EW 027 – How the Emissions-Neutral Buildings Information Exchange Wins By Growing Collaboration In the Construction Industry – with Andrea Linsky, Director of Emissions Neutral Buildings

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.14)
Andrea, welcome to the show.

Andrea Linsky (00:03.29)
Thanks, Gordon.

Gordon Sheppard (00:04.992)
It's really, really good to have you here. I've had a chance to attend events that you are leading and contributing to the leadership of in so many different ways where you are doing work that will benefit my grandkids' grandkids. I mean, I mean to leave that as sort of a sneaky moment here, because we're about to get into some of your background. I know a lot of people listening don't know you. So if you had to describe yourself and some of the work that you do, please go ahead and introduce yourself.

Andrea Linsky (00:33.252)
Sure, I'm Andrea Linske, I'm the Director of Emissions Neutral Buildings at Alberta Eco Trust Foundation and I have been working with Alberta Eco Trust for over two years here on...

multiple projects but lots of them I am here to talk about you with you today. My background before joining Alberta Eco Trust I actually am a chemical engineer by training out of Montreal and McGill but I'm Alberta girl born and raised here and decided after many years in British Columbia actually working on hydrogen fuel cell technology and

with some of the local Polytechnic universities over there on energy management that it was time to come back to Alberta and do some work here.

Gordon Sheppard (01:21.174)
Love it. And I'm just gonna, I need to get into this because I know you're just, your enthusiasm, I know you blew through there pretty quick and thanks for the Cross Canada perspective that you bring to things. And you've been in many different organizations. So your perspective has built. I know that you've stacked and layered on so that some of those things that brought you back to Alberta through there. Alberta EcoTrust, if someone didn't understand what it was, please tell us what it is.

Andrea Linsky (01:27.897)
Yeah.

Andrea Linsky (01:41.136)
Sure thing. So Alberta Eco Trust is, we are a charitable organization here in Alberta. We've been around for over 30 years, which is pretty exciting to know that we've been doing this work here in Alberta. We were actually brought together by big industry in Alberta, as well as the environmental nonprofits that saw that there was sort of a vision for a better environmental future for Alberta. And today our vision is in Alberta where people and nature thrive.

and we realize this vision by working with to sort of find out where the gaps are in industry, help mobilize resources to fill those gaps. We invest in our communities through grant making and we create partnerships with lots of different entities, which is sort of goes back to our original roots, right, of these partnership between these different entities. So, and then the big piece is about building capacity as well. So supporting the rest of the industries to do the work that we see the same vision for.

Gordon Sheppard (02:41.44)
It's, okay, so the environment in Alberta, right, kind of gets a bad rap, right? And wait a minute, there's been this organization around for 30 years doing this good work to really make it better on all fronts. Is that fair?

Andrea Linsky (02:52.944)
Yeah, it's been a long journey and we've actually sort of shifted or I should say expanded our vision over the last few years as well. We started more on the natural environment as you might think here in Alberta but in the last about 10 to, I guess we're coming up on...

10 years of work here we've shifted towards looking at cities, how cities operate and the emissions that they produce and greenhouse gas emissions they produce and not only the cities but where my focus is in really the buildings within those cities. So how do you help reduce emissions in buildings in Alberta?

Gordon Sheppard (03:29.676)
Why are you so, so I've seen you speak at a women of carbon documentary event. I've seen your passion in this area and I didn't know that buildings can breathe. If I'm saying that wrong, you know, technically that's actually true. I'm maybe just kidding myself with my little bit of information. What's your passion for buildings? Like where's that from?

