From São Paulo to Moncton: Building a 11-Person Design Firm During Atlantic Canada's Labour Shortage | Ep 58

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, 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 — excited to have our guest today who traveled over from New Brunswick, from Moncton, this morning. The CEO of 46North Group of Companies, Arides Cabreira. I tried to say that with as much of a Portuguese accent as I could — how did I do? Perfect, yeah, perfect. He was training me before he went on live here — I had to roll my R's a little. So yeah, thanks for being with us today. We were just chatting about kind of a

1:52little bit about your journey and the challenges of immigration from Brazil — both you and your wife are from Brazil. Maybe you could take us through a little of your journey before we start to find out about some of the exciting things. Let's start from the beginning. So my — I can say my career in design and architecture has something to do with the phrase that you know: when you have to be

2:28in the right place at the right time. And that happened with me when I was 12 years old. What happened to me before — it's even illegal today in Brazil or any country, you cannot hire a 12-year-old. I always liked design — design people, design school — and I was the type of student that was scared of a bigger class because I was always little compared to the other kids who were tall. So I never sat anywhere

2:58from the middle of the room towards the back. I always was on either the front chair or the second chair. I always knew the teacher, because I knew that at that location I was never going to put myself in trouble. So when I was about 12 years old, I had a brother who passed away. He heard on the radio that a company in Brazil was hiring a designer. He didn't really understand the difference between a technical design and an artistic design — that's what I

3:34was doing since I was like six, seven years old. He heard this on the radio — that some company needs a designer — and he said, "I know you love design. What do you think? Do you want to go there with me? I can take you there." I said, "Of course, why not?" Twelve years old. I went there. The name of the manager who hired me — his name is Jesus. All the designers they had, I think five or six designers on the team, were all 22, 27, 30 years old,

4:09like adults. They didn't have anyone less than 21 years old. And it was a metallurgical firm, so it was an industrial design. He looked at me and said, "Well, you're too young to work over here. But if you really want, I can give you some pointers and some classes that you can take, and once you're ready you can come back and we can talk." I told him, "Okay, not a problem. So tell me where I need to go." There was a technical school in my city.

4:43He gave me the name. I went there and I spoke with the director. The director said, "This class he's recommended you to take is only in the evening, and you're not allowed to start in the evening because you're only 12 years old — you have to be at least 18." Past your bedtime! Exactly. In Brazil the school structure is different than in North America. In Brazil we have three schedules for classes. We have one that I believe starts at seven or eight o'clock in the

5:15morning and goes to noon. We have another one that goes from one to five pm, and then we have another one that goes from seven to ten-thirty. What part of Brazil? South Brazil. Okay, so I have a friend from São Paulo and I'm sure he's probably listening in, so I'm just curious what part. Yeah, it's about — I would say about six hours south from São Paulo driving, okay, 45 minutes by flight. It's a pretty short distance. So I went back there

5:51and we couldn't do anything. Six months later I said, "You know what, I'm gonna go back and talk to that manager, because he told me to do what I could, and I believe I did what I could, but I cannot go forward." Because at that time I was already 13 — I had turned my birthday in March. And I came back to him — this time my brother didn't come with me, I went by myself. I got off the bus probably two blocks walking to this company

6:20and my legs started shaking so much. I couldn't understand myself — I was so nervous to go talk to this person. And I thought at that time and said, "Well, the worst thing I can hear is no. I am already here, what's gonna happen? Well, you already know me, so let's see." So I went there, knocked on the door. Between this time and six months before, he had gone back — he spoke with the owners of this company and they wanted to say no. We

6:50cannot hire this person, he's 13 years old — he's too young, it's too dangerous, it's a metallurgical plant, he can cut his hand on the first day. So he understood, he didn't ask anymore. But then he was walking to the production and there was a 16-year-old kid working on the press. And he said, "How come a 16-year-old can work on the press and we cannot let a 12 or 13-year-old work on design inside

7:16the office? It's like a safe environment." And they gave him the green light to hire. A week later I showed up at the door. And what were they manufacturing? Like millwork or something? Yeah, like Costco, car parks, warehouses. Oh okay. They manufacture all those metal shelves — for car parks, Costco, and supermarkets. Everything to do with metal. It's very dangerous because the acid tanks, the pressure cutting — the steel when it comes from the mill, it's

7:52like a big roll of steel — an extensive assembly line. Yeah, exactly. It was about 100 employees, I believe, about that time. And he says to me, "Well, do you really want to work? Let's see." "Of course I want to work." "Did you go there? Did you take those classes?" "Well, I went but I'm too young, I cannot go to any class at night." "That's fine," he says. "Okay, bring your parent over here and then we're gonna hire you." So I came back

8:21with my father. I was 13 years old — it was, I think, May 1986. I started, and a year later they bought the first CAD system, so I started doing AutoCAD. I worked for this company for six years, and then I quit. Another company hired me — also a metallurgical firm. This was one of the biggest construction companies in the city, in the state actually. They had everything. So this company was Motor Construction Company. They had the Construction Division,

8:57they had the Architecture Firm, they had the metallurgical division for the concrete — so they manufactured all their trucks to carry the concrete, they had the concrete mix, so they sold the concrete for their construction fields and also for all their clients. They had the high-end furniture manufacturer and the real estate — they sold real estate. What's the name of the company? Motor Construction Company. Motor. Very big company. So they invited me to work on the mechanical division to design all the trucks and water

9:36transport and all that stuff. I stayed on this division for about eight months and then they offered me to move into architecture, and that's when everything started. That was six years after. On this company I was so glad I worked the way I worked — with good people — because I was able to learn so much. And Bruno DeFranco was the architect manager of the division that I worked for, and he was also a partner of the company. He always had crazy ideas.

10:09Everybody said he didn't have his head on his shoulders, the things that he did in the city. But they were such amazing ideas. So one project that I was able to work on — and I'm proud to say I worked on this project — was what they called the Suite Vollard. He named it after Pablo Picasso. This was the first rotating residential building in the world. It took like 10 years to construct. So I left the company before they

10:48started construction, but I know the history — they finished this building in 2004. Anything that you can imagine that we use in technology today, he introduced in this building 15, 20 years ago. The building — your apartment can rotate 360 degrees. Of course they have the back part: the elevator, the stairs, the kitchen, and the bathroom, which is on the center core — that doesn't rotate. But the living room, dining room, and the bedroom — just one bedroom — rotates. Everything in the end

11:24because the facade is all glass and all balcony. The balcony rotates complete with the apartment itself. The foundation rotates, and everything on top of that. It has a center core for the audio, the washroom, the plumbing — all the fixed stuff. Okay. And how is it routed up through the center of the circle, to the center of the structure? The building rotates around with just a 40-horsepower engine, and it takes one hour to do a 360-degree rotation. So it's very slow. What happens with the

12:01soft scapes and the sidewalks leading into the front doors and whatnot — does that — because that's just the core? The first apartment actually is not at the ground level, so the envelope of the building is not moving. No, it's the floors that are moving — it's just the floors. Yeah. And what is the glass, the glazing? Is it aluminum? No, it's not aluminum — double-pane glass. And he decided — he chose curved walls for each floor, but each floor has a different

12:34color. So when the sun hits it, it creates different shades at any time of the day — it's not the same building. So it kind of floats. So we can get some images in there. And the name of the building again? Suite Vollard. Okay — Vollard. Okay, yeah. It's after Pablo Picasso. That's a wow. It's amazing. Today in the Middle East there's another one — it's taller. The problem with this building — with all the technology that was introduced

13:05— the price was over and nobody could afford it. So from 2004 nobody bought the building. The building was empty, was vacant. How many units were in it? 11 floors. 11 floors — one per floor. And the company went to bankruptcy — it was sued. So they lost the building — the building went to auction. Yeah, it went to auction. It hasn't sold, and I think last year they went again to the auction. That's a shame. It's a shame. It's only

13:39120 square meters, so it's not too big — probably like 1,300 square feet. So it just wasn't a market for buyers — it was too eccentric? Yeah, it's just eccentric. You couldn't — couldn't they just turn it into some kind of public tourist attraction or something? I don't know. Could be. Yeah. It was a shame to have that, and then the vandalism started because the building was empty. Okay, yeah. It was painted outside — it's pretty bad.

14:09It was like it could've been an icon of the city and it became a center of vandalism. All because it wasn't done properly for the time. I think the technology they introduced to the building was too soon for the time. For example, to rotate your unit — it's not a remote control, you can just talk to the building and the building rotates right or left. Yeah. All the lighting was computer-controlled, the heating system.

14:46When you talk about construction 20 or 25 years ago — it's not the same thing as what we have available today on the market. Yeah, that's for sure. Like today, for example, most houses are using LED lights — each light has a transformer. And we worked on a project for an entire village development, 135 homes, in Brazil — now here, in the US, yeah. And the owner — they contacted the manufacturer of these

15:24lights and they want to buy just the light, not the transformer. So he thinks out of the box. Instead of using like 30 or 40 LED lights throughout the house, each one needing a transformer, he's just gonna put one electrical panel for low voltage next to the regular house panel, and run all low-voltage wire to that panel, instead of running a 12-gauge wire to each light. Which costs less money. And why do you need 30 transformers? So

16:00you can have one large transformer and control all the lights. So this is one of the projects you've worked on recently, or currently? Yes — a current 25-home development, a subdivision of 135. Okay, yeah. And a similar design for all these homes, or? The layout is the same. The outside is all different — we probably have like 10 different house models. Okay. And they flip left and right, change colors, change the roof lines. Wow. Okay. So — you were a

16:29student at Vancouver Community College at one point? Yes, I was, for project management. I always loved — I wanted to explore that side. I always liked the opportunity to be doing design and also carry it through construction. So I did project management there. After that I worked for a restoration company as a project manager in BC. I can tell you the only thing I learned — one of the

17:03things that I learned is to respect all the project managers, all the people who work in restoration. I didn't find too much pleasure doing that work. For all the jobs I've done so far — for example, if I go to someone's house to renovate their kitchen, they're gonna open the door with a big smile on their face because I came there to bring new ideas, or to realize their dream, or to explore their dream for a new kitchen, a new house, anything

17:35they have in mind. They want to sit down on paper and make sure that dream comes true. When you work with a restoration company it's not the same feeling, because those people lost — sometimes lost everything. Oh right. The heading is different from the onset — it's different. So I didn't think it was a fulfilling job. I spent just one year doing project management for restoration. Yeah, distress — was that in BC? That was BC. Yeah.

