Prefab Interior Walls Are Coming to Atlantic Canada — Falkbuilt's Anathea Fenton on Off-Site Construction and Why Your Architect Needs to See This First

0:03Welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast. I'm your host Daniel Arsenault. On this episode we have Anathea Fenton, Principal at Falkbuilt Halifax branch and President of DCI Nova Scotia. Hope you enjoy. Welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Very happy to have with us today Anathea Fenton — she is the President of DCI, Design and Construction Institute of Nova Scotia, also the Principal of Falkbuilt's Halifax office. Thanks for being here, Anathea. Thank you so much — very happy, very happy to have you, and

0:40maybe we can start with DCI and just sort of a little background about what it is and what it is in the community and its goals and what it's been like for you guys the last year or so with our unique situation. You mean that pandemic that's going? Yeah, I heard about that. Yes. Well, DCI, as you said, the Design and Construction Institute of Nova Scotia, is entering its 50th year of service to the industry, which is a great

1:14milestone that we are celebrating this year. So we do have a 50th jubilee campaign and we can talk a little bit about that. But DCI was started 50 years ago and if you ask me who started it I can't tell you — does anyone know? I'm not sure — I'm sure there are a few folks out there who do. But it was really born of the idea of various disciplines and sectors in the design and construction industry coming together and working towards issues of common cause and having one voice. So rather than having

1:51silos — you know, the builders having their association, the architects, the interior designers — DCI was founded to promote partnership, collaboration, advocacy, and education for all sectors of the design and construction industry. Right, so you have players everywhere: architects and engineers, developers, contractors — they all make up your members? They do. So if you look at our current board right now we have representation of all of those disciplines on our board, as well as owners' representatives I'm sure, and government representation and

2:33some higher ed representation as well. So one of the missions is to — like you said — partner with other associations. You partner with CANS and a few other associations like that. How does that work? So we have what I would call an informal partnership. It's where we want to collaborate with other industry organizations to promote successes, to promote industry events, what each other's doing, and then again to come together on issues of common cause. So for example, about five years ago

3:14CANS, the Construction Association of Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotia Construction Sector Council, and DCI partnered on a procurement forum day. So there were over 125 attendees from all aspects of the industry in a full-day workshop to talk about procurement — public procurement — and what were the common issues, what were things of common concern that we could then go back as one voice to government and say, hey, you know, we've got some things we want to talk about and work with you on to improve. Yeah, I

3:55think I've been to — I know one, many — a few DCI events, but one in particular I remember: it was a hotel in Dartmouth where I think it was Straub speaking about building envelopes. And those events that you guys put on are so informative, so educational — the speakers are amazingly talented, tons of experience and expertise, and those events are so great for the community. Yes, so the education day that we did with John Straub is a

4:26great example. Building envelope design is something that affects the engineers and the architects who are designing the structures and shells, as well as the contractors who have to build them. So looking at it through a common lens, asking some of the same questions and trying to find an approach that not only can be designed but is functional in the end — that serves our membership well. Right. So during the last 12 months or so when things have been much different, maybe just talk a little bit about

5:04sort of how DCI responded to that. I know I've seen a few virtual seminars online that you guys have done, and they give you a time to kind of step back and have some time to do some things together, looking forward to the coming years. Yes. So early in lockdown and early pandemic days, when we were all trying to get a grasp and get our hands around what this meant in terms of how it affected our industry, we hosted several

5:35online forums with government, with other business leaders. One for example was just: how are you managing, how are you dealing with your staff — you know, trying to share best practices so that we could all get through it together, and then trying to gather information about what to expect moving forward and some of the technical aspects of how to keep our workers and our population safe. But we also — given that we couldn't do a lot of our in-person events, which is something that we are known for,

6:08both our social events and our educational events — we took the opportunity to really work hard on our strategic plan objectives that we had worked through last year. We just completed a strategic planning initiative and one of the things that came out of it was to expand membership. So DCI had been — the membership consisted of existing board members and all of the past board members — but not open to the industry. And that was something that we really wanted to change and open it up. So we're in the

6:47process of building that membership model and we hope to have it rolled out Q2 this year. Nice. So how many members would DCI have now — like 100 roughly? Yeah, probably 80 to 100, and current board members 10 or 12, something like that? No, we have 19 current board members as well as three members at large — folks who have already served but want to stay on because they believe in the mission and values and are great supporters of DCI. Right. So the big goal is to

