to be flying these through the rain? So what is the materials? How can we get that interior finished, exterior, finished window, on assembly, locked and loaded? It leans to 3D modular in some areas, but 3D modular has its other issues. But where do we find that sweet spot of a really bulletproof panel? And I think we're like in my whiteboards and my visions at night. I can see it, um, but it just comes down to scale, economics, um, and finding that material. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

A micro CLT hemlock panel with a 3d printed cladding that's thermally broken. Precision made that assembles in days Sounds great. It's there. It's not that far off it's not that far off.

Speaker 1:

It's just a matter of putting up the money to make it happen. Well, it seems like it would be. Um, yeah, sorry, people are walking by melatonin saying hi, and my eyes are doing this because I'm recognizing people um, but um, yeah, there's definitely the like I look at. I look at a lot of 3d printing stuff and I think of, wow, there's the fact that some car parts, um, some it can be used just by 3d printing. It didn't have to be. You know, in the old days I'd have to, you know, make a mold and have the alloy done, but now that can.

Speaker 1:

So there's a lot of composite materials that are like super strong, stronger than the other stuff was. And you know, to me the like, even the two by four, okay, like, let's just say that you've got 16-inch centers. Let's say you've got like an 8-foot wall you want to make, and typically it would be a track on the bottom. You typically do it with steel, now Steel track on the bottom and then your steel stud. Well, you've got all the screws, you've got all the BS that's got to go in there. That could be made with something that has different layers to it. So the inside layer is a um is going to add to the structure structural integrity because it's solid, and then the rest of it could actually be a hardened, more of a hardened material you're using less of, but uh, it's kind of like a totally kind of a what do you call it?

Speaker 1:

like a skin, like an orange, for instance, like the peel yeah and the peel is the stuff that you screw into um, so it seems like there's, but that could have no joins done properly with 3d printing totally, and you guys could be pumping those out of your. Yeah, but the speed also is the other thing. All right, the speed of making this stuff is so low.

Speaker 2:

It's this is it right, like it's the and the speed. There's two factors, I think. Speed you hit it up with speed. The other major factor that people gloss over quickly is just the pure scale. The volume of materials that goes into our buildings is staggering. Yeah, like I mean like you'd have to have like hoppers of oh, of this stuff, this stuff and what is that stuff? Spools and spools and spools, and right now to make it structurally work and all these things you can like. It's carbon graphite. Yeah, eps, like Nylon.

Speaker 1:

Nymically lozed at foam. There's nylon with graphite in there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's. It's a lot of chemicals that I can't pronounce or understand, whereas what we've been trying to push forward and one of the beauties of wood is it's a natural, bio-based product that is incredibly light, incredibly strong. So I think there's a use for wood in that it's also the biophilic design, the look, the monotonous-y of our white walls is what we're finding in a lot of projects. The introduction of wood of nature is very beneficial to people's health and has a lot of qualities that we often call the biophilic design.

Speaker 1:

Biophilic design. It's the third time I've heard that in the past two days.

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, you're real close to the Woodworks booth.

Speaker 1:

They talked about it. Yeah, someone else talked about it too. So, in terms of do you know one thing, like when you see the finishing of a home on the inside interior, I think of how much environmental waste has gone into the one color. It's not even a color white. Do you ever think about this? I think that Like white Because the pigment of like you mean colorless, colorless, no color, no color. Just like to make something white. Okay, so there's white in nature, but it's a different kind of white. It's not that milky opacity white.

Speaker 1:

If you look at a petal, that's a white flower. It's not the same kind of white a petal, that's a white flower.

Speaker 2:

It's not the same kind of white. We had to make this white, simply white. I'm trying to remember the benjamin moore code for simply white, which I've used on like the last 15 projects. Um, it's no white, like it's just white, and that's what everything gets painted. You think of the layers, the build-up, like it's we to get these layers and I mean, I understand on the interior side there's also there's fire, there's a whole bunch of things that these layers and walls are doing and control layers. But I think, and it's also what I find, I mean I got, I got three kids and two dogs at home and they're in the ripe age of two, five and seven and they are destructive. Our house is getting destroyed. These environments we're building are incredibly fragile. They're not resilient. Well, yeah.

Speaker 1:

You drive your remote-controlled car into the wall, you get a hole in the drywall. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You write on the walls and you clean it with your Mr Eraser and dig a hole through the paint. The corner would be like I haven't even gone into the bathroom yet. Why are we using the bathroom is a wet environment. Why aren't we sealing our full floors Like they are very fragile? Yeah. As a builder that's built many houses, my warranty calls are always around the bathroom, yeah, and oftentimes user error of like yeah, we spilled a whole whack of water and it drained to the floor below. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You're supposed to make like a sink of the floor, right it's not in code.

Speaker 1:

It's not required. It's smart though.

Speaker 2:

It's smart. I mean that's what like? I mean it gets back to cost and all those pieces. But no, the reality of our fragility is of our houses. There's an interesting product that you were talking about like 3D printed. There's some people were talking to me about recycled plastic. We have a huge amount of garbage plastic. Can you use that? Where does that all go these days?