18:10Because you spent some time in Boston as well. Yeah. In Boston it was more like a student — I did a couple of jobs there but there weren't too many. Right. After — when did you decide to leave Brazil and come to Canada? Ah, the city that I had worked in — you see, living in Brazil was amazing. Like Curitiba — it is considered the greenest city in the world. Wow. The mayor of the city was

18:47— he started this project, this idea to develop an entire city's transportation system. And he was an amazing visionary. Like the carbon tax — is there anything in the political front that makes that possible? The layout that he did, the green space that he maintained. The transportation — they don't have a train or metro transportation in the city, but he came up with this idea to design a true articulated bus. It's enormous — like it's very big,

19:24and because of the size of these buses they cannot drive on roads shared with other cars. They have their own lane. And so when he came up with this project, other cities showed interest in buying it. Vancouver bought the project. But again, Vancouver doesn't have the space to introduce the same transportation system they have in Curitiba, because the city is already built — you cannot start moving

19:57buildings because it's unfeasible. So they bought a smaller version, which only has one articulation, so the bus is still like a longer bus but with the one articulation they can still drive through the city and share the roads with the other cars. New York City — same thing — they bought this project. So in other projects — I never designed a single-family home in Brazil. Never. I never had the opportunity — it was all different, all high-rises, yeah, 20, 30 floors. High-rises. And it was fun projects but I kind of still missed that feeling of designing something for

20:26the end user. I never had that opportunity in Brazil. In Brazil we designed something that we thought was going to be good for the market and they were going to sell — that's the idea when you design an apartment building. When I came to Boston I

20:59had a little bit of a letdown at the first look. Some of the towns there — just the way the buildings are. I came from a place where the architecture was amazing. It was very distinct architecture, yeah. One building next to the other — but that's probably a distinction you could make between a lot of countries, especially European or South American compared to North American. I mean, not to say that we don't have some amazing

21:30architecture here, but it's on a different level. Now it's a different level. It's just that when you stay in your safe zone and you don't see what other people have to offer, you don't understand their perspective. When I first came to North America I had a feeling that most buildings were only two or three storeys, and 100, 150

21:59years old. And then I was trying to understand more about the history of New England, the history of Boston — it's rich, it's so nice. But when I came I came with different eyes, so it took me a little while to see that in front of me and start to enjoy — forget about my past and try to live in the present. So what I had there, there was so much

22:30to learn — that's what I understand.

22:35In Boston, that's when I met my wife and we had our baby there. And Canada came up — I put a resume online one time and I got two job offers in Canada. Before 2008, that's when the market was booming. The company — so like I say, I had a job offer in Halifax. They still had the same problem as we have today, like a labor shortage. And in BC, he told me

23:13the phone was ringing every 10 minutes for new clients and he could not handle the amount of work that he had. So he hired me — we didn't even do a real interview. Our interview was over the phone back then; they didn't have a video call or anything, it was just over the phone. So it took me about six to nine months to get my paperwork, my visa, everything done. When I moved was when the market crashed in 2008. Okay. And Canada wasn't

23:49— it wasn't too bad as the US was. I think the US was pretty bad — it was worse than us at that time. So how long did it take you from 2008 — or prior to coming to Canada from the US — with PR and residency? Your residency work visa, like, what was that process? It could be pretty drawn out, huh? Yeah, that was — I believe it was about six to nine months. My wife did most of the paperwork at that time. We found a good lawyer in

24:20Toronto, and also they had another office in Brazil in São Paulo that helped us with the paperwork. But it was a long process. I can tell you it was not easy. But Nova Scotia is, you know, very diverse now. And many friends that I have who've been through that process are still in the process — whether someone hired a lawyer to help out and paid them, yeah, ten thousand or more to try and get

24:48to the next step. And depending on what kind of job and how it's tiered — yeah, it's difficult. The culture shock — that's the next thing that comes up. I came from a city of 1.7 million people. My wife — we never met in Brazil, we met in Boston — but she came from São Paulo. São Paulo is about 27 million people in the whole state. I believe the state of São Paulo is 32 million people — that's almost more people than all of Canada. Right.

25:22It's a pretty dense city. What is Canada — 30, 33 million? 33, I think. Boston was big, so we had to downsize our expectations when we moved to Boston — because with this smaller size, it wasn't as busy as in Brazil, in both cities — São Paulo. And then when I got this work visa, we went to a city of 80,000 people, so we went to Kamloops, BC. For the paperwork — when I arrived, my first day in Canada I came with a work

26:03visa, so I can only work for one company. And you need — is that good for just one year? Probably allows you a grace period. I believe it was one year because we started the process at the same time. We started in 2007 — no, 2000 — yeah, I think we started beginning of 2007. We got the visa at the end of the year, and then we moved — we went back to Brazil once we got approved, stayed there for a month,

26:35and then we came back. We stayed there for Christmas — right after Christmas we flew to Canada and started my position. Yeah, okay. It was the worst winter they'd had in the last 10 years. Really? So we came there with — because you don't get that in São Paulo, no, no. We were landing in Vancouver. The time change — it was bad; it was like a five-hour difference, right, because the West Coast. Because here I think it's the same time,

27:04it's the same time — like sometimes one-hour difference, and right now it's the same. And we came — my daughter was two years old and we had a dog, a basset hound too. So we were sleeping in the day and wide awake at night because we just couldn't adjust. It took like one week just for the time zone. So we stayed a few days there in Vancouver, then we rented a minivan, put all the bags in, and drove the Coquihalla to the

27:35Kamloops area. And I have never had a scarier road drive like that in my life. A few years in Boston we went through the winter but I don't remember ever having to buy winter tires in Massachusetts. Right, never. And not so on the west coast of Canada, no. Years later I started watching that TV show "Highway Thru Hell" — and literally, yeah, it is. It's impressive. And if someone is listening and you've never driven through there, you have to do

28:09it — it's a life experience. What is that area? That's it — that's your drive through hell. Where is it? They call it that, okay. And it goes from Kamloops to Vancouver. Okay. It's very impressive. In summer it's breathtaking — amazing views. In the winter it's a lot — it's not light; hey, you can barely see — and sometimes they close the roads. They have like two gates: one at the bottom of the hill and one on the top of the hill. They close those roads to control

28:40for avalanche. So once the last car passes, they control the camera — when that car goes past the other gate they close the gate. Okay. And they use explosions to control the avalanche so the avalanche cleans up the road. That can take about four to five hours. Okay. And then they open up the road again. Wow. So you got a real good taste of Canadian winters. That was amazing. And when they built the Coquihalla, they put some

29:10bases for cannons to shoot dynamite at the mountain to cause the avalanche. But I think there were a couple of incidents that happened — they decided not to use the cannons anymore and started using helicopters, which is a little bit safer. Okay. Just drop them and let it go. Once they stop, they come with the front loaders and clean up the whole thing. So when we were driving up to Kamloops for the first time,

29:42I was nervous the entire time. I just tried not to transmit the nervousness — especially when I had a two-year-old in the background. Your wife — you mean winter driving? Winter driving, of course. Yeah, we never drove in those conditions, never. The windshield started freezing, the heating system was not keeping up — it was way too cold. I can't believe it. I wanted to get there, so it was like four long hours of my life to get to the place.