Andrea Linsky (03:50.0)
Yeah, it's sort of a long-rooted passion that you sort of alluded to there with my history working in the past few years. know, one of the things I learned really early on in my career is that there's this new concept, or I guess it's an older concept, around demand-side management. So it's like, let's talk about the energy that we're using on the youth side, the building side, or it might be in a vehicle or something along those lines, not just renewables as a solution to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

found that really tangible and viable when I started my work because it was something well we know how to build buildings let's look at techniques or methods to try and make them more efficient when we're first building them or if we need to retrofit them how can we do that to make things better reduce the energy and the emissions associated with it and so I've had this slowly growing career of doing it

in non-profit housing associations, working on campuses to actually reduce emissions on campuses, and then working, I worked for quite a while with the City of Edmonton as well to look at their overall building portfolio and look at ways that we can reduce emissions in the city's own infrastructure. And it's interesting because every building has a different story. Every building is built a little differently. They're all designed differently. Architects will tell you the same thing, right? And so there's a lot of different ways in creativity that can be

into figuring out how to reduce emissions but you can also it's also not so complicated like there's sort of the systematic same things that you need to look at every single time so so you know it's it's it's something that I find really interesting to be able to sort of problem-solve I guess you could say as you go through everything.

Gordon Sheppard (05:36.78)
I thank you for that description. Now I'm gonna think of buildings as snowflakes, because everyone is just individually unique and you have a passion for the snowflake, but making a better snowflake in a sense that meets this theme of sustainability that we've heard with EcoTrust, because you've landed. And the neat thing about your work is you could work anywhere, but you're here working at the EcoTrust in Alberta. How come?

Andrea Linsky (05:55.994)
Yes.

Yeah, so that is also a fun story, bringing me back from British Columbia. I actually was part of working on a bunch of different initiatives in British Columbia that are not unlike the work that I'm doing now with Alberta EcoTrust. One of those situations was Zeke, or the Zero Emissions Building Centre, in British Columbia. And they had a program where they were starting to build capacity and share knowledge with the building industry on how can we start to build

than we've been building in the past. And I left British Columbia, come back here, raise my family, and thought, you know, it would be really lovely to see something like this in Alberta. And so I spent probably about five or six years working at the City of Edmonton, really learning a lot about the landscape here and how things work and how our utility systems work, which are super complex, especially compared to British Columbia, how the building industry works a little bit, how we have different climate here that we have to work with, obviously, compared to

British Columbia which is a lot more temperate and warm and they don't need nearly as much insulation as we need for a lot of things and so

to know that and then thought to myself you know I would really love to be part of building this thing, the similar types of entities here in Alberta and it just so happened that at about the same time the cities of Edmonton and Calgary themselves had been thinking about something similar and so they'd set aside some funding to be able to do the type of work related to building capacity in buildings and Alberta Eco Trust stepped up as an external

Andrea Linsky (07:36.306)
third party entity that would lead some of this work in the province in bringing together industry and trying to create this entity. And so I was lucky to be able to come on board here at Alberta EcoTrust and work with a fantastic team to do that.

Gordon Sheppard (07:50.542)
How lucky, I get to meet so many interesting leaders. It takes forever to pack up all that knowledge into your brain. Do you know what mean? So you're the right leader at the right time in the right province, you know what mean? In the right entity to exponentially grow this opportunity. And again, I've seen you in action. I've seen you inspire an audience. I've seen you coordinate events that help, you know, bring all those stakeholders together to spread the good word, get the communication out and do those things.

I mean, it probably leads us into really kicking off the conversation here to say, if you had to describe your biggest win in this work in the last few years, what would that win be and how would you describe it?

Andrea Linsky (08:27.92)
you

Yes, so my biggest win is ENBIX or the Emissions Neutral Building Information Exchange. It is a program that Alberta EcoTrust runs and it is the entity that I was hired originally to stand up and get moving here at Alberta EcoTrust. And as I told my supervisors, the leadership team at Alberta EcoTrust, this is something I've been dreaming about for a long time and they were pretty excited to be able to hire someone that's been thinking about this for

longer than they had in some cases. it's a personal excitement for me just to be able to come and do this. I think that the true win behind setting up ENBIX, and I'll tell you a little bit more about what it is as we go here, the true win behind setting it up is that industry sees value in it and we're starting to hear from industry saying, this is something that I really want to be involved in and that I think that you can help.

me in the journey towards producing emissions neutral buildings in Alberta.

