EV Charging in Atlantic Canada: How Developers Get 50% Government Grants (Electric Avenue founder Mark McDonald)

0:00Our team at the Atlantic Construction Podcast is excited to announce our newest partner, Luminous Labs. Luminous Labs is the leading provider of architectural visualizations for developers, homeowners, architects, and more. Luminous Labs has a team of experienced designers and visualizers using cutting-edge technology to bring your 3D renderings to life. Using these architectural visualizations will give you a sense of scale, space, and design, and allow you to make informed decisions about your projects before construction even begins. These high-end architectural visualizations are a perfect tool for presentations, marketing materials, and design reviews.

0:35Allowing you to communicate your vision to stakeholders, clients, and more. This episode is brought to you by our presenting sponsor, Pizant Building Products. Pizant Building Products has been providing contractors and builders with the supplies necessary to complete their jobs since 1964. They've built a reputation of honest, helpful, and quality service, serving the HRM for the last 58 years. Now with seven locations in Nova Scotia and one in New Brunswick. Our team at the Atlantic Construction Podcast is extremely excited to announce our new co-branded partner, Procore. Procore is the global leader in construction

1:07management software. We'll be conducting several podcast episodes with Procore users and construction companies across the country in 2023, among many other things. Stay tuned — we're excited.

1:21Welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Very pleased to have with us today Mark MacDonald with Catalyst Sales and Marketing, and also with Electric

1:34Excellent, it's my first time. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for doing this, and thanks for stepping up for your first podcast. Looking forward to our conversation. And I gotta start with — so you took up some beach volleyball here in the last few years. How's that going for you? I love it. I don't even know if you call it research into — yes, but somebody slipped you some — yeah, the inside track on my athletic career. No, I was looking at it —

1:59it was a rebirth in sports for me. I was looking — so what was your sport before that? A couple. I would say, fortunately or unfortunately, like most Canadian men, you play hockey. So I played hockey, I played high school hockey, and then just kind of fell out of love with the sport. And then what caused that? Well, I don't want to go into it — I don't know, it's just like where it fits in your life. Like, when you're young and it's the only thing you have

2:22going on, there's lots of time for it. It's a great sport. There was a time where you thought — you tried to — I never thought that, you know, there was pressure to pursue it as someone who was six-five — coaches or parents? Yeah, parents. Because of your size? Size, yeah. And my father absolutely loved the sport — myself, no. I was up front, first one in, get down there and grind. And you were big like, when you're younger as well? Big, yeah. Yeah, yeah, big but —

2:49that was it. Like, I love basketball growing up, you know, loved a lot of sports, but hockey was so much the focus of the community I grew up in. We can all relate to that in Atlantic Canada — that's what I mean. There's a million stories like mine. But yeah, I was in my mid-20s, I was totally single, and I was playing golf all the time. I love golf, I had some friends who love golf, and one day me and a buddy were just like, man —

3:11it's a great sport, but it's not very social. So we literally — and my partner now, Kaylee, she's heard this story a million times — but we literally Googled "best sport to meet women." Really? And beach volleyball — I should have guessed it — was top of the list. And people who know me well, like, one of my attributes for better or for worse is I'm pretty relentless. Whatever you give me, I'm gonna go after it, I'm gonna go 100%. So it started as that, and I

3:37ended up meeting my partner Kaylee. We're about to have our first baby in July. The beach volleyball — played volleyball, men are at the WAG, dude. So it was kind of mission accomplished. They've got courts down at the WAG? Yeah, I thought it was just tennis courts. I don't know if they're still there — there used to be a league — but now they built phenomenal courts over on the waterfront. We play on the waterfront. Gotta bring her on that though — bring your own. We do it

3:58all the time. But over in Burnside — RBC Centre, I think it's the RBC Centre where you play hockey — and there's a football field. So anyway, met her, mission accomplished. And I was just like, I never gave up on the sport. So I went from never touching a volleyball in my life at — what age? God, is it 30? Okay, you started playing at 30. Started playing at 30 — that's crazy, man. Good for you, takes some courage to start late like that, eh. It was frustrating. The interesting thing about

4:24new — anything new, business endeavours, new whatever endeavours. It shows your entrepreneurial spirit too. And I just find like it's so fun early, because it's like the growth curve is so quick. You go from nothing to a new sport and like every day you can see and feel like you're making rapid growth. And then you plateau — like hockey, you plateau, golf — to go from an 80 to a 75 might take you five years and a lot of effort. So I find new is always

4:48fun. I think there's a term for it — they call it the storming phase, right? You get into a new business, you get into a new sport, everybody storms in. Yeah, it's exciting. And then you get the normalization, you kind of — honeymoon phase over? That's it. And then there's this gap, and a lot of people just don't make it through the gap. But for me, with volleyball, I just stayed with it. I ended up winning a bunch of tournaments, and I think my best part of

5:07volleyball is my recruiting skills. Like — excuse me — I recruited ex-national team players. My partner — my male volleyball player partner? Sorry, yeah. No, yeah, she's not wife yet, but — yeah. That's awesome, man. Yeah, I think a lot of people, if they hadn't played volleyball much or hadn't played at a high level, wouldn't maybe appreciate how awesome of a sport it can be to play and how fun it is. Not that I played at a serious high level, but I have played a lot, and it's unreal. Yeah, I

5:35agree — it's a fun sport. Agreed. And it's so social. You can play it outdoors, you can play it on trips down south, whatever. It's just one of those great games. And there's a bunch of sports coming out — even spikeball — all those things. Spikeball, yeah. What about pickleball? That's a big one right now. I haven't played it, I've seen it. Just bought a pickleball franchise down in New Orleans — they've got franchises now. This sport is getting huge. I see it on ESPN all the time. Yeah, it's the next big thing. Yeah, I

6:00haven't even played — yeah, I gotta try though. I think they're building some out in the Bedford Commons or something like that. They need them. Yeah, sounds like it. But that's a good segue into you being the founder and co-owner of Electric Avenue. Obviously you're with Catalyst Sales and Marketing too, but a lot of times we like to talk about just a little bit about your education, your time at university or college, and then onward — kind of how you got to where you are.