30:15Once we came to Kamloops we saw — small town for us at the beginning. In half an hour we saw the entire city. Me and my wife looked at one another and said, "Wow, here we are." Here we are, yeah. It's another life, we have to get used to it. And you know what? It doesn't take too much time — like a month or three months you get used to their life. It's a calm life, it's a different perspective. So you're working for a design firm in Kamloops? For a design

30:45firm in Kamloops. They hired me for the design division, but also with the intention to expand into construction. Okay, so they wanted to do the project management part as well. So I think I did a couple of years on the design and then we started the construction. Sure. And so what brought you to Atlantic Canada from the West Coast? Was it your job with Atlas Structural Systems, or was it prior to that? It was prior to that. I

31:15did quite a few — I had a few different works back there in BC. After I left the company that hired me, I got work at a manufacturer firm. It was actually as a subcontract — as a carpenter lead — to work up in Alberta. Okay. So this firm built modular for the oil industry — it was camps. And at that time they were building a 3,200-man camp at the CNRL site. They hired me as a subcontract to

31:57build. They call it new-roof work. The safety is amazing — like sometimes you didn't even know if you could go to the washroom by yourself. Because when you work in town you do things that you never imagine could hurt yourself, you can get away with it. But when you go to a site like that, the first priority is your safety, and they take that very seriously. Because I think if you

32:24have like three or four infractions you can be kicked off the site and never come back. Okay, it's very serious. So I was working for this small construction company that was subcontracted for Horizon North at this site. We were building this roof and they had — I think like three incidents. One was like a back injury — one of the employees wasn't feeling good, said, "Oh, I have a back injury." So when you have a back injury you have to report it, and once you report it that becomes recordable for the company. And there were a couple more. And then Horizon North asked them to

32:57leave site because their safety record was going to cause the insurance to rise. And that's what happened — Horizon North also could lose the contract with the oil fields. They didn't want that; it was millions and millions of dollars on the table. So they couldn't lose that contract. So they let this company go, and they

33:30hired a few of the employees. So that's when they hired me, to be part of it — to be an employee instead of a subcontract. Right. And then I became a carpenter lead for Horizon North on site. That only took like about six months. And that's a pretty good shift from what you were doing — you know, in such a strong role in an architecture firm, then all of a sudden you're on site. And yeah. And carpentry experience prior

33:55to that? Oh, I love wood. Yeah, yeah — anything to do with wood. And the construction in Brazil is all cement. I come from a North American background now — it was one of my passions, wood construction. It really just — right. You don't see wood construction in Brazil much? No. As far as the structure of the buildings, I believe even today they started using drywall there probably 10 years ago. But all the walls prior to that — what was it? Plaster? Just cement board — like a

34:24CMU block. CMU block wall, and then just open it or put stucco or some kind of acrylic finish on it. Yeah, yeah. That's it. And today they do interior walls with studs, but what happens — the Southern Pine is not strong enough; it's not structurally sound like the North American pine. The softwood species that you're gonna see in lumber is not strong. So it's more feasible not — you can do furniture, you can do

34:54other things, but not use it structurally. Okay, yeah. So that's why, unfortunately, wood there didn't go through for structure. But they can — they still use steel studs for a reasonable price — cold-rolled steel. It's pretty basic. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it would be cheaper than — I never compared the price, to be honest. But it must be very comparable with the wood stud that we have over here. Oh yeah, for sure, especially with the cost of

35:24lumber — that's been the big one. Yeah, exactly. Steel is up too, but yeah. So one day at the lunchroom there, the general manager was on site and he did a different kind of meeting that day — every day we had a safety meeting, and on this specific day he asked every employee what they see themselves doing on the job. And when they came to my turn I said, "I can see myself doing quality control," because there were a few things there

36:02that could be improved. And it didn't take a month — they promoted me to quality control on site. So I did quality control for the finish of that job at the CNRL. Then the next job came up — Suncor — also a big one — there was a 1,200-man camp. Amazing. In these camps, remember, they bring these people from all over Canada and some even from overseas to work there for two weeks, two or three weeks. So they want these people to feel

36:36at home. So — are you talking about the people helping build the modular spaces, or the workers at the rigs, the people working for the oil company? Yeah, yeah. They're coming in just for a few weeks for that oil site. And they want to make sure those people are being well treated. So how extensive were these? 30 to 100 homes in this project? What you speak of with Horizon North — like it's pretty basic modular

36:58construction, right? It's like a base-home type thing? Yeah, it's basic modular. But they invest very well in the quality — everything is amazing quality. Yeah. The restaurant, the food — it's about as good as most restaurants in town. Gymnasium, the gym — all the equipment is high-end. Theater room. Some camps even have like a bar, but the camp our company worked for was a dry camp, so you're not allowed to drink. Yeah, yeah. But it means the production level is probably better. Yeah, exactly. So

37:35no — you're not allowed to drink or use drugs. Zero tolerance. If you get caught one time, you're done. Yeah. So I did that for a couple years, and then we had the market crash — the oil crash, another crash. And this company only did camp manufacturing, modular camps for the oil fields. And there was no more market — from one week to the next. Did they pivot? They lost everything. So they said, "Okay, let's switch

38:11gears. What can we do? Okay, let's build hotels." So they started building hotels — modular hotels. Okay. They got the first contract with a hotel in BC. By the time it was underway, I started — I helped work on this project for the hotel. And I did some modular-unit projects like high-end — at the same time they had bought another manufacturing company for really high-end houses. They sell houses mostly for Vancouver for

38:48vacation homes — second homes. That was back in 2015 or 2016. The cost of construction for this house was $700 per square foot. Seven hundred? Seven to eight years ago! That sounds pretty high. Yeah, it's very high. All of this — it was all nine-foot ceilings, ten-foot ceilings. All the boxes were built with steel so they don't have any fluctuation when you transport or when you crane. All the drywall —

39:26everything was two-by-eight — it was not even two-by-six for the exterior. The interior used two-by-six walls. The kitchen cabinets were all high-end. So it was very pricey. So Horizon North bought this. And so I was able to do a couple of custom houses for some clients in Vancouver and Vancouver Island. Until I left, then I went to do the project management — I went to Vancouver Community College — okay, and

39:59then I started the project management firm. So there was — there was New Brunswick. Going back to your previous question, how New Brunswick — when I was working in Alberta I had a lot of friends from the East Coast. Sure, there would have been quite a few out there. And everybody was telling me, "Arides, for the house that you could have in New Brunswick, you could buy an ocean-front property in BC." And I always went there and looked on the

40:36realtor.com — especially at that time. Now the gap would be a little closer. Very close, yeah, especially in New Brunswick, in Moncton. I was always looking at realtor.com just to see what the prices were in the rest of the country. And I remember a couple of times I looked at Vancouver, then I looked at Saint John, and you could buy a house for sixty thousand dollars — like a four- or six-unit building. And I couldn't wrap my head around

41:10how you could buy a six-unit for fifty thousand dollars. Like, how could you live there? Because if it's that cheap, that means — when was this? What year? That would probably be 2015 or 2016. Wow. That was quite a long time ago. And these people — they always complain. No matter what — it doesn't matter if you make forty thousand dollars, you complain because you want to make sixty. When you make eighty thousand, you complain you

41:39don't make a hundred. And so far — it's the nature of the human, we always want more. Okay. So this friend of mine is always complaining, "There's no work here, there's no jobs." But I couldn't imagine — there's gotta be some way. I'm sure there are people who live there who make a living in these places. I mentioned it a couple of times to my wife and we never — she never got interested. I just let it go while I was in BC.

42:07And one day she was watching the news and she saw this Brazilian woman on the news from Moncton, talking about immigration, talking about the Brazilian community. She looked at the map and she was saying good things. And I said, "This is really close to Boston." And we had made some good friends in Boston — we started missing it. To go from Vancouver to Boston, it's expensive — it's cheaper just to go to France or any other place, because it's really expensive to travel that distance. It's a far distance.

42:40Yeah. And I said, well — she was interested and I was interested. I wasn't too happy in BC anymore. So I said, "Okay, let's go there to visit." So she came with her mind and I came with my mind, and we said, "Where are we gonna live?" And I said, "Okay, let's make a list and let's visit a couple of places." So we wanted to go to Halifax — in my mind I wanted to go to Saint John and Fredericton. And I love sailing; I had a sailboat

43:11before — it's my passion. I want to be near the water. So my head was set on either Halifax or Saint John — there was no question about that. So we came here in 2008, in March. A quick shout-out to the newest sponsor of the show, The Stone Depot. The Stone Depot is located in Bayers Lake, Halifax, but serves all of the east coast. A showroom over 8,000 square feet — perfect for masonry contractors, landscaping contractors, builders, and developers. Regardless, the Stone Depot is a great option for you whether you're doing fire

43:40pits, 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 Aeroseal dealer. They help create comfortable, healthy, and durable living environments 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

44:08visit Airtight Spaces at www.airtightspaces.com. Pivot Bookkeeping is your one-stop shop and customizable bookkeeping, tax, and filing service. With Pivot you have the peace of mind knowing your taxes are always filed on time and your bookkeeping is current, using their non-proprietary software 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

44:37increased 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. So your visit to Saint John — it wasn't your pleasure. It was a time — I think the site that we visited, we didn't ask anybody where to go, we just drove around. And the place that we drove had a lot of plywood on windows.

45:09Quite a few people on the street, and I said, "Wow, I don't think this is the place to live. I don't think there'll be a lot of work over here, because this is not a good sign when you have a whole block with three or four buildings with plywood on the windows." We went to Fredericton. A good friend of mine told me Fredericton was good — because it's the capital, if you work with technology, that's the place to go, because you can

45:38find a lot of work. We just didn't find it attractive. There was no — and because we had a young kid, we wanted something fun for her to do. There was a river — it's a river town — but we spoke with some young people, some teenagers, and they didn't convince us that that was the place. When you came to Moncton — ah, it was amazing. I saw the buildings, all new buildings, and even then it was in 2008 with a lot of construction. And you could tell the city was

46:11growing. To make a decision to move, we were still a little careful because we contacted a realtor. And the realtor mentioned — she said, "Alright, if you buy the wrong house over here you're gonna be stuck for at least one year to sell, because you cannot sell that fast. It's not that hot." And for rentals you have to give like three months' notice. I said, "Wow, too much notice." In BC if you say you're moving out,

46:41the next day you already have two people wanting to take your place. And I told my wife, "No, I don't want to buy a house as soon as we move. Let's rent one, and then a year later — because I don't want to buy in the wrong place and then we'll be stuck with a house they're not gonna sell." So we rented a house in the Abbé area, which is a pretty good area. Within six months, we decided to buy one in

47:06Royal Oaks — near the school that my daughter eventually was going to go to for high school. So this house had been sitting on the market for three years, brand new, and it was — I think it was asking $260,000 at the time — we bought it for $230,000. On the market for three years, brand new home! Wow. And today you can sell a house in Moncton even before construction is finished. Yeah, you just — you cannot build as fast as they can