Gordon Sheppard (09:33.944)
The industry sees value in it, but if I'm a big builder, I just want to hammer those buildings up and make lots of money. So what message are you getting from industry that goes in contradiction to that?

Andrea Linsky (09:46.424)
say that that's not all they're thinking about Gord. There's absolutely desire in the industry as there are in individuals and personal lives to figure out how to reduce energy and emissions associated with what we're building here. We know that we've got some

hard things to do and buildings produce between 50 and 60 percent of the emissions in Edmonton and Calgary and so we've got to figure out how to decarbonize those or how to reduce the energy and emissions not only in their operations and the way that they like with the heating and cooling of the buildings but also in the materials that we're using to build those buildings and so what we're hearing from the industry is we know we want to have to do this we know we need to get there eventually there is some building code expectations coming down from federal

levels and federal goals that are being sent and even provincial goals at 2050 to try and hit these targets and so they know it's coming and they're on board usually corporately as like just an important point for them to be able to get to and so they they're looking to get our help on how to get there and in some cases they're leading and so we're working with them to gather their knowledge and share it back out with individuals as well.

Gordon Sheppard (10:58.478)
Thanks for holding them up. There's a lot of good actors in this situation. And I'm certainly meant to throw out the controversial question to say, wow, there's leadership coming from many different pockets of all the stakeholder group here. And you just happen to be at the hub of so much of it. We got lucky James Kirsted from Levin was on. They produce wireless light switches, which is like a sounds easy. You put a key fob in there, have a central hub, no wires in the walls. It's great. Took them seven years in 2015 to 2022.

to wait for regulations to break and Canada and the United States to be viable. So when I think about someone at the leading edge of getting regulations looked at, sharing information, getting things to move around, a company like James's company would benefit from, and he's just one little piece of that puzzle that's helping to make, in that case, they're getting less wires in the walls as sort of one way to evolve the building industry. And I don't mean to comment, I'm not an expert in that area, to say whether that's the right thing or not. I'm just saying that's an evolution.

that's happening along the way. it just, let's just boil it down to see if we can get maybe one or two sentences for the win so that we're really clear on what it is. Go ahead.

Andrea Linsky (12:01.144)
So my win is launching and seeing ENBIX, the emissions neutral building information exchange hosted by Albert Eco Trust succeed and have industry really grab a hold of it and take it where needs to go.

Gordon Sheppard (12:14.818)
Thanks for pulling that together. And launching is a daunting thing because it's not instantly there, right? You're making things up in a sense by getting this entity to start. I always like to jump into the anatomy of a win then. We kind of know what the win is. So what's the strategy, work plan, people, operations, and results behind the win? Strategically, why stand this thing up? Like, what was the sort of vision, the mission, in a sense, the goals? What would you say strategically a highlight would be?

Andrea Linsky (12:40.944)
Yeah, so the strategy was a really interesting piece for us. It came from a lot of different places. So this wasn't, I would never say this was a sort of unique or a new concept. The initial impetus came, as I mentioned, from the cities of Edmonton and Calgary. They knew that the industry would need support in meeting higher levels of building code if and when they're adopted here in Alberta. And they knew that they couldn't necessarily be the groups to do that. It needed to be sort of an industry-led initiative.

that's where people turn to each other for support and moving these things forward. So they put it in their climate strategies as well as making sure that there is some funding initially set aside to help us launch everything. When we started moving into this work, partnered with a few really key industry players. One is the Smart, Sustainable, Resilient Infrastructure Association based out of Alberta that supports innovation in this

realm as well as some key industry players like the Calgary Construction Association who've been leading Charge Forward in this work for quite some time. And we knew that we had to look at, we didn't want to reinvent the wheel. This is something that exists in Vancouver as I've already mentioned. The New York Energy Exchange is another great example of this. There's quite a few in Europe as well as in Washington. So we did our research, we went out, we looked at what was already existing. We pulled from those the different models.

because they're all kind of unique, right? Each jurisdiction has different barriers that they're running into in trying to meet these higher performance goals. So how are they going to be able to do that? Like how do they support the industry getting through them will result in different programming and different offerings. We pulled that all together. And then we said, we're not going to be able to make this decision. We shouldn't make this decision. The decision on what the strategy is on how we move forward needs to come from industry. So we ran a series of industry focused

workshops across...