6:23today. Maybe you can give us the Coles Notes on a little bit of your

6:31We touched on it earlier, but for me I always had a love for technology and entrepreneurship from a very young age. I was born in '82, and my father — this is like MS-DOS — my dad brought home a computer, big investment for him at the time, it was running MS-DOS, and I remember just being enamored with this thing. I remember that too, right. I'm 37, so not that far out, not that far apart. I remember the first computer with the old operating system, like no Windows. I

6:59remember pre-internet. We used this thing called BBS — bulletin board services — to dial up on your old screech-and-squeal modem to download all these different things. At the time, but I think that — looking back — was pivotal for me, like seeing that technology, falling in love with technology at an early age. And I just followed it into college, so I pursued electronics engineering. Ended up going to Toronto — born here, grew up in New Brunswick, ended up in Toronto to

7:24go to school at a technical college. And there was kind of like this quick path at the time — this is the height of the dot-com bubble, when every tech company in the world really was overvalued relative to where it landed after. The dawn of Silicon Valley, totally. That's what it was like. Nobody knew who was going to be the Google or the Amazon, but everybody thought everyone was going to be, yeah. So anyway, started, finished college, wanted to do my electrical engineering, and it was Nortel Networks —

7:49and it was — I think it was the largest publicly traded company in Canada at the time, blue chip stock, everybody had investments in them. They came to the school, they're like, hey, start with us, we'll pay for your engineering. I'm like, perfect, career set, Toronto, you know, 19, 20 years old — I was like, this is great, my life's set. And within one year I was on a picket line, and six months later I came back to New Brunswick with my tail between my legs, not

8:13knowing — I didn't know how to save, right, you know, didn't know anything about the workforce, economics. I was like, oh my God. And it was really — I reflected recently — it was kind of that moment where it was like, I can't rely on somebody else. And really that was early 2000s, 2003, 2004, started my first business. So got into business, we were doing automation and networking systems, me and another partner, and was lucky enough to sell that and got to know some people within the electrical wholesale industry

8:41at the time, and then started Catalyst — really, or a version of Catalyst; the name has changed over the years — but started in the rep world. So still got to be in love with the technology I was always in love with, but now got to be on the business development and sales side, kind of what my strength was, or what was appearing to be my strengths, right. So you're realizing at that time, like even though you pursued engineering — electronics engineering — the sales side, the entrepreneurial side — it seems

9:07like you have both. I think it's just kind of unique, you know. A lot of engineers are — it's not necessarily introverts — but sales is maybe not their thing, right? Or starting their own business with that approach isn't always the case. Agree. Yeah, yeah. There's a great book — I think it's called The E-Myth — and it talks — yes, that is a good book — yeah, and it talks about the hats we all wear, and it's like management, entrepreneur, visionary —

9:31there's a few categories. And one word — attraction. Yeah, yeah, they kind of pull from the same school of thought. And "technician" is one of them. So I think a big part of me is still like technician — love getting on the oscilloscope in the office, or getting into the back end of the firmware on the chargers or whatever it may be. But also love the entrepreneurial vision approach, hate the management stuff, right. So I think operationally — so much — but vision, creativity, carrying things forward,

9:58seeing down the road where you're headed. So I'm interested — is it tough for you to sacrifice the technician side? Because they talk about that in The E-Myth, right? Sometimes the best person in the kitchen, who's a really good cook or at baking, starts their own restaurant, and they want to be out there doing the technical stuff, right? Because that's their skill — it's artistic, it's got this thing. And they have a hard time sacrificing that, staying away from the task-oriented stuff to carry the vision for it. Is that something you

10:26battle with every day? Is that something you struggle with every day? Yeah, yeah, no question. And it's an identity thing almost too. It is. And it's really come down to — you know, there's another great book, Traction, or — sorry — it's related to, uh, James Clear, I forget the name, but anyway it talks about the habits, right, and just creating these habits. And that's one thing for us, like as an organization, we've always worked with some great business coaches and great business mentors. Like, we went through a program

10:55with Simplicity — they're a company based out of Bedford — and they sat down with us, and what they did to help with the habits of not falling back into those loops, where it's like, oh, I'm not putting enough effort where I need it to be. So they really helped us identify where we as an organization, and as individuals, should spend our time, right. So once I figured out, okay, this is where I need to spend my time, and then putting the processes in place to create those

11:20good habits to make sure I'm not getting pulled too far into the weeds, if you will, and I'm focused on where my energy and efforts serve the business the most value. Yeah, no, that's really interesting, man. Thanks for sharing that. So can we talk a little bit about Catalyst Sales and Marketing before we kind of dive into Electric Avenue? So you're carrying a lot of different lines in the lighting world here. Yeah, you said you're dealing with, you know, a lot of legitimate

11:44suppliers like Rexel, and this kind of thing. Maybe just kind of give a second, because it's been quite a few years since this has been operational. Yeah, and I think most people who know me in the construction industry would know me from Catalyst, right. And that was — yes — since selling that networking and automation company in the early 2000s, transitioning into the agency sales world. Catalyst signs contracts with manufacturers who don't want to have a direct sales force in a market, so we specifically geographically

12:14represent Atlantic Canada. So if you're a manufacturer of lighting, if you're a manufacturer of electrical products — because we're very specific in our channel, we only sell electrical or do the business development or representation for electrical equipment — you would look at agencies like Catalyst and say, hey, we're going to hire you, you're geographically going to cover us for Atlantic Canada. And we try to pair or select manufacturers who kind of complement each other. So lighting is a big piece of our business, decorative lighting, residential lighting —

12:43you know, many in the design world, the architectural world, would know us from that. And we have everything from commodity plugs and switches to pipe and wire. If you're an electrician, there's a chance that we kind of rep or do business development for manufacturers that you would buy that product from — to the retailer? Correct, only dealing with the subcontractors and electrical companies. Yeah, that's a good point, that's a good caveat. We only — it's only B2B, yeah, so we're only calling on our vertical. So

13:10our customer is really the electrical wholesaler. You mentioned the Rexels, the Wescos, the Gray Bars, the Eddy Groups — yeah, those wholesalers who only sell to electrical contractors. That's our customer. And then the influencers, if you will, in our channel are the electrical engineers, the electrical contractors, the developers who are making decisions on some of these electrical products directly. That's kind of where we spend our time from a traditional sales and marketing standpoint — trying to influence the decision-making process.