47:39sell. The market is amazing. I got my first job in Moncton at Atlas Structural Systems — within about a week. Because when I came to visit I met this Cuban architect who worked at Atlas as a designer there, and he introduced me to the manager. We got a good feeling, and when I finally moved here in July, a week later I was working for them. It's pretty easy to transition — good

48:15place. I can say that I learned quite a bit working for Atlas — some of this would be wood trusses and open-web joists and modular. Yeah. It was a part of my life that was missing — that structural part of the house. You know, it's good when you can design something that you know is gonna stand. Yeah. That was the thing that was missing for me. And that's one of the things that is missing for a lot of

48:45designers — they don't have that experience. So you've got a really diverse background with your different positions in Brazil with a lot of eccentric projects, obviously since you were 12 years old, then on to your journey — taking a PM certificate at the community college in Vancouver, working as a carpentry lead and quality control, and then here with Atlas Structural Systems and everything. So was that — was it always your plan to kind of — no,

49:18no. My head was always — it was always the passion. But not to have your own firm. I cannot say that I had it on my mind. My actions were, without me even noticing, pushing me towards that again. As an employee — like if you mentioned the story of being called out to say what you'd prefer in your role as quality control — you were already thinking of the best interest of the company all along anyway. Maybe

49:55subconsciously you're not really realizing that. I cannot say for the first job, but from the second or third company I worked for, I never thought about money. Never. The money was — I had something in my mind that says, "The money is a consequence." The first thing I need to know is if I'm gonna like the company. If I like it — because I can get bored too easily. I need to know if I have a challenge. If I don't have the challenge,

50:25I'm not gonna stay in the job, no matter how much they pay me. I find that comment very interesting, as an entrepreneur. When you say "I never cared about the money" — as a business person you have to care about that, right? But at the same time, if it's the only way that you're making decisions, I guess, you know, that's an operations manager — that's how they make decisions. Yeah, it's an interesting statement though. But can you imagine doing something for 25 years

50:54that you hate, just because you make a lot of money? Big problem for a lot of people, it is. Yeah. And later on — your attitude toward money — was there a change once you had dependents? Like once you had a child, you mentioned in Boston, and then you moved here — did that change your thinking, or were you still able to move freely? It's kind of different because

51:29I'm a dreamer. I can dream with my eyes open. Yeah. My wife — she's the solid ground of the family. So you complement each other well? Yes. Meaning she lets you dream but she reins you in a little bit? Yeah, exactly. Or just gives you a more analytical view. And she never says no, but she says, "Are you sure they're gonna go through it?" And then she actually throws the ball back in my court. Yeah. Like, or

52:02you can take chances, but depending how big your chance is — that can be calculated risk. You can take a little risk. You have to take calculated risk. Well, how does your plan B look? So do you have your plan B? So I always thought, "Okay, if something goes wrong, what can I do?" That takes away the anxiety. Yes, yeah. So I did that a couple of times and I took the risk. So at Atlas, I do believe I can

52:34say that I left the doors open in case something goes wrong. I can come back. You're very transparent — you said, "This is what I'm gonna do, I feel like I want to do this." Yeah. But when did you know that 46North Group of Companies — that you were going to go out on your own? Was there something that had been building for at least a few months, or was it just like, you need to

52:55do this, you need to try now? So I was an account manager there. And we had seen some drawings that came through our desk, because what happened — Atlas and the other companies who supply and sell the engineered products also provide the engineering for those products. So you cannot manufacture a roof truss if you don't have the engineering behind it. Yeah. So you have to support what you sell — that's what we did with Atlas.

53:29We designed, but there were some projects that came to our desk that didn't have good quality or had some mistakes. And not just that — in some parts of New Brunswick, the city or the building inspector didn't even request a full drawing. You can build a little structure there with just a piece of paper, do a little square, and they're happy with that. It's safe, it's fine. But if you buy trusses, you

54:01have to — they have to bring the stamp. That's the only thing they ask. And some clients didn't even have a drawing. So most homeowners are scared to contact an architect or a designer, for some reason — maybe because of the language, or it's intimidating. It's a tough one. But they feel comfortable contacting the builder first, like, "Can you build this?" And the builder tells them, "Don't contact the consultant, talk to us." No,

54:33no, actually I have a couple of builders — good friends — they've worked together with us on many projects. They send the clients to us. They say, "Well, the first thing you need —" the client comes to them and says, "Okay, I want to build a 1,500 square foot home. When can we start?" They say, "Well, do you have drawings?" "Ah no, I don't have drawings." "Well, that's the first thing you need." Then they send them to us.

54:59So then we can take that. Yeah. And sometimes the clients come to us and they don't have a builder — then we have a few builders on the list that we're comfortable giving their name to and going forward. But of course we work with

55:18— when I was at Atlas we saw the opportunity. And I always had a side job — like most people do. And I worked on nights — there was a time when my part-time became a full-time and I was working two jobs. I worked two jobs, and there were no weekends — I would work on nights and weekends. And I came to Atlas and said, "Okay, we have an issue. Right now I have two full-time jobs and I can't handle it. I'm getting too

55:51stressed." And I spoke with my wife before I talked to them. And I said, "What do you think? I think I have enough work to carry me for six months — six months is guaranteed." And she said, "Well, what are you gonna do if in six months you don't get any more work?" Yeah, yeah. I said, "Well, I can either go back to Atlas, or I can go do construction, like framing. I have all the equipment in my garage — I can build a house." So that's not a

56:22problem." She said, "Okay, if you're not scared, go ahead." So you started building homes then? No, no — I'm saying if something went wrong, right? Yeah. What was your plan B? That was my plan B. I had built a few houses in BC during that time. Yeah. But here then — she gave me the green light. I came to Atlas and said, "Okay, I think it's time for me to go on my own. And I can give you as many notices as

56:48you need — two, three weeks — if you can train anybody. But I'm gonna go on my own." And I said, "I hope you guys support me on that." And they said, "Sure, I understand." And then 46North came into plan. So then I started structuring what I was gonna do. I didn't want to just leave Atlas to do design. I wanted to structure a company that could grow. So let's build an umbrella. This was only a few years

57:16ago — 2021? Yes, exactly. 2020 we started planning, through to 2023, and you have 11 employees? Yes, 11 employees. Yeah. So I structured the company — okay, let's build an umbrella so this umbrella can create sub-companies working underneath, because I have a family. I want some protection and I want a better tax bracket as well. The name — we said, "Okay, let's create." We already had a couple of design projects — it was always like a small business with no

57:48registration. Okay, so let's incorporate it and let's create 46North Group of Companies. So under 46North we can put a design company underneath — that will be the first company. And if we start building houses for our own, there will be a holding company underneath 46North. And so forth — the project management can also go underneath 46North. So that'll be 46North Project Management. And so on. So do you want to be able to offer

58:20from inception design through management of the build to turnover, and then have a holdings company to own some of these properties? I always — I was always careful with that because I didn't want my clients to think that I'm overreaching and taking jobs from them. Yeah, so you want to be a little more focused, maybe, so you're not seen as competition. Yeah, yeah. Right away you cannot compete with the people who bring your

58:52work — it's not fair. And I've seen a lot of companies do that. But a lot of the clients you first took were your base — you were doing that one service, it was design work. Yeah. And my idea for the project management was to do something big. I didn't want to do a little house build for someone — I would not build houses myself. I would do something larger commercial, large commercial. So that way I kind of — yes, I was still gonna take jobs

59:22from another construction company, but I was not going to compete with my own group that provides me jobs. If a third client comes to the door for design and doesn't have any current relationship with a CM or construction management, then you're able to offer that to them as well — and that was the intention. Yeah, yeah. Has that scenario happened on the commercial side? Yeah, no, no — it didn't happen because after I left Atlas, within one month

59:56four more clients came up and they asked me to design their custom homes — two-thousand, three-thousand square foot homes, a little bigger houses. And then within the first month we got the first multi-unit — it was like an eight-unit apartment building. Then we got another one — four buildings, two of them 48 units each. So multi-res, six-storey buildings — the biggest buildings located all in Miramichi. Miramichi.

60:26Okay. It was a big order there. So that was the first large project. So all this design work came right away, right away, on the first month? Yeah. So then you needed to hire. So because it was just yourself — did you have people you knew were going to be involved or work with you prior? So it was you — you were freelancing. We were freelancing. I set up our office in my house and said, "Okay, let's go from here." Then that was

60:55the same time as COVID. It had already happened — there was around the second year of COVID. My wife was working from home because the company she was working at in town — with COVID they shut down everything, so everything went to work from home. And I told her, "Wow, I need to hire someone. I don't want to say no to a job." So I looked — I think I found — I can't remember if my first

61:26employee was the architect from the Philippines or the one from Brazil. I think it was the one from the Philippines. Did you purposely — when you knew you were going to need employees to scale and grow, you knew this thing was probably gonna work, you had work lined up, all this design work came your way — so you knew you had work for at least a year or so. And so I can hire two, three

61:49people now, give them a salary. I know the revenue is coming in to pay this expense. Did you go right away to hire immigrant workers — is that something you had in mind? No, because of my journey. I tried locally — I couldn't find anybody locally. There was nobody available. And then I did Kijiji — nobody available. Due to, you know, lack of people with the right amount of experience, or just everybody was working, or because

62:17you're a new company you couldn't attract them? No, like — there's no response. Labor shortage, labor shortage. Okay. So I put a post out, and that's when I got the first contacts. But it was all international. I think I got like about 20 resumes — nobody in Canada. Oh, everybody outside Canada. On the same platform — I had met this other architect who was from Brazil and was living in Moncton. Well, probably within three or four months

62:51she was living there. Okay. And she saw the post. I called her for an interview. She had a little bit of English. And — my heart — I think she was the second one, but the first one was from the Philippines. The distance kind of scared me a little bit. So she — is she based here now, or working virtually? Her first months she was working virtually, yeah. Half of them are, half of them yeah. So she wasn't an architect — she had even

63:22a planner's license. She had done contracts with the US Air Force — she did some very nice projects. And she was employed elsewhere at the time. And I always felt a little scared, especially at the beginning, because you never know if things are gonna go well. For example, you offer a job to someone who is already employed at a company for two or three years — that person quits that job, but you're not too sure if you're gonna have

63:56enough work to keep that person busy. Yeah, it was a little bit of a concern that I always had. Well, I think that's something that — especially with a startup — that's part of the weight that you carry. The paradox of: what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Do I hire these people now and hope that the work comes in, because if I wait until three months from now for confirmation that I'm gonna have work, then they're not going to be available. Yeah. And these are the kind of decisions you have to navigate.

