The biggest change to improving quality in the building industry in a century Building Professionals, a Winnipeg based family company that has been providing quality assurance, certification, training and consulting services for over 3 decades recently launched a complete upgrade and revamp of its quality assurance program. This program is currently offered through various industry partners across Canada and the United States. The new program entitled, historic QAP 2.O, builds on some of the work and standards developed in the mid 1980’s that aimed to improve the quality and professionalism of contractors providing services to the residential energy efficiency industry. This new program provides a very high level of consumer protection, while at the same time providing value and a return on investment for the contractors that will participate in the program. The program is industry based, bringing in manufacturers, contractors, architects, building officials, home/building owners. Some of the highlights for home/building owners include warranty programs that provide 10 year, $150,000 protection for those that are considering upgrading their house to make it more green and energy efficient. The newly launched program will focus, at first, on the sprayed polyurethane foam industry (spray foam pro) in Canada and the U.S. This will be followed by other programs that building professionals have developed over the past 3 decades to improve and upgrade the overall quality. Tackling existing buildings is the single largest impact in order to reduce energy use, meet the challenges of climate change, while at the same time providing economic benefits and consumer protection. Building Professionals will be launching this program in other countries over the course of 2013. Countries include Mexico, Spain, Chile, Japan, China, Sweden, United States, South Africa and others. This program will provide immediate benefits to the Manitoba economy, as building professionals looks to add more staff over the course of the next 5 years. The company currently employs 20 individuals and will grow to 27 by the end of 2013. It will be nice for Manitoba to leverage their knowledge of green building and building science and start to export this expertise globally.
