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*Winner - Best Tech Podcast - 2025 Quill Podcast Awards*
British Columbia is experiencing an unprecedented housing crisis. While addressing various aspects of the housing supply chain is essential, no single approach can fully solve the challenges we face in scaling housing production. So, what's the blueprint for growth?
In November 2023, DIGITAL — Canada's Global Innovation Cluster for digital technologies — launched its Housing Growth Innovation Program with support from the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs. The program brings together collaborative teams of industry leaders to accelerate technology-driven approaches that are driving real, tangible growth for British Columbia's housing production sector.
Amy Vilis, Director of Housing Growth Innovation at DIGITAL, chats with innovators doing groundbreaking work within DIGITAL's Housing Growth Innovation Program to develop and implement technology-based solutions within British Columbia's housing sector across the full scale of end-to-end production. These conversations showcase how ideas are making it into the real world where they can become comprehensive, viable and, best of all, achievable solutions to accelerate housing production for British Columbians.
Amy Villis (00:02)
Welcome to Blueprint for Growth, Innovation and Housing, a podcast exploring cutting edge solutions, transforming Canada's housing landscape. I'm your host, Amy Villis Director of Housing Growth Innovation at Digital, Canada's global innovation cluster for digital technologies. Today, we're diving into the construction phase of housing development.
This stage is inherently complex, involving numerous stakeholders, intricate scheduling, and a myriad of potential problems such as weather delays, supply chain disruptions, and labor shortages.
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Amy Villis (00:46)
We'll explore how modular construction, offsite manufacturing, digital tools, and AI are enhancing construction efficiencies addressing BC's housing production needs. From safety concerns to quality control issues and regulatory bottlenecks, we'll examine how innovative projects are leveraging technology to overcome these hurdles and accelerate housing delivery. Chris Hill is the president of BeCollective. Chris is a recovering custom home builder now focused on sustainable offsite manufacturing.
Over 15 years of experience, Chris combines his expertise as a CPA and master residential builder to focus on energy efficient climate neutral designs. He is deeply involved with organizations like Safer Homes BC and Hyam Housing and is currently collaborating with Digital on a knowledge platform to create best practices and accelerate prefabricated construction through training and design insights. So looking to innovation and looking to opportunities, let's talk about a little bit about what that
kind of means and then kind of talk about the shift that, you know, we're going from traditional stick build, bespoke on site to this offsite.
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Amy Villis (02:08)
If you want to dive into explaining that to folks and give some thoughts in there, that'd be great.
Chris Hill (02:13)
I mean, I would like to start these conversations with contacts too. Offsite construction is kind of like project management. It's this big broad term. Lately we've been defining it kind of in four tiers. Tier one being sort of one material. So it'd be a light wood frame with sheeting installed, but you're going to build these wall panels, their components, trusses, even mass timber, glue, all those pieces are the pre-manufactured parts that are done offsite. So that'd be tier one. Tier two, you're starting to look into value proposition, value add to these walls.
So you're adding membranes, insulation, rain screen. In Europe, they're doing finishes on the interior and exterior. We're not quite there yet. Actually, I should say that there's exceptions to that in BC and in North America. We're almost there, but that's very, very early. Type three would be mechanical pods and exploring other parts of what is being built beyond just sort of your load bearing structure. And then number four is volumetric modular, where you're going to take all of those previous components I just listed
put them into a box that you can drive down the road and assemble on site. Those are sort of the four categories. I like to sort of put these in. And I think there's also a division on each one of those categories. Quite often we get into a material conversation, sort of wood, steel, concrete, then sort of composites are the four primary areas of those. So I focus predominantly on value add panels in a wood frame basis. That'd be my expertise, but know a little bit about the other areas in that regard.
And so that's sort of the context of what we're talking about. think the process, what we're finding right now is the process. It's this interesting exercise of change. And we know we have to change the way we build. I'm working with huge, large developers that have a significant backlog of homes because they don't, can't get enough bodies on site to stick frame the way we've traditionally done it. And they're recognizing that we need to improve productivity. And so how do we do that?
I believe one of those solutions will be offsite construction, putting as much as we can into a controlled environment and an industrialized process to execute that. And so once you've started to do that, technology is a massive factor between the scheduling of that production schedule and being accurate. One of the biggest flaws in construction, or some people love it, is we're building one-off unique pieces. Every building is the first time that building has been built, first time someone's
completing that puzzle. So I think that's where technology, that chaos that's created, technology can start to organize that and help us get through that. And we're seeing it more and more, but I think it's a pretty significant readjustment on our process and where we engage with manufacturers. A lot of the underlying work that I do, if you ask me what I actually do, is I work with manufacturers. I am one, and I try to facilitate early concept schematic work with consultants.
architects and engineers so they can understand where to maximize the value proposition for offsite construction.