64:28Yeah, exactly. You're building up and it's a push-pull — constant riding of that wave. Because the client who came to you asking for your service needs that no matter what. It doesn't matter if you can't do it — someone else is gonna do it. If you say no, the chances are that that client never comes back. Yeah, because in some clients' minds you preferred to supply service to somebody else instead. Yeah. So you can't really turn away work when you're starting out.

65:02So I hired her. She was amazing. She's been with me now — that's the third year. She never took a day off other than the holidays and all that. But no, we never had a problem — it was a good ride. How fast did you get up to 11 employees as you are currently? Was it just

65:33like every three months you were hiring? So she came in the first month. Within a month and a half we hired the other architect from Brazil. Okay. And she's now living here in Halifax — she moved and got a better offer. Well, she got an offer from a bigger company and she's working here — she lives in Halifax now. I think two months later, within three months, I had another architect — Andreessa De Mayo, from São Paulo. She's with me to this day, just over

66:00two years now. And she did amazing work too. So for example — if I go back — yeah, yeah — Marjorie was the first one. So she did a contract for a US Air Force project in the United Arab Emirates. So that was one of the big ones — I think it was like a three-year project in the UAE. What part? I just didn't ask, okay. Yeah, it was all confidential, I bet. And she did a project for the

66:34village of the president of the United Arab Emirates as well, for his personal village. So that was pretty exciting. Within three months — Andresa. So Andresa was also an architect from Brazil. She was working at a Home Depot design kitchen. She had invited me to be friends, I think it was on Facebook or LinkedIn — I don't remember which one. Yeah. And I saw her background and said, "Okay, I'm going to invite her" — she never actually applied. So I needed someone, I needed

67:14help urgently. And then she came and we started working that same week. She did some amazing work in Brazil. So if we include the experience from all of our team — she did a large mall in São Paulo. The challenge for this mall was it was built over a contaminated area, so they had to reclaim all the land, make sure there was no contamination, then build the

67:48mall on top. Carandiru — you've probably heard about it — that was the famous jail in São Paulo, there was a massacre, a lot of people died there. Massacre — yes, yes, yeah. I don't remember what year it was, but they shut it down, moved all the prisoners from there. The company she was working for was hired to restore that building. So they made a shopping and education center in that building. So it is being used — right. But it's

68:26not just a retrofit. Yeah, okay. And then the challenge for her — they asked her, "What is your biggest challenge?" And she said, "Well, for the 20 years of experience that I had in Brazil, with all of this —" she did a project where she was responsible for all of Walmart throughout Brazil, for design and construction. So she has a lot of Walmart experience. Right, so with all that retail experience — yeah. When she came over here to do

69:00custom homes, the first thing I said to her was, "Forget everything you learned in Brazil — it's different." Yeah. "If you try to forget what you learned in Brazil, you're gonna learn this system much faster, and you can enjoy it." It's a different project. So she kind of had to unlearn some things. Unlearn some things, yeah. The construction methods are different. And all her skills would be so transferable. It is — it's just the only way to

69:29know the difference is to go and immerse yourself in it. And it's not like — for example, as simple as a gas station. Everybody thinks, "Well, to design a gas station it's simple." But there are a lot of rules behind it to design and build a gas station, or a Walmart-sized building. And she has that background. So if any client walks to our door today

69:56wanting to build something of that size, we have the experience — not just to design but to manage and run that project from beginning to end. So considering all the experience that we have. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you've put together an amazing team. And you're saying like half, you know, are immigrant workers that are working virtually, from the Philippines or Brazil where you're from. Yeah. And the other half are local — but

70:27they're also from some of these other countries as well, with international backgrounds. Yes. Okay. Do you have anyone working for you that is from here? Yeah, no — I had one who worked for three days and she couldn't stay. Yeah, yeah. And I know lots of friends in the city here who all have companies basically fully staffed with foreign-trained workers. So my next step is to convert the firm from design status to an Architecture Firm. Okay. So because our

71:04team — most of them are Architects — they're not licensed in Canada. So — but with all the — well, that's the reason you want to pivot to that, just for licensing? Is it kind of a legal question? What's the difference for our listeners? So in the building code, they allow us — for any building — there are two sections of the building code. One we call Part 3, and one we call Part 9. Part 9 is considered for small buildings. So that means the footprint

71:41of the building cannot be more than 600 square meters and cannot be more than three storeys. That doesn't mean it limits you only to residential — it still allows you to be in commercial space, multi-res, on three storeys. Yeah. And of course we need our associates — we have structural engineer firms that work with us all the time, we have civil engineers, we have mechanical engineers. These aren't all internal, so that's not 46North — that's a

72:14subcontract. That is just a team that we put together and work with all the time. They're all designers, some of which are Architects. Yes, yes. But these firms are licensed engineers, of course. Because when we do, for example, 12-unit or 18-unit apartment buildings — those ones we are allowed to design, but we still have to have a structural engineer of record on the project, and also a mechanical engineer. Same thing for electrical, depending on the size. Up to 12 units we don't need an electrical engineer. We need a mechanical engineer. You've already done well beyond that, right? Because yeah, the first couple requests were 48 units, probably six storeys? Yeah, yeah.

72:45So those were four storeys — the 48-unit buildings. And those are considered like a small commercial. So for example, if you take a restaurant in a shopping mall — the restaurant is small, it's only a small space, like in the food court. But that space belongs to a large-scale building, the shopping mall. The shopping mall is Part 3, so we're not allowed to touch something that size without being licensed. Right. Because of the square footage. Yeah, yeah. So that's gonna be a barrier for you to grow into some of

73:20— the shopping mall. The restaurant is small — only if you go to the food court, those are such a small space. But that space belongs to the large-scale building, the shopping mall. The shopping mall is Part 3, so we're not allowed to touch something that size without being licensed. Right. Because of the square footage. Yeah, yeah. So that's going to be a barrier for you to grow into some of

73:46those larger commercial projects if you want to pursue that route. Yes. Like there's a different terrain for your competitors too — things like a shopping mall or an airport. If you want to design an airport — someday we have the team to do that and we have the knowledge. We already have that skill set to design an airport. We just don't pursue that because right now we have about 25 projects on the go. Each team member has

74:17two projects they work on at the same time. So this could be anywhere from multiple residential homes that are 1,500 to 3,000 square feet — custom homes — and then some you could have at a shopping mall or a multi-unit res. All kinds of different productions. So I don't — I don't want to sound wrong — of course I want to design a skyscraper someday in Moncton or in Halifax or anywhere. Just because it's a business

74:51card. When you design a building like that, in architecture we say the same — that guarantees your future business. That's my business card. That building is gonna stay there for 100 years. It's not — nobody is gonna tear that building down. A house doesn't — it's not the same. But the pleasure of designing a custom home is — again, it's the end user. Sometimes you act as — so the passion's still there in that regard too, right? It's just a different

75:24kind of client. Yeah, different. Different things. It all depends on what passion you're following. We are following this — we're still on a small-building scale, considerably. Not that we advertise to get anything bigger than that. We do have the team and we do have the knowledge to do it. Anyway, the next expansion that I would like to do on the company is the conversion from design to Architecture Firm, and we have a

75:59prospective partner to achieve that goal. And hopefully we can, either this year or next year, get there. Currently, how many projects are you working on outside of New Brunswick? You said you're working on some south of the border, in Boston — outside New Brunswick, we do. I believe we have about 12 to 25 that are not in New Brunswick. No other provinces in Atlantic Canada as well, or mostly south of the border? No, south of the border. I haven't done

76:31anything yet in Nova Scotia. Okay, this is obviously something you're open to. Of course, yeah. And I drive to Boston every month — coming to Halifax is a shorter distance. My drive to Boston is eight hours; over here it's like two and a half hours. So can you tell us about some of the projects you have currently, or that you've done since 2021, the inception of 46North Group? You mentioned some multi-res

77:02in New Brunswick — I think you said Miramichi. What about some of the ones that are south of the border? Are these all residential homes, as you mentioned — the 125-home kind of thing? Yeah, we have a contract with a manufacturer firm. We had one, and now we're working with another one in Texas, designing their manufactured houses. So this is a different type of approach. We supply — it is industrial, it is industrial.