13:39And that would include — does that include catching things upstream, dealing with architecture firms in their design, preliminary design, engineers too? Like trying to get your products into the spec? Absolutely, yeah. That's kind of like the holy grail for anyone in my space. If you can build those relationships, find the right solutions — you know, a lot of the time it is a solution they're trying to do, especially with architects. They're trying to do something very specifically — hey, here's

14:03the vision, okay, product expert, you know, how do we go solve this? Even for me, you know, I carry an LC designation as a certified lighting designer, so I'm able to add — or traditionally was able to add — that layer of knowledge and expertise when they were looking for products. And a prime example not too far from us is Queen's Marque. We worked with McKay Lyons Sweetapple very early on — which part? Like the interior. So we helped them with all the interior suite

14:31lighting and ended up in the hotel portion, the residential side as well. So we were lucky enough to work with the architect — they were doing, I believe, the construction drawings on that piece. So it was Brian McKay, I think it's McKay Lyons Sweetapple — yeah, yeah, up here on Gottingen Street. So we worked with them because they had a vision for how these residential units should look from a lighting perspective. We were able to put a package together, like, okay, here's how you solve exactly

14:58what you're trying to achieve. And then we were lucky enough to supply the equipment on the project. Well, this must be a satisfying one for you to look back on. Yeah, those are always feathers in the cap. And those are great stories, especially buildings like that that are so iconic. It's great to be able to be a part of stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, some of these buildings — the Cunard is going up now, and all of a sudden they're just

15:18finished before Queen's Marque started. It's almost like every year we add a new signature building on the waterfront, or somewhere downtown. It's crazy. Yeah, well, I'm in the West End. I was actually on top of — Dexel's got a building there — no, not the George, no, it's the — it doesn't have a number in the name of the building? Yeah, something West, like 33? Yeah, West 22. Yeah, West 22, that's right. So yeah, speaking of these iconic buildings, that's one, in my opinion.

15:46But we're up on the parapet — we're up on the roof, just on the edge of the parapet this morning, looking at some lighting we had done to light the exterior top fins of the building. And looking out — is it like tube or blind lighting or something? Yeah, it's a really cool product. It's actually made to replicate neon, traditional neon, but it's silicone-embedded LED, so it gives the effect. And it's got DMX controllers, you can do different lighting scenes, lighting colors. But as I was up there, I was looking out over the rotary, and there's 177 —

16:11yeah, right, that new building. So another iconic one, and a really interesting spot. Yeah, it's changing here very much so. You can see Richmond from down there. Richmond Yards? Yeah. So I don't know — I'll probably get this all wrong — but Richmond Yards, I think there's a 34-storey tower. 177, I think it's 35. I don't know what West 22 is — it wouldn't be quite that high, but

16:39it's got to be in the high 20s, because for a long time 27 stories was Fenwick Tower, which was the highest, and now like everybody's exceeding 30. So things are now past that milestone — it's a new world. Yeah, I think I got off on the 22nd floor, okay. Yeah, so that sounds right. And then yeah, 35, I can almost confirm for 177. But Richmond looks big and taller. Yeah, it's impressive. That's an impressive block, because it's like it's a whole block of the city, and there's

17:07like 11 buildings over 11 years or something. Yeah, and the pace of it is incredible. Kudos for the pace — isn't that Westwood? Yeah, yeah. You know, no wonder, and I'm sure Bird Construction's there for a reason to help out on that side of things. Yeah, it's insane how fast it's going up. It's crazy, it's showing. Yeah. I think we were talking earlier about your involvement in EO — Entrepreneurs' Organization? Yeah. Because I think Jimmy Lauraway — who's in that — his company Anvil did the

17:33cladding at the building, West 22. I think you're right. That was one of — I don't want to get this wrong, Jim, you might be listening right now — but it's probably one of the bigger jobs he's gotten. Like, I know he's got some stuff with Dexel and he's doing great, but I think that was a pretty milestone project for him. And it looks — it looks amazing. I'm sure you noticed even when you're up there. Yeah, the cladding. I think Dexel probably gets a lot

17:54of compliments on their architecture, but that building specifically — and if he did it, you know, it looks like they did a phenomenal job. Hopefully it went well. But yeah, Jimmy is in the EO. Yeah, well, that's cool. Yeah, I know Dexel is — I believe — one of the only larger developers who has their architecture firm internally, right? Because they've got their own. And I'm sure that makes things a little more streamlined when they're designing these buildings, right? Like, they're in full control — kind of a

18:18thing. Yeah, and I remember Chris was on here, and I listened to that podcast — he was talking about it, and it's kind of a mix for them too, it sounds like now, where okay, we'll get our in-house to make sure things move, and then, yeah, certain visions on these buildings — they'll bring in outside architectural firms as well. Yeah. This is the WM Faris thing, is that — their architecture firm helps design everybody else's here? That's how it works. Yeah. But moving on to Electric

18:39Avenue — we started this in 2021, very focused on EV chargers in both residential and commercial. You can definitely explain it better than me, but this is a really forward-thinking — you know, there's something that a lot of developers are getting in on now. You've had some success in the city already, and certainly it's got to be a good time to be having such a keen focus on this renewable product in the commercial space. Yeah, so the back story is —

19:10going back to Catalyst, we as an organization sat down — this is probably five or six years ago — and, you know, like many contemporary businesses: what are we trying to do, why do we exist, and how do we make decisions? And we settled on — like, sustainability has been a big part of my life. The outdoor lifestyle has been really important, from backcountry skiing to beach volleyball. We do some eco racing — you name it, just like the outdoors.

19:38Apartment? What's eco racing? They used to — they stopped doing it actually — but there was a — it's an orienteering race. We always used to do it here. It's 24 hours, 50 by 50 kilometre map. They put you in the middle of the woods, you get a compass — you can accomplish it on a map and it's like a race. It's a race? So you're running? Yeah, well, if you can — yeah, it's 24 hours, but yeah, definitely running for a big piece of it. No way. But

20:02yeah, outdoor was always important to me. And as a business, we're like, what are we going to do? Because we were into LED lighting — we saw the push coming in our market from an efficiency standpoint. So as an organization, as Catalyst, we settled on: we're just going to help others achieve environmental sustainability through electrification. That was now our new guiding light. Every decision we make had to check that box. Got into solar about four years ago, or close to five years ago, and we've been

20:27lucky enough to supply almost two megawatts of solar into Atlantic Canada through Catalyst. And then the EV charging conversation came up about four years ago. At the time, it's not the buzz that it is now, but it was still — you know, people were talking: what's going on with this market, what infrastructure is needed in this market? And we said we couldn't make the economics make sense at the time, four years ago. But we said, hey, it aligns with our purpose, it aligns