Amy Villis (05:15)
So engaging with those architects, engineers, folks in the construction sector is a huge piece of, as you mentioned, change management in the sector. So what are you working on to help facilitate that? Because you are a lead in this sector, and especially here in BC and across Canada as well. So maybe let me know a little bit about how you're working with those folks to shift that paradigm.
Chris Hill (05:37)
So the shift in the paradigm and getting a better understanding, I don't think there's a silver spoon and I don't think there's an answer there yet. So lot of the work we're doing right now is working with the manufacturers, the people that have built buildings with offsite construction and starting to establish best practices or I'm going to use the word standards, standardization, but with a big asterisk to make sure that we can still leave space for innovation. I was on a call this week and I'm going to use our analogy because it was awesome. The USB drive, the USB universal serial bus.
Everybody got together in a technology space and said, let's get a base platform that we can all use to plug and play. And from there, a lot of devices and tools came out of that. And I think it's still early for construction, but we need to be working a little bit better for all our connections, all our pieces, our process to work a little bit seamlessly across a number of pieces. So I think that's what we're working on is really starting to define those industry best practices and then allow or create an environment that it can be taught to the stakeholders and decision makers at the very start of the project.
Amy Villis (06:39)
to talk about one thing that you you're working on which is a lot of fun to say the bio-based super walls like come on let's talk about the super wall the bio-based super walls you want to you know dig in that one and let me know
Chris Hill (06:52)
We obviously want to make energy efficient and have a reduction strategy. So that's one of the biggest sort of underlying principles that I deploy. I think a lot of people are doing that now. Wood is a bio-based material. So our frame is starting out with a bio-based material. I'm not going to get into the debate of LCA and how we're going to track the wood. We are zero rating our structural wood. We do use insulation products that are carbon stored. So based on the most common LCAs.
and metrics and frameworks, can zero rate that insulation. That creates a carbon storing wall. It's mostly at this point, dense back silos. It's affordable, available, and I can use it today. That is recycled newspaper. It's pretty funny. You hold this stuff and you can see like bubble gum wrappers and all sorts of stuff in it, but it's a pretty effective product. We've been working with some experimental stuff with wood fiber insulation.
There is North American supply available now. Unfortunately, it's in Maine. So it's on the wrong side of the water. when you start to ship, insulation is a big volume. When you ship it, it just costs too much money. But there is BC supply in the works. I have some prototypes and samples in my shop. That's what we do in the research space that would even amplify up that potential carbon storing. That fiber would be using a waste stream product. We've experimented with mycelium hemp. people are like, you can put fungi in walls.
I say it's actually totally possible. There's some really interesting stuff coming out of that.
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Chris Hill (08:28)
Last week I was introduced to a plastics company that was taking PET plastic, recycled bottles and putting them into walls. think it's interesting.
Amy Villis (08:42)
Yeah, without a doubt. The big question is future of offsite construction. What are your thoughts? Where do you see this kind of evolving as you work to put these best practices into play? We see the sector moving quickly as you indicated with new technologies, AI, all the pieces floating around. Where do you see the sector going and the impact you're going to make on it?
Chris Hill (09:07)
feel we're going to start to see stabilized demand and which allows for the appropriate investment. You're going to see companies fail. You're going see companies succeed. I think you're going to see some enthusiastic amateurs do quite well in this space and start to have some disruption, whether it be a robotics company or a small digital startup within that space that's really cracked the code on generative design and configurators and that does accelerate the process. There's a waking up.
We just have to do it. Like we don't have the people, the bodies, the skills. There's so many alignment in what we're doing that I think it will start to be the norm. I'm really excited to see it. Like if we go real like 50,000 feet out there, really starting to see regionalized factories be able to produce a high quality product and see economic reconciliation for those places still having jobs in those regions.
I think indigenous communities are a massive factor because they're the landholders. They're becoming the primary developers in this space. It's partly about jobs, but it's mostly about them being the leaders in that space, creating the housing needs in a quality space, in a resilient sort of checking so many boxes. I think we're super close and it's more about like kind of having the right people in the right room right now. And I think that's starting to happen. I've never been a part of a project that has so much funding.
being tossed around at a federal level, at a provincial level, the grants, the ministry, you throw an offsite event right now and you get hundreds of people at it without a blinking of an eye. We started to limit the door, which is not normal in this space. So I think the interest is there and it's about to sort of take off. The silver bullet's not there, but nobody's got the right key to unlock it. So that's also kind of exciting within an opportunistic and opportunity place.