77:31So when you design a house here in Canada, the building code only requires architectural design — that's it, it doesn't require anything more. But with our package we offer part of it structurally, and part of the electrical — we don't call it electrical because it's not required as a record, but we call it a lighting plan. Lighting plan, all the data — where the plugs go. Because when we design a house with the furniture layout, we know what's the best layout for lighting, for

78:06plugs, and anything like that. For manufacturing it's different — it is a BIM design, it's BIM management. So whether steel or wood, we have to design everything that goes on the house — like a hinge, a hanger. Well, this is what you're doing with the client from the States: designing the manufactured homes. Manufactured homes, okay. So everything goes on the — like, if you think of a timber-framed home — I'm trying to picture, okay — just a

78:42regular house. Once it's all wood products — it's a wood product. Like using Kent Homes — same thing, okay. So some people confuse that with a mobile home — it's not a mobile home. A mobile home is one thing — that's more like a modular. Modular method, okay. Yeah. Some people's quality standards don't accept mobile homes because they want a permanent structure. Modular construction is a permanent structure. So we'll bring up some pictures of these as we're talking

79:11about it — when this is released, yeah, so people can see. So these houses — they want to build five houses per week on the production line. So everything has to be thought out before it goes to production. It's not like when you're doing a custom home where you're doing the framing and then you bring the homeowner in: "Okay, let's walk the floor and see where you're going to put the lights, where we're going to put the plugs." It's not like that. It's five houses per week, five houses per

79:41week — assembled on site. One starts at the beginning of the line, the last one is leaving at the end — done at the warehouse door to go to site. Yes, all the pieces ready to assemble. Yeah, modular. Okay. And then we had to build up the process of how we're gonna put this house together, right? So you're designing the home, you're designing the parts, and you're also designing the logistics and the critical path, and also the process.

80:14The process. Right. Because in manufactured construction they want to do as much as possible indoors. So anything you do indoors, you save money. You have a controlled environment — no rain, no sun. Subject to the weather? Very much, yeah. No, exactly. So anything you do inside is more economical and faster. But it's impossible to do everything inside — some work has to be done on site. So if you do exterior decks, skirting, or attachment — the roof system. Should you leave

80:53those things outside of your scope for manufacturing, then just let them buy those materials and assemble as needed? Or is it all kitted and part of the process? It's just built on site — it's part of the process. And it's supplied with the modular construction. For example, the roof system — a gable roof in reality is not a gable roof, it's a hinge truss. So you build the truss to the maximum height for transportation on a highway, and those roofs already have the shingles — everything is down there. When they come to site they crane those up — the top parts of the roof, two different pieces, come together at a hinge point. Okay. So this is the thought process that goes into how it can be manufactured and also delivered, and how to have as little assembly on site as possible. Yes. The single-storey houses are a little

81:21bit more simple because there's more attachment to the foundation. And how you're gonna do the roof, the siding, of course. And so these are the type of construction that fall in with this client in the States that you're speaking about — these are homes, right? These are not multi-res, not major projects as far as square footage? Yeah, these are all about 1,500 to about 3,000 square foot homes. Is the operation underway, or are you still

81:52working on the process? No, it's already built — the first house is going, it's going, it's going good. A lot of change, a lot of learning curves for the manufacturer. And do you think there's a niche there for a firm such as yours, or an Architecture Firm that has the right people as part of their team, to help design these modular processes? Not just designing the building but also the manufacturing — do you think there's a big, huge

82:20need for that right now? Yeah. It serves all kinds of people all over. Yeah. I can say safely — I can say today that I don't have competition. Nobody has competition for this. We have — I can think of — four people that I've talked to in the last six months that would love to give you a call about that, because they're trying to do some of that and solve some of those problems in-house with project managers who might be good

82:49project managers on site, but this — you're taking the game here and flipping it on its head. Yeah. And like I said, it gets more complicated when you do a two-storey home, because how are you gonna attach this house together? You have to account for uplift. So the structural engineer comes into play — it's very important to have all that knowledge on the manufactured home. Very important. Because how you're gonna transport it is one thing, how you're

83:19gonna attach it, and then how you're gonna connect all the plumbing, all the electrical — so all of that has to be thought out before you start producing. Right. So do you think there's an advantage for you, because you came from a place with more eccentric design, to incorporate some of this stuff — the psychology, this cultural dynamic — to what you're helping with here in the States? I think — I think it makes me think of what you were talking about — yeah, yeah, exactly. The rotating building. I ask some of my

83:50team — because that's how my mind works. Yeah. I had a couple of friends who built engines, like car engines. And I always wanted to learn how to do that, but I never had the opportunity. You know, when I see something — I never think about how that thing runs; I always want to know how that thing was built. Yeah. So for example,

84:18like a Dodge Charger engine — I don't really care too much about the power the engine creates. I'm more curious to see how the engine was put together. That's my mindset. And the house is the same thing. I have one builder in Boston that I've designed most of his houses — even his personal house. I've redesigned like three personal houses; we're going to the fourth house now. And he never went to school for interior design, but he's the best interior designer I've ever

84:55met. He's natural — he's naturally gifted. It's probably good that he didn't go to school, and in a way, you know. So I designed his house. And some people, when they see a house, they want to see the final product. I always think about how the house was put together — how to build the house. Even before I started doing design, since I was young, I always thought about the process behind — the process behind the process — how to

85:29build. I never thought about the finished product. I always thought: how can I build that? So you're thinking almost like an engineer, on the analytical side, while you're designing — using both sides of the brain. Yeah, into engineering. Exactly, engineers. Yeah. Things like that, for sure. And that was kind of the engineer's way of thinking. Some of the construction — the architects design crazy buildings, and how do we put that together?

85:59That's right, that's the engineer part, yeah, yeah. Now it's neat to get some insight there. It's neat to hear too, for our listeners — if they're site workers or just people interested in how things are being built — a glimpse into what it is to have a design firm or an architecture firm. For that matter, sometimes you're an architect and that means you're at a big corporate firm and you're basically

86:27doing paperwork and change orders all day. But then other firms — seems like yours — yeah, you're pretty diverse. You say you have a very diverse team, a lot of different backgrounds, really experienced people in different capacities. And you're working on a lot of different types of things — you want to design an airport someday, but you're working on design and manufacturing processes for modular homes, while you're designing the actual homes south of the border, doing all kinds of different things.

86:53Right, yeah. And sometimes you see a building — a pretty, interesting building — not just architectural construction, but anything you're gonna do, you have to put the process together. So we have one other team member in our company. He's from

87:17— was he hired prior to the invasion, or during the invasion? Actually, yeah — during the invasion. And I even asked him if he wanted to come to Canada. No, no — he lives there, okay. So a lot of people have moved here from Ukraine. He's a mechanical

87:45engineer. And if you want to talk about process — this is the guy. He lives for the process. And Chernobyl — he worked on Chernobyl? He worked there? Wow. Years later — well, did they work on the cleanup part after the disaster? Or the whole nuclear? No, after the disaster. So he worked on the new containment structure. So he was responsible to design all the rebar structure — they built another

88:07structure on top to contain it. And so he did all the concrete reinforcement rebar for that construction. Years later — I don't remember exactly on top of my head when the incident happened — but he did this work like a few years ago. Because they still have radiation there. They built up this team, and you can only work 50 minutes. So we were talking about this earlier — because of the radiation levels still present. Imagine — you dress up, put

88:47all your protection gear on, go there, work on your rebar 50 minutes, and then the clock sounds and you have to leave. And how much do they get paid per hour? I would love to know that. Yeah. And someone has to be there to coordinate. So that's — somebody has a new crew coming in every 50 minutes, 24-hour process. And then that same person, 24 hours later, is allowed back. And because of the number of people, they can only work 15 minutes

89:27— and that project could take forever to complete. But they wanted to build this in a short window, so they were working 24 hours a day, but only 15 minutes each time. So I don't know — you take 24 hours divided by 15 minutes and that's how many people you need. Wow. These are great stories from all these employees you've assembled. So you've got like almost a global operation happening here in New Brunswick, carrying out work in the States, in

90:01Canada, and the language — so are there language barriers? No, no English barriers. But the linguistic capacity? Yeah. So this guy alone speaks Ukrainian. So you've got — Philippines, Russian, Vietnamese, Portuguese like yourself? Yeah. Spanish. But they all speak English in common? Common English, yeah. The English is the main language. Well enough to get by, to become — better for some than others? No, yeah, awesome. There are some confidence issues, I guess. You will sometimes have to push someone. I say, "No, you can do it." I've

90:32worked with people in this city who might be Lebanese — they've been here for a long time and I understand them very well. But they're still kind of self-conscious when they start working with somebody who's local. "My English is not that good, that's why he doesn't understand what I'm trying to say." But really it isn't an issue of language — it's kind of a self-consciousness thing. Yeah, too, yeah. It's

91:06nervousness. Like, for most people, when you're too nervous the language just goes away. Yeah. But if you had a couple of beers, oh man, you're gonna be able to make a speech. Well, just let them drink on the job! Yeah, yeah. So yeah, he has a good start. This guy — so he speaks all these languages: German, French, Estonian. Wow. You can speak that many different languages — that's very impressive. Yeah. After Andresa — our

91:29next employee, I believe, was Janie. Yeah. Janie — she's from Vietnam. She graduated in architecture in Vietnam and she did a master's degree. So — I didn't know this but I learned it — it's good to talk to all these people because you learn something different every time. France and the Philippines and Vietnam have some history. I think the Second World War — and to compensate for what the French did to them, they

92:03offered them free scholarships. I don't think they offer them anymore, but back when Janie went to school, they paid for her entire master's degree program in France. They paid for her rent, they even gave her a bonus every month to study. If she wanted to travel on the weekends, transportation was free. So she did the master's degree there. I still learn now. So she can speak French perfectly. Wow. And Vietnamese, of course. Then she moved over here. When she moved

92:49over here, her English was still — she was nervous, she wanted to get a little better on her English. But her experience was amazing — she did hospitals in Vietnam, she did projects for schools and universities. All big buildings again, like I did in Brazil — just like skyscrapers. She never designed a single-family home in Vietnam, just big buildings. And then she came to us. One thing that got me — one thing that made me

93:22hire her, at the first meeting — she never mentioned during the interview, "If you hire me, I'm going to be your best employee" or "If you hire me, I'm going to give you the best I can to design your projects." She always put herself as if she was already hired. And it was actually interesting — she — I mean, I actually met her for the first time. Yeah. Today,

93:55— yesterday, because we talked about job interviews — that was the reason I hired Janie. That's why I hired you. And your English — I know you had to improve. But that wasn't the question for me. The question was: do you have the confidence? You put yourself in a position as if you were already here. She was here for the first month in Canada, so the first company she came to was our company. Okay. So there was something that made me invest in her.