7:23get some traction and gain more members in the coming years. So for anyone listening now who's interested in DCI, or has heard of it, or is maybe just hearing about it for the first time and thinks that it would be beneficial for them to be involved — they can find you guys online or reach out? They can. So our website — we also are on Twitter and Instagram — those are probably the three best places to reach out to us. That's dcinovascotia.ca. Or is there a fee to

7:56become a member? Yes there will be, and those are some of the things that we're finalizing as part of our membership model. Right, so yeah. I know you mentioned the jubilee celebration — maybe we can just finish out the portion on DCI with what that looks like and when that'll be. So we really want to celebrate our 50th year but also be forward-looking — you know, what do the next five, ten, twenty years look like? So we have a

8:27jubilee campaign that we'll also be rolling out. It's also a sustainability campaign of sorts — we really want to sustain the mission and values of DCI moving forward. So you'll see a number of campaign initiatives in the coming months. We will also — we're aiming for Q4, assuming all the vaccinations and everything goes well and we continue — we continue to outperform the rest of the world, I think, right now — and our health

9:02side — we are looking to have an education day in Q4 as well as our annual awards dinner. So that will be a much bigger event to celebrate our 50th anniversary. Oh, it's definitely a silver lining — yeah, light at the end of the tunnel. So I think moving on to our next topic, which is the other thing that takes up most of your time: being the Principal of Falkbuilt's Halifax office. This is a really, really cool company — amazing product, it's very

9:34contemporary. And I know that I can't explain it near as well as you, so maybe you can just give us a little background about how that transpired with you being involved, and I know Falkbuilt is quite new to the area. So yeah, well, Falkbuilt is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta — it's a two-year-old company delivering digitized components for interior construction, and really what that means is pre-manufacturing or off-site manufacturing of interior wall assemblies, millwork, and systems. I have worked on and off for the founder of

10:20Falkbuilt for most of my career. So that's where the name comes from, right? What — Falkbuilt? Yeah, is it because it was his name or is it a Danish name or something? Just his mother's family. Okay, right. Yes. So I know you guys have some pretty comical, good humor on the website about — so well, you can't — employees are Falkers? Yes! It's just a shout-out. Meet the parents, exactly. Yep. So we have fun — meet the Falkers! Really neat. But the value proposition for Falk-

10:54built is delivering interior construction faster, you know, improving schedules with cost certainty and an environmental sustainability component. Right. And just so we can maybe break this down — so the components for this interior partition wall system, it's like precision-cut studs — it comes with a track and digitized horizontals, am I saying all that right? — and then there's a pre-finished cladding that finishes off the partition. So at Falkbuilt we're not inventing anything, we're innovating everything. So it's really — when you look at the super-

11:40the design idea came from racking — industrial racking. So if you go into an IKEA or a Home Depot, it's slotted and you can move the shelves up or down, right, based on that slot pattern. So these super studs are "super" because they're really strong but they can support not only — which gives it some structural capability — but all of the cladding. When you layer those three components together to form the wall assembly, you don't need backing to hang millwork — it just becomes a very strong

12:18system standing on its own. But the speed at which it's built far exceeds what you can do when you're mobilizing a lot of raw materials, bringing them to site, cutting on site, dumping all of the waste material — you know, that's just very inefficient. If you think about it, conventional drywall walls are one of the few things in an interior build-out that are actually built from scratch on-site. Your ceiling systems are all pre-engineered, pre-manufactured; floor tiles, even mechanical ductwork and other electrical systems can be — all

12:58in some form or another. So designing for disassembly is a term that's often used, and what that means is that you can take all of these things apart and bring them back to their individual components. It makes it easy to — but more importantly, for a wall assembly, you have access to all of the building infrastructure that is in most need of change: your technology, your electrical, and in hospitals and healthcare, med gases and other components that need inspection. Why would you bury it in something that you can't get into

13:34without cutting and then making a lot of mess and disruption? Right. And so you mentioned the time to install, which also touches on the horizontals. These are between each vertical stud within the system, and there's an electrical component — so the electrical is built in while you're assembling the partition. Exactly. So the super studs are 48 inches on centre, so you don't need them every 16 inches — you need fewer of them, which is part of the speed of the install. And then the digital horizontals

14:15come with the duplex receptacles pre-mounted and wired, so all you have to do is connect to a junction box in the ceiling, or it can be plug-and-play to a zone box. Right. So if you're a GC, you're thinking: I need less subs on site. Exactly. And if you're an installer, you're thinking: well, I don't have to mark out the tracks, I don't have to lay out that way — although it's still, like you said, the very same procedure where it's like two tracks and