20:51with our vision, aligns with our why. So we said, let's find some EV charging product to run through Catalyst. And we found one — but when we got into this space, it wasn't like a traditional electrical wholesale product. People in the space, you know, they were tech companies out of Fremont, in San Francisco, right, they were chasing software-as-a-service subscriptions, they were chasing ARR revenue, they didn't know about our channel. So we ended up signing a deal we didn't love, with a company we didn't

21:15love. And we started deploying their infrastructure. We had a lot of success early on through a federal program — it's called ZEVIP, Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program. This program through Natural Resources Canada pays for 50% of charging infrastructure. And we ended up landing a really nice deal. It was amazing to work with them — I think it's a phenomenal business story — but Killam Properties here in Halifax, they ended up purchasing over 420 chargers for their buildings across Canada. And through that process we learned so much, but we learned a whole

21:44lot of things about what not to do, because this manufacturer we were working with had a whole lot of issues. There were other things we didn't love, like once you buy their hardware you're locked into their software for life. There were a lot of business things we didn't love. We got frustrated with the whole process, we had some other issues with them. So we said, you know, forget it, let's do it ourselves. Really? It aligns with our vision, it's not that complicated, let's figure out this

22:06charger and let's figure out the software and let's just come up with a better sale — integrate it all holistically, integrate it all. So yeah. When I ask — just for our listeners, for context — 420 chargers across Canada. So like, how many per property? Great question. I think it was like between two and five percent of the parking lot. And not only in the parkade — not those kind of units? Like in the parking lot? Both? Both, both. Private and public. But yeah, most see —

22:33multi-unit residential is kind of — it's the most influential space, in my opinion, that you can put chargers in right now, because the government — that's funding — our government that's funding these chargers — they're trying to change consumer perception. Because right now, the number one thing — if you're polled, or the average person's polled — "hey, do you want to own an EV?" — it's like, well, I don't trust how far they drive, I don't trust there's enough infrastructure to support it. So multi-unit residential is so important because 90 — somewhere close to

22:5990% of the time you charge an electric vehicle, you charge it at your destination, and your destination is normally your house. But if you live in a multi-unit — yeah, which I read some data recently — almost 31% of Canadians live in a multi-unit, and that's only getting — worse? Getting worse, as it's growing? Yeah, like more people are living in an apartment. Well, it depends — what, sorry? Because I live in one, yes. And sometimes I wish I did. So correct, it could be either way. Yeah, it's becoming more

23:28costly to own a home. Yeah, interest rates are going up. For sure, it's becoming harder to own a home. So when I say "worse" — worse in the sense of maintenance-free? It's true. There's a story for both sides, and I know a lot of developers who listen to this — they're probably happy with that statistic. Yeah, plugging them all. But so the chargers are going in the parkades where the tenants park — that's the primary reason, like Killam is deploying them. Right.

23:52Right. And then for the government, like this over-deployed infrastructure — so for Killam it was two to five percent of their total parking portfolio. At the time, there was less than one percent of Canadians who owned an electric vehicle. So the government's achieving their goal, because they're changing consumer perception. You pull into that parkade in your building, you see 10 unused chargers, you're like, oh, maybe I can buy an electric vehicle because the infrastructure's there. Yeah. And this was, like, 10 years ago, probably? Well, it

24:16started — the program really only started about four years ago, this federal program that funds it. And now it's evolved into all these streams. We actually worked pretty much exclusively with Clean Foundation on their EV Boost program. So now they're kind of re-administering these funds regionally. So we've helped a lot of developers access those funds, because it's 50% of everything — 50% chargers, electrical labour, engineering fees. The programs pay for half of everything to get these chargers in your buildings. That's amazing. Yeah, that makes

24:44getting that business off the ground a whole lot easier. Yeah, it was a whole lot easier to bootstrap for sure. You know, traditionally when you enter — because there's a tech component to this space — we have software to allow you to monetize the chargers, right, because you want to be able to bill your tenants because you're using your house meter, your energy, to supply power to these tenants. So you need a way to recoup that cost. So the software piece —

25:07there's a bunch of technical pieces to it. So traditionally, you know, this early into a market you'd probably need some financing, or you'd have to go and dilute equity to raise enough capital to get into the space. But for us, yeah, with the government paying for 50% of things and paying pretty quickly, it made it a whole lot easier to bootstrap the business with our own equity. Yeah, right. So is it typical, if you're in a building where there's charging stations in a parkade,

25:33you're paying the building owner, and the building owner is generating revenue from that parking — from that charging station? So is that typical? That's not typical for us, fortunately, and I'll explain why. So that model is pretty typical if you see — you go to, let's say, Enfield, and you see the Tesla fast chargers out in Enfield, they've got E-Fas chargers, or all that, or you see some Flow chargers off the highway. Typically those are a lease model where, hey, I'll lease

25:57the space and I'm going to collect the revenue from the charging, or there's some revenue share. The nice thing for apartment building owners — in my opinion — and for us as a business, if you get funding from the government to deploy this infrastructure, it requires you to own it. So you have to buy it as the developer or the building owner. You would buy the infrastructure from us, or whoever. But what's nice about that is you keep all the revenue. So we have ROI cases on apartment buildings here in

26:26Halifax where it's less than a two-year payback. This hardware is warranted for five years, it'll probably last you ten anyway. And they're using our software, and that ROI includes the software fees. So yeah. But that's our business model — hardware is kind of secondary to getting you the software that you need to control access to the chargers, but also collect revenue or monetize the energy that's going into these vehicles. A quick shout-out to the newest sponsor of the show, The Stone Depot. The Stone

26:52Depot is located in Beechville, Halifax, and serves all of the East Coast. A showroom over 8,000 square feet, perfect for masonry contractors, landscaping contractors, builders, developers — regardless, The Stone Depot is a great option for you, whether you're doing fire pits, patio stones, kitchen and interior stones. So if you're looking for a great stone supplier, visit The Stone Depot. This episode is brought to you by Airtight Spaces. Airtight Spaces is Atlantic Canada's first authorized Aerobarrier dealer. They help create comfortable, healthy, and durable living

27:18environments with the added benefit of energy efficiency. Air sealing is a critical step towards net zero buildings. Using air pressure to automatically guide sealant guarantees the highest quality results in the least amount of time, with the least amount of effort. If air sealing is important to you, you can visit Airtight Spaces at www.airtightspaces.com. Pivot Bookkeeping is your one-stop shop for customizable bookkeeping, tax, and filing services. With Pivot, you have the peace of mind knowing your taxes are always filed on time and your bookkeeping is reconciled often. Using their non-proprietary