Amy Villis (10:59)
Chris, thanks so much. really, really, really appreciate you coming on today and it was great to see you. Intelligence is just one way that we can use risk strategies to make sure that things move quickly. And so we need more tools like automation by making decisions. Development officer. Matt Farrell is a veteran in the field of building regulations with over 25 years of experience.
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Amy Villis (11:27)
His passion for improving the construction industry from a regulatory perspective has led him to explore innovative ways to integrate new technologies into the regulatory approvals process.
Matt is currently working with digital and exciting project called InspectorAI, a digital assistant for inspectors. It aims to modernize building inspections using AI to enhance efficiency and compliance. Our discussion with Matt will delve into how this cutting edge technology is set to transform the inspection process, potentially streamlining construction timelines and improving overall building quality. We all know construction comes with a lot of challenges, managing resources, keeping sites safe and staying on schedule.
AI has the potential to be a game changer, but where do you see the biggest opportunity for companies to actually put machine learning and data to work in their daily operations?
Matt Farrell (12:18)
I think construction is one of those industries that is right for adopting AI, specifically in their processes. Because really when you start utilizing machine learning principles, taking data and making better predictions on how things should happen or how more efficiently to utilize resources and time, there's lots of areas in construction that that can be applied to. So into design, you can look at best ways of...
of implementing design practices that will be easier to understand or more adaptive to different types of technologies that use components, materials that are readily available, those types of things, ways to manage the construction scheduling, health and safety protections where pitfalls or issues with hazards may occur on job sites.
So really any aspect of construction is able to adapt AI principles. It's really having the tools in place to be able to do that. And that starts with data. Being able to collect that quality type data to feed into these machine learning algorithms that is really key to having this whole innovation occurring in the industry.
Amy Villis (13:30)
So leaning into this opportunity, your team is building an AI-powered solution, InspectorAI, for the construction industry. Specifically, what are the biggest challenges you're tackling with this technology? And how do you see it making a real impact on the issues like efficiency, knowledge sharing, and the bigger struggles in the housing sector?
Matt Farrell (13:48)
Yeah, we're hoping it fills a number of gaps actually. The first one being is creating more efficiencies and speeding up the timeline for housing. A lot of delays can occur when work is stopped or a builder has to go back and fix up deficiencies or areas where construction has been done improperly. So if we start identifying where some of these compliance issues may occur, before they occur, we can stop that and it makes the inspector's job easier and it makes
it makes for more efficient timelines of construction. So those are some of the immediate benefits of what we're trying to provide. The other area is in some of the knowledge gaps that are out there as well. And be quite honest, the idea for this project came from the industry profile where we have a lot of individuals that are retiring right now. And that's happening across all sectors. One of my close friends was in...
in the industry for 47 years and he passed away. And it really sparked an interest in myself and some others about, how do we replace that knowledge? How do you replace so many years of knowledge in this industry? And one of the ways we can do that is by, you know, collecting, you know, what those individuals have done in the past, how they do inspections and try to replicate that in machine learning process. So those are some of the ways that we are looking to fill gaps. And we're also seeing ways that this could
potentially lead to more efficient decision making in the future as well. You know, some of this data will be very helpful for directing where training occurs, where, you know, regulatory reshaping occurs, because things are maybe too complex. We see it as starting a whole chain effect of things that will improve compliance and improve design and construction.
Amy Villis (15:34)
How do you make sure this new technology improves the inspection process without throwing off the current state and workflows folks are already used to?
Matt Farrell (15:42)
Great question. We really don't want to be disruptive to the inspectors in the current way they do things. So we want to make it as user friendly as possible. So a lot of inspectors will already have e-permanent systems. That's one of the reasons Cloud Permit is involved with that. So we're working with them to really develop this type of product and integrate it into their system and other e-permanent systems as well. So that when an inspector goes into it, they will be following normal processes, but it will provide them with additional information when they're doing their inspections. That can be in the form of checklists or could just be in the form of recommendations. So similar to some of the technology that users are familiar with now, like Netflix, if there's a common deficiency that occurs or if there's something that an inspector should be aware of, given a specific site, the tool will create that recommendation or we'll highlight that specific feature. Maybe it's a building code provision, maybe it's something that around a specific area is construction, watch the stair height in this or ensure that the railings are constructed in a proper manner, those types of things. So it'll give that inspector that information, that field, saving them time and energy and going back and looking up certain things.
but it also gives them some confidence as well that what they're looking at is important to the construction process and it is something that's been identified by other inspectors, their peers and colleagues throughout the industry. Because this really is somewhat of a crowdsourcing type application where you're taking information from inspectors right across BC and we're envisioning right across Canada to really build out the platform.
Amy Villis (17:25)
The InspectorAI tool seems like it could do a lot more than just help inspectors. It could really have some impact on improving communications between municipalities and builders. Can you explain how it might help construction teams catch and fix compliance issues before inspections even happen?