14:44a stud that goes in between, right. And then it's really about eliminating — having a finished cladding eliminates the paint, the mudding, the sanding, the tape. It's more cleanable, the surface. Exactly, and much more durable. I mean, drywall is paint over paper over chalk — it doesn't stand up well to high-traffic environments, where a three-quarter-inch MDF with a 3D laminate over it can withstand years of high-impact environments like hospitals or schools. Right. And it's also designed for other rough-ins like plumbing —

15:30there are protrusions in the studs so they can be used for washroom partitions as well. Yes. And we're — you know, Falkbuilt is continually innovating, and certainly fire-rated partitions are something that they'll hopefully be introducing in the coming years. Yeah. And so what about the sound rating — adding batt insulation, which you can if you choose to, but it has a sound rating high enough just with the initial assembly, right? Exactly. And that's usually one of the

16:03concerns about using a pre-manufactured wall: there's a perception that acoustic integrity is going to be lost. This exceeds drywall in terms of its — so what part of the assembly is the sound rating? Like, what part — is it the cladding that goes on that has a sound rating to it as well? The cladding does, but it's how you seal the system. You know, sound will find a path of least resistance, just like water does.

16:35You know, if there's a place for it to go, it will. So it's how you seal at the ceiling, at the perimeter, and then the cladding and the studs themselves — those sound waves have nowhere to pass through. Well, it's — I mean, if you have a really, really loud talker it just depends on who's screaming on the other side. So where has Falkbuilt's partition product been used? What sorts of projects — what opportunities are in the local market?

17:10There's really a pretty broad base of application, which is great because it opens up so much more to talk about with builders, architects, and owners. But some examples: we now have one project in Antarctica at a research center. Falkbuilt is also doing a project in the Arctic Circle — so really from the top of the globe to the bottom. Healthcare is an incredibly important sector for us. We see a lot of growth

17:52particularly in our Middle East markets — hospital rooms, exam rooms, clinics, retail applications, industrial applications, commercial offices. There's really an almost unlimited palette in terms of design, so it's about what do you want it to look like, how do you want it to function, and we design to those and build to those. And so your head office of Falkbuilt is in Calgary, Alberta — is that correct? Yes. And so the reach is global, basically, for your product and for its

18:31yeah, it is. Right now there are independently owned branches — like mine in Halifax — all over North America, as well as in India and the Middle East. So is it — part of the plan, is it being specified by architects, allowing you to grow? Or are there other ways to have your product used, whether it be on commercial, industrial, or healthcare? Well, we find typically when you're talking to the owner — the end user who's going to actually

19:07occupy that space — they are often the ones driving the decision. But we're certainly seeing a lot of uptake with general contractors across North America, because this is solving a number of their challenges that they're seeing on site, which is lack of available trades. You know, we're losing more trades than are coming into the industry, and certainly here in Nova Scotia that's going to become very critical over the coming years with all of the infrastructure projects and housing development that's going on. There's been a lot of disruption to the

19:41supply chain. You know, this is Canadian-made — it's shipping across Canada, so it's a very reliable supply chain. In the two years that Falkbuilt has been in the market, they have not had a price increase and don't foresee any. I recently worked on a project where we were able to assure the GC team that there would not be more than a five percent increase over the next three years. That's pretty positive compared to wood and steel and some other items that we

20:13all know about. Exactly. So there's a certainty around this type of approach, both in schedule and cost of the materials. Right. So maybe we can touch on sort of the other side of Falkbuilt, which is a Revit add-on called EchoDome. I'm going to let you explain that, because it's EchoDome, right? Yeah. And it's a great — as you said, kind of like an add-on layer. To make it simple: we work with the build team's Revit model, so we want to be

20:59working in the same software platform that everybody else is, so there's nothing that has to be translated back and forth. But what we can do is take that Revit model, bring it into EchoDome, which is a cloud-based technology, and the project team members can meet up in the dome and make real-time decisions in the dome. And they can be meeting just by downloading the app to a phone, a tablet, or the desktop, and can do a virtual walk of the space,

21:36change finishes, change layouts, and it helps the project team collaborate easily instead of turning pages and trying to visualize things. You know, looking at a symbol for an outlet on a drawing — what if you can just stand there and see it in the space? But you're doing it virtually. So it enhances and enables that upfront design collaboration. Right. And it has avatars — you can walk through the space, you pick a hat and away you go. Away you go! Yeah, yeah. And as I said, it