Speaker 1:

It gets shipped overseas, or burnt or just filled.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm not the expert there, but I would say, and it's an interesting piece, but you also like, literally with the volume of material we use in construction, by the time you get that available and produced do you have an?

Speaker 2:

industry that's now creating plastic to be used in houses. Oh yeah, which is the back like the backlash of that is significant, but it is a waste product that we should be using. Yeah, it does have some attributes that make a lot of sense of resiliency, lasting a long time. Like to use the attributes it's using to make a huge island in the ocean for our housing problem. Yeah, which.

Speaker 2:

I think those sort of like you get into these deep material conversations that I think are really interesting, of what is that product that's widely available? It also quickly goes into regional. I get to talk about projects all over North America and sometimes all over the world.

Speaker 1:

So you're in a really, really interesting segment right now in the market. Yeah, like it is so exciting about the opportunity. Where are things in the? Are there venture capital companies that are interested in your kind of like? Is there money to be other than government grants, which are pretty, usually pretty small? Is there any like? Are there any global VCs who are interested in this kind of innovation and building products?

Speaker 2:

I think it's I mean. If you know any, let me know.

Speaker 1:

I'm just curious whether or not there's an ecosystem for that, like there is in tech.

Speaker 2:

I think there is starting to be, and I think actually what we just talked about with that digital brain is a pretty heavy tech piece and I think the VC side will come through that tech VC.

Speaker 1:

It would there. I'm just wondering if it's going to port itself to the material side.

Speaker 2:

What's happening, though, is you've got big multinational companies.

Speaker 1:

Like Lafarge and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, or St Cobain is digging into offsite pretty heavy.

Speaker 1:

What about? What's the other large one, the Heidelberg?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, those are the. So what's that's concrete, based like Lafarge.

Speaker 1:

High School. I know they are, but I'm just saying they're probably looking at it.

Speaker 2:

They're digging in. They also understand that everybody's trying to do their best to reduce concrete on every single one of the projects. There's a lot of carbon right now, so they're going to build their electric car. They're going to figure out something.

Speaker 1:

They've been the gas car for so many years.

Speaker 2:

And I'd actually give the concrete industry massive credit.

Speaker 1:

They've done a lot of stuff. They've done a ton.

Speaker 2:

They've actually moved way faster than anybody else in the construction industry in that space and I think that's really encouraging. And those are the big, big players. St Cobain, which is certainty, which is drywall, all that interior stuff and a ton of membranes and layers and insulation um, they've got, they've, they've developed an off-site system and they're really pushing it. Um, I think there's more and more interest. I think there's still there's no sure bet right now. It's still really early, and I think that's causing some peace. It's also, I think, within the outside construction space and we've seen it in across the is. Where does it actually? Who are the major players? Who's going to be that instructor? Who's going to be like?

Speaker 2:

there's the enthusiastic startup the enthusiastic amateur startups yeah, then maybe they get something that runs. Or is it a sawmill that's vertically integrated that gets something going? Is it a building supplier that starts getting into offsite and they're just adding value to their supply chain? Is it material suppliers? You have all these different players dabbing their toe in. Developers are probably the ones that fail the most and that's where we get a lot of failures in offsite construction, because they've got a pre-existing core competency with the way they've been doing it and that change management on an internal organization is really difficult.

Speaker 2:

So it's kind of a bit of a. The other part of what I sleep at night is what do you bet on Like? Which is that entrance that's actually going to make some ground here? Yeah. And I don't think there's like there's no obvious clear-cut winner. It's still sort of that early Wild West where you're figuring it out.

Speaker 1:

I think your brain's a winner. I appreciate that Well, the brain itself, because you can keep changing the outputs. You can't.

Speaker 2:

This is a long-term investment strategy. It's not going to happen in two weeks. It's not a quick hit. So you have to be flexible to market change and I can guarantee you product innovation is coming, code change is coming, all those pieces. There is change.

Speaker 1:

Change inevitable. I just had Corey on from the city of Vancouver. That was interesting. Yeah, yeah, Lots of things that you know they're obviously would like to be doing too. There's huge inefficiencies, that Massive yeah.

Speaker 2:

All over the place.

Speaker 1:

All right. Well, chris, this has been very interesting. I think we should have a longer chat in the studio, probably about this stuff, because I kind of geek out on where this is all going. So that's actually pretty cool All right.

Speaker 2:

So how do people get hold of you? It's the best right now to head to bcollectivecom. Not BC, not BC 1B. The word collective no space com.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and then you're on LinkedIn. I am on LinkedIn, chris Hill.

Speaker 2:

All right, super generic name, but I've been pretty popular these days, so I think I'm getting up there.

Speaker 1:

Perfect, sounds great. Okay, well, pleasure. Thanks for spending time with me. Appreciate it. Thank you, cheers. Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the site visit podcast and Sitemax, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Sitemax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.