Improving Conditions for Green Building Construction In North America | CEC

Executive Summary 

Recognizing that green building requires specialized skills and capabilities on the part of many actors in the building industry, this report reviews education and training opportunities throughout North America and compares those opportunities to the skills and capabilities that are needed now, or are likely to be needed over the next decade. It also identifies gaps between the educational offerings and anticipated needs in the industry, and makes recommendations for bridging those gaps. 

Improving Conditions for Green Building Construction In North America | CEC

All workforce sectors need specific technical skills, such as the ability to work with certain tools or install certain systems, as well as interpersonal skills—the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively. Beyond skills, however, all parties to a green building project will be most effective if they also embrace an ecological mindset of interdependence and interconnectivity and shift their thinking from the conventional, sequential hand-off paradigm of design and construction. 

Successful education and training programs typically have one or more of the following characteristics:

• Knowledgeable, charismatic trainers with experience in the field 
• Peer-to-peer mentoring
• Online education that is accessible whenever the students can make time for it 
• Short-format instructional videos 
• A focus on the “why” of green approaches in addition to the “what”

The recommendations include specific suggestions for disseminating these best practices, along with steps for addressing the following gaps: 

• Ecological mindset and awareness 
• Soft-skills training and mentoring 
• Financial benefits and evaluation
• Training in specific technical fields 
• Cross-disciplinary education and training 

In addition to these industry-specific education and training needs, the report points out the value of educating those who can drive demand for green building, especially corporate clients in the United States and Canada, and government officials in Mexico.
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If you are interested using lean project delivery practices to deliver high performance green building and working on getting all new building to be NetZero Energy by 2020, please contact me with an email supporting this initiative.

For more information on Commission for Environmental Cooperation 

Thank you for your support in helping to make the Building Industry more Sustainable

Murray Guy @Lean_tobe_Green
Learn: LEAN LAB. … Design: Integrated Designs … Build: EcoSmart
For inquires: Mguy@i-designs.ca or 306.934.6818

4 Ways the Future of Learning is Changing | Randy Swearer

As the world becomes increasingly complex, the old Industrial-Age approach to higher education—studies of siloed individual subjects such as math, language, and science—has to change.

4 Ways the Future of Learning Is Changing: "

One of the hallmarks well-regarded universities share is their history as longstanding institutions of education and tradition. But disruption of how people make (and how they learn to make) things is erupting everywhere. So in the future of learning, if universities don’t ride the waves of change, they (and their students) won’t be able to keep up with the evolution of industries and jobs—and more broadly, the demands of a complex, global society.

Higher education must adapt to the 21st century—in learning, in culture, and in developing future leaders. And it won’t look anything like the current college experience.

1. No More Lectures. That’s right: The days of showing up to an hour-long lecture at 8 a.m. will slowly diminish. Traditional teaching pedagogies are ripe for disruption, and it’s starting with the new idea of “flipped classrooms.”

2. Not Just a Degree: Micro-credentialing. The boundaries of having just “one” role in a career is eroding: Skills and knowledge across disciplines is becoming more evident and necessary. Unbundling of degrees is gaining traction as an approach to actually get multidisciplinary education into practice.

3. It’s the Student Experience That Counts. Universities must adapt to the idea of expanding learning opportunities outside of campuses—to local businesses, major corporations, nonprofits, and other institutions.

4. No More Grades. The grading system started around 150 years ago, and it requires more than evolution; it needs a revolution. How do you quiz a business student interning with a company as part of their real-world application of materials in a flipped classroom? How do you take all of those multi-channels that students are confronted with and bring them together into a graded experience? Right now, you can’t.

Integration of education is the key because learning happens everywhere—in the classroom, in outside experiences, and online. It’s not about the knowledge channels; it’s about the connections between them. So each university must bring that integration to bear on the needs of its students.


If you interested in trying an Online course to develop your Lean and Green project skills, you may want to check out Lean Lab.

Murray Guy aka @Lean_tobe_Green
Learn: LEAN LAB. … Design: Integrated Designs … Build: EcoSmart
For inquires: Mguy@i-designs.ca or 306.934.6818

Is it Time to FLIP the Education System?

The Flipped Classroom - Education Next : Education Next: "The Flipped ClassroomOnline instruction at home frees class time for learning
By Bill Tucker 

Four years ago, in the shadow of Colorado’s Pike’s Peak, veteran Woodland Park High School chemistry teachers Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams stumbled onto an idea. Struggling to find the time to reteach lessons for absent students, they plunked down $50, bought software that allowed them to record and annotate lessons, and posted them online. Absent students appreciated the opportunity to see what they missed. But, surprisingly, so did students who hadn’t missed class. They, too, used the online material, mostly to review and reinforce classroom lessons. And, soon, Bergmann and Sams realized they had the opportunity to radically rethink how they used class time.

It’s called “the flipped classroom.” While there is no one model, the core idea is to flip the common instructional approach: With teacher-created videos and interactive lessons, instruction that used to occur in class is now accessed at home, in advance of class. Class becomes the place to work through problems, advance concepts, and engage in collaborative learning. Most importantly, all aspects of instruction can be rethought to best maximize the scarcest learning resource—time.

The Benefits of Flipped Classroom Learning

• Fostering better relationships, greater student engagement, and higher levels of motivation.
• Creating videos forces instructors to pay attention to the details and nuances of instruction—the pace, the examples used, the visual representation, and the development of aligned assessment practices.
• Course redesign offers an opportunity to reengage students and improve their motivation
• Instructional videos are powerful tools for teachers to create content, share resources, and improve practice.

Flipped classroom teachers almost universally agree that it’s not the instructional videos on their own, but how they are integrated into an overall approach, that makes the difference. 

It is TIME to Flip the Education systerm on it's head?

Murray Guy aka @Lean_tobe_Green

Learn: LEAN LAB. … Design: Integrated Designs … Build: EcoSmart

For inquires: Mguy@i-designs.ca or 306.934.6818