27:47software and applications, all of your business finances are securely handled by their local account managers. Pivot takes great pride in providing you with unlimited support and a direct line to your account managers right here in Nova Scotia. Whether you're an established business looking for new options and increased efficiency, or a newer company looking to build a solid foundation for future growth, Pivot has a product that can be modified to your needs. Consider making the pivot today — book a free consultation at pivotbookkeeping.com. Yeah, so you've got these incorporated

28:15into your design — you've bought the full hardware-software package, you now have a building where it's either multi-res or even a retail space or a place of business — you're offering this eco-friendly, it's good for your employees, it's good for your tenants, it's good for everybody. Yeah. Depending on what side of the fence you're on on this, I think the jury's still out for a lot of people. Right? Is that where you find — when you deal with, in Atlantic Canada, developers particularly — like it's a bit

28:41of a tough sell right now? Or is it getting better for you? It's getting better, no question. Like when we initially went out and solicited our network of developers, it was only a handful. It was Killam, it was J2K — Jim and John Kanakos — there was a handful three or four years ago who went after some of this funding. And I mention their names because it's all public knowledge — if you receive funding from them, it's public record. So they were Front Runners, right? Correct. They were early adopters, in my opinion, in this market.

29:07But as time has gone on — and it may be less of our sales pitch as a business and more of this happening — where tenants are saying, hey, I just bought a Tesla. So I find it's a mix now. Before, it was progressive, forward-thinking developers who were deploying this infrastructure almost — need it now. Yeah, it's becoming — it was kind of an amenity, and now it's a commodity. Yeah, so the shift is starting to happen. Despite what side of the coin you may be on, the jury is still out for some —

29:36so there's got to be like a percentage now, already, where if you've got a 100-unit building and there's 50 to 80 or 100 parking spots, 10 are probably driving an electric vehicle. Would it be that high right now? It wouldn't be that high — it would be that high from a new vehicles sold standpoint. So I think globally we're hitting close to 15% of new vehicles sold last quarter globally. And then you've got hot spots like Vancouver, Quebec, that may be higher, close to 20%. I'm just

30:04throwing out numbers. But as a total of vehicles on the road, we're still less than 2% in Canada. Oh, it's that low? It's still very early. So yeah. But 10% is kind of that sweet spot. I like that number because that kind of accomplishes the goal we touched on earlier — where, hey, you want to over-deploy infrastructure to change perception. Right, because that's why the government's giving this money out — they want you to over-deploy to make sure every tenant who comes in your building feels comfortable they can

30:29buy an electric vehicle. So what about, when it comes to the specific chargers that you're having manufactured and sold through Electric Avenue — are these fully integrated with, like, any kind of vehicle? Is there some that won't charge on them? That's a good question, that is a good question. The answer is all vehicles will charge. So the chargers we're deploying for apartment buildings — there's two types of chargers really left. Level 1, we don't care

31:03about anymore, because it's almost useless. It's 120 volts, you know, plugged into a regular outlet. On any modern electric vehicle, I think the top 15 vehicles now in North America get over 500 kilometres of range on a single charge. That outlet does like five kilometres of range an hour — it's like putting a spare tire on that you can only drive five kilometres an hour. It's going to take you a very long time to get anywhere. So the chargers we talk about now practically are Level 2 chargers.

31:29So 208/240 volt AC into the vehicle. And then you have Level 3 — what used to be called Level 3, now they call it DC fast chargers, or rapid chargers. All the apartment buildings deploy Level 2 chargers because it makes the most sense. You get the most longevity for distance out of those charges. Is that why? Yeah, it's a mix — exactly that. And every vehicle takes the same connector now in North America in that range. So it's a J1772, and then if you drive a Tesla

31:59there's an adapter for it, so that would work on a Ford Lightning. Ford Lightning — every vehicle for Level 2 chargers has a J1772 port, except Tesla. They use an adapter. So you're kind of good there. You think — it's just got to be different, he's got to be different. And I'll give him credit — they've deployed so much infrastructure. We have a Lightning in our company fleet and we have a couple of Teslas. And I went down to Maine recently for the long weekend — we went skiing down at Sugarloaf. And I

32:25took the Tesla as opposed to the Ford because Tesla charging infrastructure is so good. Elon has to be different, one. But two, they invested — they have over 17,000 fast chargers globally. They're like an infrastructure company more than a car company, almost. Correct, it's incredible. How much — that trip was tolerable. I will say that. I had a — that's a good word — it was tolerable in the Tesla. I had to make the best of it, yeah. I had a buddy who came with me. I called it a mutiny by

32:49the end. Because when you're used to stopping for five minutes for gas — I think we had to make two stops on the way home to charge. 45-minute stops, let's say. So we added — I see how far a drive is that. I mean it's got to be — it's normally nine hours. It took us like ten, ten and a bit. So that was with Tesla. But I called it mutiny because by the end he was getting so angry. So I was like, you have to start

33:08baiting them. It's like a Pavlovian response — I was buying them lotto tickets and donuts to keep them going for the stops. But yeah. Going back to what you were saying — the reason Level 2 is so valuable: one, the amount of power required is low. So Level 2 chargers are like your stoves. It's a two-pole circuit just like your stove, typically 40 or 48 amps, just like your stove. So it's an accessible amount of power for a building. Also you mentioned it — the

33:34cars prefer it. So the cars would rather charge slowly — when I say prefer it, it's better for battery degradation, like long-term battery maintenance — to charge the vehicle slow. If you're using those fast chargers off the highway — like our chargers that we supply for apartment buildings are 10 kilowatts; those Tesla chargers I referenced are 150 — so 15 times more energy, and it's also far more than 15 times the cost to deploy, but worse for the batteries. And the other stat that everyone should know in the

34:02destination charging space — like workplace, home — the average Canadian only drives 67 kilometres a day. That's less than two hours on a charge, or a night. So you don't need — even when we do these buildings, interestingly enough, especially downtown, a lot of people aren't driving that far. That's the average, you know. The average — a lot of people fall far below that. I would be fair below that. Live in the South

34:26End, right? So you might be in the 10-kilometre range, and then someone coming from Enfield or Shubenacadie is bringing that average up to 67 or whatever it is. So that's a really good point. These apartment buildings — so what we do too, from a power standpoint, because everyone's like, where's the energy going to come from, where's the power, where's the infrastructure — we'll put up to six chargers on one circuit, and our software will load-share them. So first car plugs in, gets the full amount of power. Second