Matt Farrell (17:42)
Yeah, a lot of the stuff that we collect right now is anecdotal. That's how a lot of the decision making is made right now. So what we plan to do is merge the two different types of information together to really make a strong argument for not only need to change in regulation, but where resources should be focused, where additional knowledge is required from the trade side, from the construction side, even the design side where attention should be given.
So we're looking at breaking down some of those traditional silos that occur with the information and having municipalities share this findings from this product with their construction industry as well. And that's another way that we are looking to create those efficiency. So that the same tool can be used by builders before they perform their inspections or request their inspections to ensure that they have met that compliance.
So it'll guide them through the same types of potential pitfalls or potential issues and have them look at it so that they are prepared for when that inspector is on site and make sure that the construction is in compliance.
Amy Villis (18:48)
inspector AI streamline inspections and potentially reduce the timelines in there. Like where are the real big wins going to come from that?
Matt Farrell (18:56)
Yeah, it's basically by identifying some of these deficiencies beforehand, you can really avoid them earlier on in the stages. You can include that into part of your planning process. So instead of having a two week or a four week shutdown, for example, where you have to go back and fix a lot of framing, you can identify that this is where an issue is going to occur. you provide more attention to that specific area. You ensure that the roof has been constructed properly, those types of things.
and avoid any type of delays down the road from having to go back and fix up work. And that goes for all areas of construction as well. What we're seeing as potentially as a benefit for regulatory agencies as well is that this will identify certain areas where the trades are competent in those areas and where focus does not necessarily have to be applied because their compliance is regularly.
occurring. maybe, you know, some parts of the construction process don't need as much attention. It's going to be a tool to not just, you know, avoid risk, but mitigate it in some regards as well. So it's going to help out municipalities in multiple ways by providing that information and, you know, advising them or directing them where to apply those resources. Because as you stated earlier, we're heading into a period where construction is going to increase. It's much needed. We need to build
millions of new homes in BC and across Canada, but we are going to have a shortage of knowledgeable people to do so. the AI is well suited to fill that need.
Amy Villis (20:32)
Where do you see the sector? What are you excited about? What gets you jazzed around the next five, 10 years within innovation and technology use in construction?
Matt Farrell (20:41)
Now we're in a case where we have to be more productive in the way we actually construct buildings and we have to be more aware of what that critical time, those critical timeframes are for construction as well. We can't really waste any time during those periods. So this is where the industry as a whole, we'll have to look at these new technologies like AI, like BIM, like computer visioning, the use of sensors in construction sites as well.
use of robotics. think there is a large opportunity for robotics to be used as part of the manufacturing process for housing. Moving things from on-site to off-site is going to be key as well. There's a lot of benefits that go into that. the fact that we're in a housing crisis and we will be for some time is really an opportunity that this industry can embrace some of these changes to help solve that crisis.
Amy Villis (21:36)
It's great to have these opportunities to work alongside people that are seeing an opportunity in the market to potentially create a commercial opportunity to build Canadian IP, to get things done so that we can build more houses is ultimately the narrative. So I am very grateful for the work that you guys are doing.
Matt Farrell (21:54)
And I think we're equally grateful from our side as well because if this opportunity did not come up through digital and sponsored by the BC government, I don't know if we would have brought forward this type of idea. It's the funding opportunities for the private sector that really will drive some of this innovation to occur. You know, there is a lot of constraints on industry right now to, you know, be cost efficient or utilize their scarce resources in a more efficient way.
The fact that there is funding out there really drove us to try to put something together that is innovative and that, you know, this funding will help build. So we're appreciative of that as well.
Amy Villis (22:34)
I'd like to thank my guests, Chris and Matt, for their time and their insights. As we've seen today, innovative projects are addressing complexities and challenges of the construction phase through digital tools, offsite manufacturing, and AI-driven solutions. These initiatives are paving the way for more efficient, sustainable, and affordable housing production in BC. Join us for our next episode as we take an expanded look at the future technologies that are shaping the Canadian housing sector. We'll explore cutting-edge advancements such as robotics,
digital twins and other emerging technologies that promise to redefine how we approach housing development. Thank you for your time and especially for being interested. This podcast is just one way digital and folks you hear in these episodes are working together to accelerate housing production and position British Columbia as a leader in housing innovation. But there is so much more that we're doing. Digital's Housing Growth Innovation Program invests in mission driven projects targeting key housing issues.
as well as encouraging collaboration and information sharing through workshops, events, and more. We'd love to hear from you. Reach out through our website at housing.digitalsupercluster.ca for more information. This podcast and Digital's Housing Growth Innovation Program are made possible with the financial support of the province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs.