Kris Skiba joined Dexel in 2006 with a Dalhousie engineering degree and spent his first days shoveling gravel. Sixteen years later, as VP of Design & Construction, he runs the city's most integrated apartment-development operation — design, construction, and management, all in-house. This episode is the clearest explanation you'll find of what that actually means, why it compounds over time, and what Halifax's building boom looks like from inside the machine.
The lot on the corner of Spring Garden Road and Pepperell Street sat empty for more than fifteen years. It was the kind of gap a city eventually stops seeing — a sore point normalized into the streetscape. When Dexel finally broke ground on The George, a 15-storey, roughly 170-unit mixed-use building, it wasn't just a construction project. It was the end of a decade-long approvals process and the result of a development model that had been quietly compounding since Louie Lawen founded the company.
Kris Skiba walked host Daniel Arsenault through that model for 68 minutes on Episode 12 of the Atlantic Construction Podcast. What follows is what a builder takes from it.
Own your mistakes — then fix them on the next one
Dexel is part of the Lawen Group, a family-owned Halifax business. On the development side, Dexel Architecture (five in-house architects focused on construction drawings) and Dexel Construction Management work together on every project. On the management side, sister company Paramount handles leasing and operations once a building is occupied.
Owning the full sequence changes the incentive structure. As Skiba puts it: "we're owning them, developing them, designing them, building them — you live with every mistake." A developer who hands off to an outside GC and walks away doesn't hear about the drain detail that caused a callback three winters later. Dexel does, because Paramount is still managing the building. That feedback loop is the source of the model's compounding: every solved problem becomes standard practice on the next project.
The in-house architecture team exists for exactly this reason. The tradesperson pool thins as the industry grows, Skiba notes — "the craftsmen are fewer and further between as the industry grows — forcing a higher level of detail to the site." If you can't rely on every carpenter reading an ambiguous detail correctly, you eliminate the ambiguity. An in-house team that knows the projects and the contractors produces drawings precise enough to build from without interpretation.
Construction management is communication, not control
Skiba describes the construction manager's job in a way that flips the usual framing. You are not the authority in the room; the subcontractors are. A mechanical contractor has spent years doing nothing but mechanical work. A structural sub knows their trades cold. The CM's job is clearing their path, not directing their craft.
"you're facilitating them to do what they're good at — you're just trying to help make that happen."
What makes or breaks that facilitation is the meeting cadence. Dexel runs three levels: daily huddles at the site, weekly three-week look-ahead sessions with the trades, and bi-monthly project-manager reviews. The logic of the look-ahead is straightforward: "if you talk about it in advance they can be prepared — calling two days before you need them is because those meetings aren't happening." A subcontractor who knows in week one that they need to be back on site in week four can schedule around it. One who gets called Thursday for Monday can't.
Budget 10 years before you budget concrete
The George took more than ten years from initial concept to occupancy. Spring Garden West — a proposed 29-to-30-storey project on a full city block — had its community engagement process starting in 2015 and 2016, and as of the 2021 episode it was still years from a shovel.
This is the Halifax reality, and Skiba doesn't dress it up. Bylaws written in the 1960s and 70s created friction for any project that pushed density or height. "bylaws and zoning developed in the 60s and 70s are not relevant for Halifax in the 2020s." Centre Plan, adopted in 2021 for the Halifax Peninsula and central Dartmouth, is helping — but the attitude on height is still finding its footing. In a city that barely had construction work when Skiba joined in 2006 and now faces a labour shortage, the skyline change has been dramatic. The approval pipeline hasn't kept pace.
For a developer, the practical takeaway is that "the actual construction timeline is the most intense but just a small snapshot of the entire project." If you're evaluating a major Halifax site, the construction cost line is almost beside the point until you've mapped the approvals path. The parallel-tracking strategy — stacking approvals and early construction phases so each doesn't wait on the prior one to fully resolve — is what compressed The George's timeline. "if you waited for each step to be finished before you started the next, the George would still be another 10 years away."
Build it twice — once digitally
Dexel has worked exclusively in BIM for 18 years. On the Press Block project (the Granville/Barrington/George heritage-and-new-construction site), Fathom Studio handles concept architecture; Campbell Comeau Engineering does structural BIM; Equilibrium Engineering handles mechanical and electrical. All three models are hosted by Dexel and merged bi-weekly. Contractors are brought in early for buildability input before the drawings are locked.
The goal is simple: "we really do build the entire building digitally before we build it physically." A clash caught in a model review costs a few hours. The same clash found on site costs days, rework, and schedule compression. The federated model is also why Dexel can bring subs in for constructability review without handing them a half-finished set — the model gives them enough geometry to give useful feedback.
The 25-year number that changes which systems you buy
Skiba's most transferable idea for any developer-operator is the capital evaluation horizon. When you own the building and manage it for decades, the first-cost bias that drives most developer decisions — pick the cheaper system, hit the pro forma — is actively counterproductive. "we look at construction cost on a 25-year horizon — does it make sense to invest more capital now."
Applied to mechanical: VRF (variable refrigerant flow) is one of the most efficient HVAC systems available for multi-unit residential, and it's supported by Efficiency Nova Scotia incentives. Applied to the building envelope: Dexel adds 1.5 inches of continuous rigid insulation outside the stud wall on The George. Thermal bridging through studs is still widely ignored; the new energy code is catching up to practice that Dexel was already running. "the rigid insulation reduces thermal bridging — a really big issue largely ignored — the new energy code is addressing that now."
Applied to parking: Dexel uses a hot-rubberized-asphalt bridge-deck membrane on every parking slab from day one. It costs more upfront than a standard coating, but Skiba points to 20-year-old buildings where they haven't had to touch the slabs. "bridge deck solution — a little more money but it's one and done, bulletproof — 20-year-old buildings we haven't had to touch." The coating that needs annual touch-up looks cheaper on the construction draw. Over 25 years it isn't.
Suite-by-suite utility metering, through Wyse Meter Solutions, completes the picture. Moving from bulk-billed utilities to individual accounts changes resident behaviour. "user pay is the best way to create a more efficient building — the science is supporting it." For a developer-operator who carries the energy cost in bulk, the submetering investment pays back through lower consumption across the portfolio.
The companies building Halifax
The projects Skiba describes didn't get built by one firm. They're the product of a specific set of Halifax-rooted specialists working inside a coordinated model.
Dexel sits at the centre — developer, architect of record, and construction manager. Five in-house architects generate construction drawings; the construction management team runs the site. Sister company Paramount Management handles property management and leasing once the building is occupied, closing the feedback loop that makes the model work.
Fathom Studio brings multidisciplinary design capacity — architecture, landscape architecture, planning — and works on concept design for projects including the Press Block. Campbell Comeau Engineering provides structural engineering and contributes BIM models to the federated coordination process. Equilibrium Engineering handles mechanical and electrical engineering, including the energy modelling that supports systems like VRF.
On the building-operations side, Wyse Meter Solutions provides suite-by-suite submetering, and EfficiencyOne — the independent, not-for-profit energy efficiency utility behind the Efficiency Nova Scotia program — provides incentives for high-efficiency systems including VRF.
Start from the bottom
Skiba's closing message is the least complicated thing in the episode. The construction industry offers more diverse, well-paying career paths than most people coming out of school understand — construction management, accounting, architecture, project development — and none of it gets promoted hard enough to young people. NSCC programs are a start.
His own path started with an engineering degree and a shovel. "you need the humility to shovel gravel for a while — then a year later you realize how much you learned." The groundwork isn't a detour from a career in construction; for anyone who wants to understand how a building actually gets built, it's the only reliable starting point.
The buildings standing on Spring Garden Road say the rest.
Guest: Kris Skiba, VP of Design & Construction, Dexel Developments. Episode 12 of the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Watch the full episode. Also featured: Paramount Management, Fathom Studio, Campbell Comeau Engineering, Equilibrium Engineering, Wyse Meter Solutions, and EfficiencyOne / Efficiency Nova Scotia. Receipts: VRF — Efficiency Nova Scotia; Spring Garden West approvals; Centre Plan; The Press Block.