34:49car — well, 50/50. And we can split that power down across six chargers. So you don't need as much electrical equipment to deploy the charging infrastructure. And so if I'm looking at this very common sense — and I'm sure there's lots of people out there who know as little about this as I do — if I'm looking at a parkade, are these stations positioned individually, like in a parking stall at the back on the concrete wall, where there are two yellow lines? Are they

35:13kind of somewhere where people can drive by them? How does it depend — it depends on the unit, depends on the — yeah, the decision, you know, construction. So the decision really is a construction decision. So we always try to keep the cost down for the rough-in on the electrical — get them as close, yeah, get them as close to the electrical room as you can. But from a user experience standpoint, you want to dedicate a charger to a tenant, or a charger to a parking spot. So I

35:40would kind of want my own, correct, in my own parking spot. Yeah, because the problem — we get this question — depends on the fights down there over those. What happens — like we have a feature in our software, and we primarily use it like for hotels or publicly available chargers — where we can charge a penalty if you don't turn the spot over. They call them "EV squatters." Like squatters? So they'll plug in, they'll be done charging in an hour, but they'll leave it there for six. So

36:05they're hogging it. And I've been guilty of this early days, like, oh, that's a good parking spot, I'll plug in. Right, for the parking spot. But as more people adopt, we've got to get away from that. So we have a penalty system that we can deploy in our software where if you don't unplug we'll charge you, you know, 15 bucks every 10 minutes as a penalty. Does that not harm the battery at all? Just leave it plugged in, because it's going to stop —

36:26it stops it. Yeah, there's a little control pin in the cable, and it literally sends a signal on this control line and stops sending power. So no harm to the battery. But you're burning power still? No, you're not. It actually cuts the signal and turns the power off. But in an apartment building, for you — like you just mentioned — you want your own one. Because if I come home at nine o'clock at night, I don't want to get a notification from our app that says, hey,

36:48you're done charging at midnight, go move your car. Right. You want the same use-case scenario as a single-family homeowner: I come home, I plug in, I go to bed, I get up, my car's ready to go. So for apartment buildings, that's the experience — one charger per parking spot, or per vehicle, or per tenant. Okay. Here's another question from a construction standpoint. I'm assuming, you know, a lot of your entry in the sales stream and the process — you know, you want to be there in the design phase, you want to

37:13talk to the developer, you want to talk to the architect, you want to catch the stuff upstream so your product's going to be in these buildings. And hopefully they're forward-thinking in their design. Then there's — you could be talking about retrofits — a lot of big commercial buildings that would have parkades, being redone, big interior renovation, maybe you can work it into the new architectural and electrical drawings and all that kind of stuff. What about existing buildings where developers, building asset owners are interested in having some

37:40of these? How hard is it to route the electrical in existing parkades to have some of these? Or are there certain kinds of units that can be kind of wall-mounted and run with cabling fixed to the concrete instead of inside the wall assemblies, or stuff like that? Yeah, that's a great one. Because here's one thing I found that I think is interesting — in many instances it's easier to retrofit chargers right now in older buildings than in a brand-new building that never had

38:13any electrical capacity planning for chargers. Because in older buildings I find two things: one, they've become incredibly efficient over the years — LED lighting, new air handling units, new efficient heating systems or boilers, or they converted from electrical to natural gas, or whatever it is. As a rule of thumb, I see buildings have become significantly more efficient, so their electrical loads have actually decreased from the original design. So that's one thing. And the other thing that I find interesting about older buildings

38:45is now — because the way we build, and it's not a good thing or a bad thing — architects are squeezing those electrical rooms for every square foot. You go in a brand-new building and it's like transformers stacked on transformer, 36 inches between things, it's hard to move. You go in these older buildings and there's a lot of real estate in those electrical rooms to add things like new services, new transformers, new distribution, new panels. So yeah, new buildings sometimes that didn't have any provisions are actually

39:10more difficult to retrofit. And then on the brand-new construction side, we definitely have some progressive engineers — I say progressive, some engineers we work with — who are calling us saying, hey, what do I need to do to make sure this building is, you know, going back to things like load-sharing the chargers and all these variables — they're preparing. And credit to Efficiency Nova Scotia — you may know of Efficiency Nova Scotia. Yeah. They just put out a program called — I believe it's called EV Ready

39:35Planning — they'll pay for up to 75% of the engineering on a new build or an existing build to figure out how to get the EV infrastructure in place. So yeah, we're starting to move there. We're definitely behind the construction curve as far as that goes, because you go to places like Vancouver — they have municipal EV readiness requirements already. You can't build a new building in Vancouver without submitting a plan that shows, hey, I'm going to get this building to 100% EV chargers in the next 10, 15 years.

40:02That legislation is already in place. Yeah, you have to have EV chargers in your new commercial build? Correct. And they require things like I just described — load sharing — because they don't want you overusing power or over-dedicating circuits to chargers. They want four-to-one load-share ratios on these chargers. So with your — you know, you've mentioned the private developers in the city, that some are more proactive with this than others, you've had some success with many of the bigger ones. What about public —

40:33municipality — anything there to talk about, or any success, any progress? Yeah, so municipal — I'm thinking like, whether it's a public office space, a government building, or even parks. So public has not — like if you look at the whole EV infrastructure landscape, it's big, it's broad. How much charging infrastructure is needed? Our focus has really been on fleets, dealerships, and multi-unit residential buildings. But inevitably we've started to find success in multi-tenant commercial — I should say that too. But

41:08mostly workplace. It's hard to distinguish because some people see that as commercial — if it's multi-res or commercial? Correct. And I call it multi-tenant commercial, like a strip mall or stuff like that, or retail tenants — or even workplaces are another great example where I think our hardware and software is perfectly paired and matched for. But we did have success recently with Inverness County, so they should have theirs online soon. We did 14 Level 2 chargers — destination chargers — at a lot

41:35of tourist areas, like close to beaches and things like that, because that county was really progressive. So these chargers are outside in the parking lot near the beach? Yeah, correct. And actually, they had to bring power — we didn't do the power, of course, because we only supply — but they brought power in off existing poles. So they ran services because there was no building infrastructure there. They ran services off existing poles specifically for the units. And the other thing we did

42:00which is cool — our chargers, you can put SIM cards in them. So we actually sell SIM packages for 4G data, because payment processing and user access control in our software — they've got to be networked. So those chargers — we shipped them, every single charger, I think it was 14, with pedestals to mount them on. We shipped them with SIM cards in them, so they don't even need to connect them to a network or Wi-Fi. They just sit on the cell network and talk back to our servers. That's awesome, yeah.

42:25And so what about the app that's part of the product offering? Maybe tell us a little bit about that for our listeners. Yeah, so the app — and this is common in the industry, and it's actually one of the complaints of a lot of EV drivers right now — is how you need an app for everybody's charging network, right? And we're no different, but we are trying to make it easier. But yeah, if you want to interact with or transact with our

42:50chargers, you've got to download our app. It's Electric Avenue — it's in Google Play or the App Store. So you download the app and you enter your credit card in there once, or multiple credit cards if you want different payment options. And then when you pull up to the charger — and again, this is not unique to us, it's common in the industry — there's a QR code. So the cheapest and most cost-effective way to deploy hardware is: scan the QR code, initiate the transaction, and it will

43:12bill that credit card on file. We also allow RFID cards — those are really popular for apartment buildings — or RFID keychains. And you can even use the same ones that you use for building access control. So same idea, you tie that RFID card to your account and it bills the credit card that's on file in our system. But where we're all trying to get to, and what our chargers are capable of — and this is a little too technical for most, but anyway — right now the problem is if you use a ChargePoint

43:38charger or a Flow charger or our charger, anyone's charger — it's like, I need a different app, I gotta install all that. Yeah, every charger's got a different app. You go to a different place, or this place, even on a trip — you've got three different apps to use on one trip. That's it, exactly. You do that road trip with the non-Tesla vehicles like I talked about, and you've got an app for every charger. But what we've done as an industry — which is kind of cool — and we're

44:00just starting to transition to this: Tesla set the gold bar. Tesla builds the vehicles, they build the chargers, they build the software. You plug into a Tesla charger with a Tesla vehicle, you just plug it in and walk away. It knows it's your vehicle, it knows what your credit card is, and it just starts billing you for that charging session. The problem with all of us who are trying to be in the open-source or outside the Tesla landscape is it's different vehicles, different chargers, different software. So how do we all talk

44:25together? So the ISO has set out a standard — it's called 15118. And now the vehicles are coming built to this ISO standard, and all of our chargers — that's a differentiator for us really — all of our chargers are also built to this new ISO standard. So they run a different firmware, different software, and they talk to our server on a different protocol, which will allow for what they call plug-and-charge. So now if I plug in with my Ford, my Hyundai, my Porsche, my Audi, as soon as I plug into that charger —

44:54because the vehicle has been built to that standard — I can put my credit card information in my vehicle app, say the Ford Pass app for example. I put my credit card info in there, I plug into the charger, and now through a secure token my credit card can get sent to our charger, and we can transact without you having to operate the charger, download an app, or anything like that. So we're getting there. Our chargers are built to that standard, our software is built to that standard.

45:18But that's kind of where we need to get to. What does ISO stand for? It's the International — yeah, International Standards Organization. Yeah. Because again, you're trying to get all the major manufacturers of vehicles and all the major manufacturers of chargers and software to figure it out together. So the ISO has stepped in. And some people — because everybody will work together? Well, the thing with the standard is it doesn't force, but I think that's what we need to do as citizens of this industry — make sure we're

45:45providing software and hardware that's compatible with these standards. Because if you don't, it's going to kill adoption, right? One bad experience — no different than you walk into a restaurant: it's something like 60 touch points, one goes bad and it's the same — that customer, that's it. Same with EVs. If I love everything about my EV — that Lightning, I love it, it does 0 to 60 in like 3.9 seconds, it's incredible — but if I'm waiting three hours on my way to New Brunswick to

46:08charge, I'll probably not buy another one. No, right, or have a bad experience. Yeah. So a couple of things — you mentioned that this legislation is passed in Vancouver. With your pulse on the market and when it comes to EV chargers in commercial, retail, multi-res — do you see, say, five years from now, will it be the fact that a new build's not going to be done without at least some

46:38EV element for charging stations in a parkade? And then, do you see the legislation ever going from the west coast to the east coast? I'm sure it's going to take a bit longer for that one, but yeah. In my ideal world, yeah — legislation, ideally. In my ideal world. But it's the old — Daniel Pink talks about it in Drive — he's like, do you want to hit someone with a hammer, or do you

47:03want to dangle a carrot, or do you want to provide value to them? And I think legislation sometimes is hitting people with the hammer, and that will only go so far. So I think legislation helps, but having the people who can influence it just start to standardize on this — like the developers, I think they carry a lot of leverage right now in this path to electrification, or electrified transportation. So you say a responsibility in some ways? I would

47:30love to say that, yeah. I mean, we were just at Build Green Atlantic — they had 10 times more people engage with them this year than when they had it last time, prior to the pandemic, which would have been three years ago. It was really successful, lots of people there from all kinds of different capacities for the past and that, going green, you know, when it comes to renewables, renewable products — and lots

47:53of good stories with developers who've been really forward-thinking and early adopters in all kinds of different things, right, toward that. And you're dealing with a client base there that, you know, lots of high dollars, lots of stress, big timelines. When it comes to making decisions, a lot of times — not to any fault of their own — it's going to come down to dollars and cents and can we make this work? Even if they do have a passion for it. I mean, it's

48:20got to make sense for them financially, and there's got to be sometimes more of that kind of incentive than anything else. And really, that's just — that's always going to be the dictator. You're going to let them live by the numbers. That's how these guys live, because they have to. These are private businesses. Yeah, these are private businesses. Yeah, you can say what you want about developers — they're a crucial part of the

48:43ecosystem, right. But it's definitely a unique spot you're in to get your specific products in there. Yeah. And the economics — I think that's the most important point for any business to make it past — because we talked about less than 2% of the cars. So if you look at that product adoption curve, we're still in the — it's not high enough for them to — we're early adopters, we're still very early adopters. And I think there's a term even before early

49:12adopters — like fanatics or something — like people who are just true believers. Yeah, you've had some success though. Yeah, and even going back to the developers — I won't quote the developer, but I think it's an important quote. It's like, why? We went in there trying to sell charging infrastructure to a developer, a very well-known developer, I have tons of respect for them. But he laid it out — you just talked about the business of it — it's like, you know, why do I care right now about this? Well, my buildings are