94:27After that, we got two more. We had — we had Louisa. She's a young architect. She hasn't done a lot of jobs yet, but her personality was pretty good. She says one thing that drives her every day is achieving other people's dreams — helping achieve other people's dreams. So you know, when you build a house — it doesn't matter if it's a young couple, they

95:01want to build their first house — or that person who says, "Well, I'm downsizing — this is my last house I'm gonna build." And I've heard that so many times from people, and a couple of years later they come back again and say, "Oh, I'm building another house, by the way." Yeah. It's — when you put everything that you know and you have into making that dream happen for those people — and sometimes you have to act as a balance keeper between

95:39the — between the husband and wife — or a marriage counselor. Yeah. And unfortunately the wife always wins. Yeah. This is a fact of life, it's a fact of life. And some clients — I know we had a good client a couple of years ago. We worked on his house — his passion with his wife was amazing, it was a nice couple. She had her way with him. And I told him, when we were about finished with the project — he

96:10— "You guys, during this process — these three months that we took to design your house — I learned so much about relationships just being with you guys, that I'm gonna carry that to my life today. Because the relationship is not easy — you have to make it work. And making it work is every day. And it's not just a home — like, when you share your office space with someone you have to make that work. It's a relationship that you have daily. And

96:47sometimes you see your co-workers more than you see your own family." Yeah, that's right. So you have to make that work. Go ahead. Sorry — unfortunately the house never came off the paper, because six months later he found out he had cancer, and he passed away three months later. Wow, yeah. I said, "Wow, yeah." Yeah. It is crazy. But yeah — you never know, huh? Yeah. It was — he helped me grow, even though I'm 50 years old.

97:15I learned from their relationship. Yeah. And sometimes they fight — yeah, that's just the nature of it. Yes. Another young architect — Barbara — also from Brazil. She liked to help people achieve their dreams. And she won a special project — it was a community vegetable garden and cultural venue revitalization there in Brazil. So she hasn't done a lot of projects — I think she graduated a few years ago. Carla is the youngest team member that we have. She started a couple

97:45of days ago, actually. Wow. She's a civil engineer. Okay. And she worked on the tallest building in Brazil — it is the second-tallest building in South America. It's 290 meters high, 77 levels. It's a big skyscraper, yeah. Finished last year, 2022. So your hiring process to bring in these different people from different countries — what's it been like? Has there been a lot of thought, or has it just been a networking attempt? A network, yeah, right.

98:27So you're talking to other people and they're saying, "You know, this would be" — and you're very focused on what you're looking for. And yeah, you're kind of — one thing that we always look for is the

99:05— it doesn't matter if it's a man or a woman, they have to have respect for the team. They have to be a team player. Nobody's better than anybody. It doesn't matter if you have 20 years of experience or one year of experience — when you teach someone, you're also learning from them. Yeah, I'm sure it's the best way to learn. Yeah, exactly. So we're not allowed on our team if

99:22someone doesn't have that team environment, that team-player mindset. And that keeps the culture secure. Yeah, it keeps your — yeah, exactly. And racism doesn't grow in our office because it's such a multicultural environment. Yeah. And we have clients from Africa, we have clients from everywhere. The clients from Africa — they're here, they're here right now, yeah. So the homeowners — they're not just developers? Developers, investors. It sounds like a lot for you to manage

99:52as the CEO. You've got a lot of different — do you know what? The toughest part, I think, for me is the administration. Administration. I think — I don't think it's just for me. I don't think I speak just for myself on that part. But you have one of your staff who says — but you are the administration. You, yeah. It's hard for people to understand, I guess, how much you need help with those task-oriented things.

100:31It's not because you don't want to sit and do that stuff — it's just that your mind is so full of different relationships, different opportunities, different points A and B to connect. It's a full-time job just to run those meetings and play out those ideas. And you need to have those other structures in place or you can't survive. Most companies fail in the first three years, and it's not because they don't have the service, they don't have the clients —

101:01the customer does — they don't have the administration. The administration — I think it's the biggest factor for the company to fail. Because you just concentrate on one end. For example, I love the design part, but I cannot let go of the administration because it's important. And sometimes through time management — it's critical, because you're not gonna work eight hours a day. Yeah, if yeah, you stop — no, it's at

101:27least 12 hours a day, and you have to work on the weekends too. You have to make time to visit clients, you have to make time to return their calls, you have to have time to make a proposal — and then payroll, invoice, even depositing a check. I sometimes had a check in my pocket for like a week — I didn't have time to go to the bank to deposit it. Not that I don't need the money, but it's just, yeah, you don't have the

102:01time. Yeah. So administration people that you trust are important. On the other hand, I don't think I could work with anybody I don't trust. So I trust all my team. But there are things that you have to do that you just cannot let someone else do, right? So where do you want to be with 46North Group in the next three to five years? You're taking on projects in the States, you

102:29haven't done any in Nova Scotia yet, you've got 11 employees with lots of different backgrounds as a design firm. Definitely Nova Scotia — it's one of the markets that I want to explore. And you want to explore the construction management piece as well, as far as — or is that later? Probably start the projects and then we can move to project management after that. But the project management will be strictly project management — I don't think we would

102:59only do projects we've designed ourselves. But I don't think we would like to do the construction itself — we just want to do the management. Yeah, of course, yeah. Not as a GC — just a bridge between the finance and the construction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even today — like for example, this morning — because of risk reasons? No, no — it's just the number of employees. Yeah. Like if you're a GC, you have to go out and find a lot of expertise on that front. There's a

103:28labor shortage right now. You can't provide those services to clients unless the person in that position has the right amount of experience, or it won't go well. Yeah. And we had a meeting — a dinner meeting — with the Construction Association a couple of weeks ago. And the national president came to do a speech. He travels all over the country, he meets with the Prime Minister, and he mentioned that it's not just New Brunswick or Nova Scotia — this

104:04crisis we have in real estate is everywhere. The labor shortage is everywhere. Yeah. So it's funny — we have a rental crisis. There are no rental units anywhere. So what happens? These young generations leave their parents' home, go to college, then they rent a place. Theoretically you stay in this apartment for a couple of years, save some money, and put together a down payment for your house. And then they buy a new

104:42house, move out — so they free up the rental units and make them available for the next. But finance rates are too high, so this young family cannot afford to buy a house. So they stay longer in these units — if they ever left the parents' basement, let's say for example. So they rent this place and they cannot leave because they cannot afford — a rental today is like $1,700 to $2,000. You build an apartment — it's expensive. Yeah. So they stay. So there's no

105:16rental available. Finance charges too high — they cannot afford a house. So they stay in the rental. So there's no rental available. The government is trying to accommodate all the builders and incentivize the builders to build houses. Now we have the labor shortage — there are no people to build all those projects. Yeah. Once you start a construction company — okay, now it is — you start a construction company, it's easy. But how are you gonna do it? They still have

105:52— if you call a reputable construction company or a GC today, they're gonna tell you they can only start building probably in December of next year. Yeah, yeah. It takes us back to what you were talking about earlier with your own personal immigration story, and then the people you're hiring virtually from these different countries. You would not have been able to build the company you have today without hiring these people virtually from these other countries — you wouldn't have the expertise, you wouldn't

106:26have been able to find them. You can only do so much during the day. And a big way to solve the labor shortage is going to be with immigration. Yeah. And you see that happening obviously already — lots of companies are hiring 20 to 30 employees from different immigration pools, whether it be concrete formwork or carpenters or whatever it is. It's still a bridge there that we have to cross. Because when you work at a distance, especially the type of

106:57construction here is different. So if you hire someone from South America or from overseas — Philippines or wherever — it's not the same type. But you can teach them. We have our training session every week. We have a group meeting — and a picture. Google is a silver bullet for all this, because we can show pictures and say, "Oh, this is how we do this here." You have a group meeting with everyone every week? Everyone, yeah. Once a week at minimum. Yeah. And we're trying to make everybody

107:28comfortable. Like Carla — she's the newest employee — and she sent me a quick message one day, yesterday, and said, "Do you have a couple minutes? Can I call you?" I said, "You don't have to send a message, just call. Just call." Yeah. "You are the same — if you're here in the office you just walk in my door. If I can talk, I'll talk. If I cannot talk —" So this is a model that's used a lot by local businesses where people

107:59just live a few kilometres away — they're still working a hybrid model, or they might only see each other in person once a week anyway, meeting virtually. So how have you found the communication for what you've built? Yeah — I can definitely say COVID helped quite a bit with this, improved technology, of course. And it made people realize that there are all kinds of ways you can do work; it doesn't have to be face to face. But I guess you would prefer it to be