22:14could be your team members that are in the same city, or it could be somebody from anywhere in the world — all coming together at the same time. You really just need a stable internet connection, but other than that — yeah. And it's cloud storage, so you can use an iPhone or an iPad. Exactly, right. Yeah. You don't have to have the EchoDome software downloaded — you just need to have the app. Right. Yeah. Okay. And so, with the prefab material, is

22:48EchoDome used to gain measurements and things for prefabbing, and then it goes to site? Is it used in that sense as well, or is it just for the actual design stage? It's more — right now we're using it mostly in the upfront design stage. But there is an AI component to it where it will help inform manufacturing, among other things. But no, it's not taking measurements at this stage. Okay, right — it's just using the model that's already built. That's very neat.

23:18So I know you have a virtual factory tour coming up and you're not sure of the date yet, but we can tag the date with the episode here. Maybe you just want to talk a little about that for the listeners. Sure. We offer virtual factory tours because we can't unfortunately invite our guests to tour Calgary in person just yet, but that is something for next year we hope to get back to doing. In the meantime, we can book an hour for our client teams

23:49or for any interested groups that would like to see the factory, see our solutions in action, and also meet the founders. We have an incredible group of dedicated Falkers whose sole purpose is to create an exceptional client experience, so we really welcome people to visit us any way they can. Right now that's virtually, and it's a great opportunity to meet them and see our solutions. Great. I also wanted to mention an award that Falkbuilt won with a competition put on by Oxford

24:31Properties — a Canadian developer. Am I right in saying that? Yes, yes. How long ago was that? That was last fall, I believe. Okay. And so there was a design competition in Toronto where several pre-manufactured vendors competed, and Falkbuilt was successful and have done several projects as a result of that one. Right. Yeah. I think on the website it mentioned a project where you guys had to relocate six offices and build six more. And so there's the — you know, there's the initial build

25:12and there's certainly a compelling value proposition — we've already talked about that — with building it in the first place. But then what happens afterwards? What are the downstream operational savings? How easy is it to — what does that look like? What does it look like to have to go back into a Falkbuilt partition job and sort of disassemble and restructure the floor plan? Well, that's the beauty of it — it's as easy as it is to put in; it's just as easy to

25:46right. There are very few parts and pieces. You do have to evaluate where you're putting it next, because components are manufactured to a specific environment — ceiling height, for example. You can't take eight-footers and put them in a ten-foot ceiling environment as easily, but there are some ways of achieving that. Right. So we talked about some of the pros of using the Falkbuilt partition product: speed of install, cost-effective, cleanable surface, and those kinds of things. What are some of the challenges that

26:24you're facing right now? So the biggest challenge that we have found — and I have found in my 20-plus years of experience — is that there's always the mindset of "this is the way we've always done things," and to try something different, everybody always wants to know who else has done it first. So the real tipping point — and I think where the market is changing — are some of the things that we talked about earlier: there just aren't enough people to build everything that needs to be built

26:57in the time frame that we have set out here in Nova Scotia, with our healthcare infrastructure projects as well as — you know, you're looking at anywhere from 50 to 100,000 people coming into the city over the next — that's going to create a huge demand for housing that hasn't even been built yet. Right now, general contractors seem to be on the leading edge of trying to find more efficient ways of doing things. What we really need though is that by the time they get the package —

27:33the tender package or design package — it's almost too late to insert these solutions into the mix, because you're not simply swapping out a drywall wall for a Falkbuilt wall. You really have to look at the whole process. So it is a collaborative approach that needs to be looked at and adopted early by the architects. And they have to look at not just "is this the way I've always designed things" but how is this going to get built —

28:10and that's where that collaboration piece is so important. Right. So who's your — the biggest competition is conventional, right? So that's conventional versus contemporary — trying to teach an old dog. Exactly. And that's why I think the approach that Falkbuilt is taking is so smart, because it's very much aligned with that process instead of working against it. That being said, there are certainly a number of companies out there who are doing pre-manufactured wall solutions, so whether it's just glazing systems or

28:51solid walls — you know, the market is definitely growing, but it is a small drop in the bucket compared to what the conventional market share is right now. So I think there's room for a lot of innovation and a lot of great solutions. Right. Do you want to touch a little bit on the sustainability side and how the product is more sustainable? Yes, that's a great question, and thank you because it's something I'm really passionate about. The