49:3799.9% occupancy, right? I'm not having vacancy issues, I don't need differentiators. I'm worried about, you know, fighting the city for approvals on projects, and you've got me focused on something that's not moving the needle on my business. As much as they may care about the environment and going green — it's not at the point yet where that 99.9% is going to drop to 95%. Correct. But that might happen in five years, ten years. And my question is, why — why do they — like, can they be looking at it as almost

50:08like, well, this is going to be the case in five years? So if you're just putting up a $40 million building up here on the Arm — yeah — why don't you have it in there? Because, you know, that's — we'll say the building's a 60-year investment, about 100 years hopefully. But that's a long time, a long time. So even though it isn't that time yet, kind of it is, because you're dealing with a building that's a product that has a 60-year life cycle, technically, and longer than that — a

50:34lot longer, hopefully. Hopefully. Yeah. So why not do this now, if it's happening, if it's gonna happen? And that's the conversation we typically have. Yeah. There's an ROI. If there's funding — okay, if you get a tenant in there who's charging, and you're buying the power at 15 cents a kilowatt hour and you're selling it at 30 cents a kilowatt hour — we can do a simple ROI payback, because we have the data, right. We have enough chargers under management to tell them that story. But I always push the

50:58scarcity piece — the funding is available now, it may not be. It may not be, because once this thing moves from early adopters to early majority, that's when all of a sudden the government — this thing is self-propelling now, right? We don't need to put a bunch of stimulus, we don't need the IRA — down in the U.S., the Inflation Reduction Act — pushing it. We don't need — just look at the Super Bowl this year: I think there were like eight or nine EV commercials. The vehicles are phenomenal,

51:23it's just the infrastructure that could potentially kill the adoption. But if you don't go after infrastructure now, if you don't go after funding now, eventually it won't be there, and then you're paying full price for it, and the ROI story is not as lucrative. Yeah. This is going to seem like a weird connection, but we had a guy on our podcast talking about radon and the new risks with that. And one of the things they're doing now is making sure that the — we'll

51:47call it infrastructure, the rough-ins — and things are done, even if the radon units aren't being placed in as part of the build. The rough-ins are there for the fact that you're going to need it, and it might be legislation soon. Smart. Like, so what about telling building owners — something a lot more expensive to put this in after, or at least prep in these buildings so that you can fit your units in there, or the rough-ins are done, or the electrical room has this much room? Is

52:13any of that going on? Not formally — again, the legislation's not there. And we just have a few engineers in our circle here locally. Now we sell nationally, so we have sales groups across the country. It's going on in Vancouver, it's going on in Quebec, we're seeing it in some municipalities in Ontario. Unfortunately not here. We're seeing some engineers who recognize it and who work with the multi-unit residential development community. And then you have programs like I mentioned earlier that just came out, like this EV Readiness

52:41program — like, okay, now we'll help you pay for this. But yeah, you're absolutely right. And it's not even the infrastructure per se — like, I don't need you to give me a new transformer today, I don't need the panel in there today. Just size the service from NS Power and size the electrical room accordingly. You don't need to spend a hundred thousand dollars on electrical distribution gear to be EV ready, but you better make sure your service is ready and that you can put

53:07that transformer in the electrical room at some point. Anything else we didn't talk about that you might want to mention on behalf of Catalyst or on behalf of Electric Avenue? I'm just going to put it out there to our listeners — we touched on lots of stuff. But I think — I touched on it briefly — but what we like to do, as much as we're a private business and we need to make some money off hardware and software to keep

53:28this thing growing and running — one thing we've always done for private developers is help them access the funds. Because, as much as I say there are funds out there and available, it's a convoluted process. It's a government RFP with a whole lot of red tape and hoops to jump through, and nobody's excited to tackle those. And not — you know, you were talking about progressive developers earlier — like Peter Paulie, I think, is one. As far as the green side of

53:55construction goes, I think he's probably one of the most progressive — most people would agree, from what I know — in Atlantic Canada. And for him, same idea — a lot on the go, but doesn't maybe have the capacity from a business standpoint to go after some of these funds. So that's one thing I'll put out there: if anybody just wants to — we don't lock you into our chargers, we don't lock you into software — if people just want to go after the funding, we help

54:18them at no charge. Yeah, so reach out to you guys? Yeah. Reach out. Like your Efficiency NS partnership? Yes, exactly. We'll help them at least get the funding, and then maybe we'll build a relationship in the process and maybe we'll sell them chargers someday. But that's something we do — it has an altruistic component to it, where we'll just help them get the funding, because it can be a lot of work and it can be technical and it can be convoluted. And we'll always dedicate

54:41resources in our capacity to help people go after some of this funding that's out there. Yeah, I'm sure that's going to be good for them to know, because not only is it about dollars and cents — it's about dollars and cents now. Like, how much money do I take now? And if you don't spend this money now, I'm not going to spend it. It's really hard to talk to developers into doing that, you know. Yeah, that's awesome, man. Look, I really appreciate

55:02your time today, Mark. Great to hear some of your story and all about Electric Avenue and Catalyst and all the great things you're doing, man. Wish you a ton of success. Just thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us, and for being with us here today. Been great. Awesome. Maybe we'll see you on the volleyball courts. Yeah, I'll have to get out there. Summer's here, let's go, let's get that going. Cheers, man. This episode is brought to you by Cook Insurance, your

55:25trusted insurance broker in Atlantic Canada for 50 years. Insurance is complex, and the Cook team focuses on delivering comprehensive solutions for your construction needs, including builders risk, wrap-up liability, performance bonds, and project-specific construction. A Navacord partner since 2020, Cook is one of the largest construction brokers in Canada and offers national strength with a local touch. Whatever your insurance needs are, Cook has you covered. The team at the Atlantic Construction Podcast have been able to build a strong relationship with the folks over at FCA Surety. FCA Surety is heavily engaged in supporting

55:54the Atlantic Construction marketplace and helping contractors to build their businesses, and we can't recommend them enough. While FCA has their head office in Ontario, many of the members of their team have lived in Atlantic Canada and worked in the construction community here. This gives them a unique national perspective with a local flavour. Andrew Curry leads FCA's national surety operations as Vice President of Surety. Their knowledge of the bonding marketplace and understanding of how insurance companies view your business is unparalleled. In addition, the depth of their team and reach across Canada gives

56:22them the ability to draw on numerous experiences to help clients navigate items like sub-trade construction disputes, liens, and supply risk management. These are the things that separate FCA Surety from the pack. And make sure to give the guys a call over at FCA Surety for all of your bonding and surety needs.