108:22— oh yeah, of course. Always. Like for example, it's doable. I worked on the construction and you learn so much when you're on site. Yeah. Even meetings are far different, especially when you're dealing with business transactions or a potential business with a client — it's way more beneficial to be there with the person. Than it is to be on a screen, yeah. So now — we got our company approved with Immigration Canada, so we're gonna start bringing

108:55these employees who want to — not everybody, but some people are comfortable with work from home, so we're not forcing anybody to come. But I think the first one we're going to bring is the one in the Philippines. She's really ready to come to Canada and try a different life. Right, is it? So do you mean that you'll help her as a company with her visa, her PR, and kind of help her with her journey to

109:29Canada? Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. So she's the first one. We hope to have her here by this summer. Okay, yeah. So she'll be living in Moncton? In Moncton, yeah, yeah. She — go ahead. She's fast — she knows the product virtually, but I still think when she's here, I want her to spend a couple of weeks on a job site with some of the builders that I know, so she can learn a lot more. Did you foresee you having such

109:55success or growth two years ago when you first started? Not at all. No — you just took that first step? Yeah, freelancing at first, yeah, freelance. So what gave you the confidence, after you hired the first couple, to think, "We need to hire 10 more"? Is it just that you knew you had work, you knew the cash flow, the revenue stream was coming in? Just the attitudes, for sure, that helps. We

110:27— we never say no to anybody. We find a way to do the work. And of course, some of our team members are moms and dads — they have kids, they have a personal life. Everybody has a personal life. So I never force anybody to do overtime on nights and weekends. But come the time — I put it on the table and say, "We have this project, we have to finish it by Monday. Who is available?" And

110:52I always have at least two or three who jump up and say, "Yeah, I can do it." For example, these people are on different time zones here as well. And this girl from the Philippines — one thing that surprised me at the beginning was when we tried to make a schedule. I tried to make a schedule for her that at least gave us like two hours of crossover work. So for example, we are

111:2411 hours apart — right? How does that work, tying in with your meetings? Well, what time is it — 11 in the morning one place, and 10 pm at night the other? Our meetings are usually in the morning. Okay. So for some of the people tuning in — yeah, like 7 am here is 9 pm at night there. So I stayed late to connect. For the first few months we did it like that. And one day

111:52I was working and I looked on Teams and her name was green. I sent her a message: "What are you doing up?" "I'm working." "But it's 11 AM here, so it's like 10 PM there." "I know, I'm working. I changed my hours." "How come?" "So now I'm doing Canadian time." "Are you sure?" She did that just for herself — to help the newer designers that were on our team. Because her knowledge is

112:18really strong — she shifted her biological clock just for that. She's working on Canadian time now, only Canadian time. Wow. And then there were a couple of projects, especially for the manufacturer, where I asked her to go back to Philippines time. Because I need two people to work on the same project at the same time. So instead — instead of us working eight hours each day, we're working 24 hours on the same project. So my team over here was working during the day — like a few extra

112:50hours, like 12 hours a day, doing a couple of hours of overtime. And then when they finished, she was starting her day there and jumped on the same project and continued. So we did that for three days — 24 hours on the same project — and we finished the project on time to deliver. Yeah, so that was amazing. I really like the coordination and the team. So for Carla, I told her:

113:22"You don't have to call me — you can call anybody on your team and anyone will respond to you, will help you with anything." Language, dimensions — because dimensions are different too. They don't use Imperial anywhere else — it's just here. Wow. So yeah, I know that team environment is good. The Philippines — well, I was all metric in these other countries, right? There's no Imperial. So in Canada any commercial work — government work, public work — has to be done in millimeters.

113:45Building codes are in millimeters. So when we read the building code we have to convert — yeah. But all residential work is in Imperial. It makes a challenge. And in all the other countries it's only metric — that's it, no change. So I know it's difficult. As a design firm, it's hard to talk about future projects a lot of times — they're confidential until things come out. But you mentioned a few — is there anything, any other projects that you're kind of

114:25really proud of, or any milestone projects that you want to mention before we wrap things up? Yeah. What can I say — I mean, these multi-res projects would have been so awesome. I can say that I've had a good teacher through my past — 37 years of experience so far. In the US, I met this architect, Peter Pittman. Today we do some contract work together, and he does such amazing, amazing work. We did

115:03a 98-unit apartment building in Massachusetts — that was just a spec for now, they didn't go through. This is something I would like — I would like to be part of that project if it goes through. It's like an investor: he buys property, does all the engineering, and once the project is complete he sells to a developer. Right. So he doesn't build it turnkey? Not turnkey, yeah. Right. Because to build a high-rise, to put together something like that, you need — it's not a small

115:47business. It's not a small company. You have to have the power to do something like that — you have to have a bigger company behind. And so what he does — he provides the plans? The plans, yeah. We had some projects over here — we have a new client that came up this week. He's from Ontario, so it's healthcare. This is something that we're working on — is it locally in New Brunswick, or another one in the States? Canada entirely — all of Canada.

116:23So Ontario. Okay, yeah. He wanted us to take care of the entire Atlantic side for him. His company's portfolio is to do about 10 buildings per year, and all these multi-units — anywhere from 48 to 260 units. Yeah. He provides housing for the healthcare sector? Maybe wood-frame buildings? Yeah, most likely it will be wood frame. Yeah, yeah. Wood frame today — you can go up to six storeys, and that's it. Yeah.

116:53Some developers — when you go to a building that size, especially with the price of lumber, it makes more financial sense to go with concrete than wood. If you're gonna go up six storeys, your replacement cost and your insurance — you have a better rate. It takes a little longer to build, but there's a better return for the building. If you do concrete, they have some preference. If the price of lumber was reasonable

117:33— and it was before COVID — yeah, it came down a little bit, but it's still up though. Yeah, for sure, the prices are all over the place. So we help — there are a couple of young builders in town. They're doing renovations. Sometimes we help them with some pricing, some construction methods, structurally too. Some builders today say they can build a house for about $280 to $300 per square foot, from $270 to $300. For multi-res? For a

118:10single family. Single family, okay. Right, you're talking about residential? Yeah, residential. And I heard somebody — but you see anywhere from $250 to $600 or $700 here now in Nova Scotia, depending on how high-end the finishes are or what — some are up there pretty high. I had a new client come into the office yesterday to do an addition on their cottage. And this builder told them they can build for $130 per square foot. $130? I say

118:44that's tight. I'm not saying he cannot do it, but there's only so much he can do with the price of lumber — and he's a young builder. Yeah, I say, "Okay, well I hope he can do it." But yeah, no, the cost is a lot more than that. And I can tell you the builders who are selling for $280 or $300 — they're not making tons of money. No. And that's low right now. Yeah, exactly. You're not — many people getting

119:17an appraisal for that much — it's probably $400 that's more the norm. Exactly. And I know one good friend of mine who built probably three or four spec homes, and his cost was about that. So yeah, so I don't know how much margin you'd have — you'd have to be at like $450. Yeah, I don't know how someone can build for $130. I don't know how they're doing that. They must know something I don't know. But we try to be neutral on the aspects, and

119:46— I always offer our service to both the builder and the owner. And one policy that we have in our office: our job does not finish when you pay the last invoice with us. Our job finishes when you finish your house. Right. So are any of these homes, once you design them — are you managing the contractor for the client? No, no. So you're designing only. But we are there — I tell all my clients, "Our door is always open. So if you need help to select

120:19the builder, please come to us and we're going to tell you if the builder is asking the right questions." Yeah. Well, most of these are going to classify as high-end custom homes, right? That's why you're involved in the first place — not everyone building a home is going to have a designer. Yeah, exactly. And I say, "If you have any questions, please feel free to knock on our door. And if we can help, we will help. And if we can

120:53answer a quick phone call, yeah — we're not going to charge you extra for it." Well, hopefully we can help. This will hopefully get you some exposure here. Yeah. I'm sure you're talking to lots of people in Nova Scotia already — whether commercial clients or developers for multi-res, or whether or not you have interest in designing homes here or not. But I'm sure that will get you some exposure here with the podcast release. No, and then we'd like

121:18to thank you for the invitation. And I think this is important — to expose and try to explain what is involved in construction, what has evolved in the project. A lot of people think it's simple — it's not simple. But it's not complicated; you just have to do the right thing and find the right people to do the work for you. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being here. And it sounds like 46North

121:44Group is off to a great start, to say the very least. So congrats with your success so far — it's really, really exciting to see where things will end up. And I'll definitely love to stay in touch. Thanks for doing this. Great, appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. Cheers. This episode is brought to you by Cook Insurance — your trusted insurance broker in Atlantic Canada for 50 years. Insurance is complex, and the Cook team focuses on delivering

122:17comprehensive solutions for your construction needs, including builders risk, wrap-up liability, performance bonds, and project-specific construction insurance. 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 has been able to build a strong relationship with the folks over at FCA Surety. FCA Surety is heavily engaged in supporting the Atlantic Construction marketplace and helping contractors build their businesses. And we can't recommend them

122:43enough. 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 flavor. 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 them the ability to draw on numerous experiences to help clients navigate

123:11items like sub-trade construction disputes, liens, and supply risk management. These are things that separate FCA Surety from the pack. Make sure to give the guys a call over at FCA Surety for all of your bonding and surety needs.

123:37items like sub-trade construction disputes, liens, and supply risk management. These are things that separate FCA Surety from the pack. Make sure to give the guys a call over at FCA Surety for all of your bonding and surety needs.