29:27when you design materials and solutions for disassembly, it means there are a number of benefits. One: they can be in use longer, so it's a more durable system in the first place. At the factory — on the procurement side — they're looking for ways to minimize waste altogether. There's much less debris and waste cut-off on-site, so fewer dumpster pulls. You know, construction generates 30 to 40 percent of our landfill waste because we perpetually build, demolish, build, demolish, and we're seeing a lot of that in Halifax

30:15right now. I think that goes back to when you mentioned that it's not as simple as swapping out this kind of wall assembly with ours. It's like: okay, yeah, we're eliminating the waste, we're eliminating dust and mess on site, we're eliminating sub-trades because our walls have electrical built in — and so on and so forth. And it's so much more than just: what's the cost per square foot? Exactly. And not to mention that the installation is a third of the

30:44time for your product. But even that is really where it stops — there's much more big-picture thinking to it. And if you tear out a drywall wall, you can't do that without destroying the base material components, so you're pretty much having to dump all of that. Whereas this is a system that can be easily disassembled — even if it's not going to be reused again, it's much easier to dispose of because you can separate out the studs from the cladding and the insulation quite easily.

31:22Not that we ever hope to end up in a landfill, but if that is the worst-case scenario, there are recycling options as well as ease of — yeah. And you mentioned opening up the walls, which is such a big deal whenever you're in construction and you're in some kind of renovation and you know you have to get to that point where you have to open up walls — it's always something you want to try and avoid. But with your product it's like there's no

31:45problem — it's just like a grid-and-tile acoustic ceiling tile. Exactly. I mean, drywall ceilings evolved into a grid-and-tile system because you had to get at the infrastructure up there — why would you not take the same approach for your walls? And in healthcare it's all the more critical because the downtime for taking a room or an entire floor offline — because you've got a leak somewhere, or they've got to change the acuity level of a room, we now have to convert our labor and

32:21delivery rooms into ICUs because of a pandemic, for example. You know, maybe that's not the perfect example, but our hospital systems can't afford — nor can our patients afford not to be in the rooms when they need to be in them. So if you can take a tile off and be in and out in ten minutes, you don't need the same level of hoarding and taking the rooms offline. Yeah. I wanted to ask: what's your goal sort of for

32:54the Halifax branch of Falkbuilt in the near future? What are some of the things that you're doing to try and generate some growth for this product being used in Atlantic Canada? So right now I'm just focused on getting out and sharing and letting people know that Falkbuilt is in business in Halifax. And so that's my primary focus. With that is growing the

33:25business, growing the team, generating some projects. And yeah, I think there's a tremendous market opportunity here for it. You know, it's not easy to decide that you're kind of quitting what you've done for the last 15 years and starting something new in the middle of a pandemic. But I think it just goes to show — and you were always in the construction field as well, you mentioned that you grew up in a family where your dad and brother were in contracting — so what, before Falkbuilt, what

33:55were you involved with? How did that sort of transpire? So I've been in the pre-manufactured construction industry for the last 20-plus years. I started when I moved to Calgary — like many people did in the '90s from the East Coast to the west — and I started working for Smed International, which was one of the leaders in modular wall solutions in North America. I spent almost 10 years in the Pittsburgh market and surrounding states growing a market there

34:35for their environmental solutions before joining Falkbuilt. Nice. So for people who are interested in Falkbuilt that might be listening from the local market or Atlantic Canada or anywhere for that matter — if they want to get in touch with you or find out more about the product and more about your plans for local growth, how can they get in touch with you? So falkbuilt.com is the website. I have a local branch — you can find my local branch on that website and contact information — and that's the

35:14best way to get a hold of me. Awesome. Well, it's a very cool product and very interesting, and I really wish you the best of luck with the growth here. I think it's a great market and I'm sure sooner or later you'll be able to get through those tough spots and talk some people into trying something new. Yeah, well there's a lot of interest already, so I'm very excited and very optimistic. That's great. I really

35:42appreciate your time today — thanks for doing this. It's been a pleasure. And us at the Atlantic Construction Podcast team just want to thank you for your time and thank you for doing this. Well, thanks for having me — this has been great, and enjoyed sharing about DCI as well. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Be sure to follow us on any podcast platform you use. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Instagram at Atlantic Construction. Be sure to send us a comment or a review —

36:12we'd love to engage with you.