Andrea Linsky (14:43.49)
Edmonton and Calgary to really pull from them and say, hey, here's what's available. Here's what we could do. Here's where we think based on our experience that we should go, but is this actually something valuable to you? And that led to the development of something we call Shaping the Exchange, which is a great report that's available on our ENBIX website that sort of shows what where the barriers are, what people think they need support in doing here in Alberta, what's unique about Alberta and what are sort of the guiding framework for how

this organization needs to be set up. One of the things that they made really clear is that our goal is to accelerate building and renovation practices that lead to emissions neutral built environments in Alberta for both new and existing buildings and all types of buildings. So we've got these really sort of big goal of let's just improve the buildings right as you could say and we do that a lot of different ways. They helped us figure that out as well when we were developing this strategy we share knowledge or help others share knowledge.

We foster innovation and leadership in the sector. Sometimes we're leading, sometimes others are leading and we're helping. We're strengthening collaboration, so sometimes we bring people into a room that might not necessarily always be in the same room. A good example of that is we work regularly with the construction associations across Alberta, as well as the different built entities which represent residential builders and the construction associations of the commercial builders. So let's bring them together, let's talk about topics that they might not

usually talk about because they work in such sort of unique realms. And then we also

set out these guiding principles and the guiding principles were really important because industry said like if you're not going to follow these guiding principles we're not really that interested in being part of what you're doing and so that was really helpful for me as a leader in the first year whenever we had new ideas coming to us about what we should be offering or how we should be doing things I can say is it in line with our guiding principles and if it's not then it's not a good fit for us. We have tons of partners let's go find one of them and see if they can take on

Andrea Linsky (16:49.626)
this piece of initiative or work, it's not something that will resonate well with the industry that we're working with.

Gordon Sheppard (16:55.918)
Thank you for that detailed, well-prepared description of maybe one of the best strategic planning processes that I've ever heard. The typical strategic planning process throws like a few people in a room and they just sort of bang out something. And then in your case, the temptation would be, especially with the entity that you're setting up going, well, here's how we're doing things and then going out. this patience to get the iterative buy-in over time, how powerful has that been for the buy-in?

process to like I that would have just given you a chance not only to network with people but actually to get their input that they would feel that they're contributing to moving it forward.

Andrea Linsky (17:31.832)
Yeah, absolutely. It's been extremely important, not only for pulling together the actual work that we're doing, but also...

our key funding stakeholders need to know that this is actually hitting the audience that they want it to hit, right? And so working with any of our funders saying, well, here's what we've been told by industry. So that's what we're going to do. If you want us to do something else, like we can have a discussion with industry about whether or not I think that that's a value, but it's really sort of helped us not only pull in the right industry people and say, hey, you were at the table. You said you wanted to do this. Let's have some discussions about doing this together.

but also show value to the funding streams that coming in as well.

Gordon Sheppard (18:19.065)
Fantastic. mean, anytime we have a strategy, I go to the second step and say, well, we need a work plan. was a moment when ENBIX didn't, there wasn't a fancy acronym. There was an idea. It was a little thing. So there's sort of a first moment when that starts to incubate. And then we get to this moment in time. How would you describe the total timeline, like in months or years, and maybe some highlights in that sort of work plan along the way?

Andrea Linsky (18:41.572)
Yeah, the work plan was one of those like you had to figure it out pretty quickly in part because a big part of our platform is our website. So enbix.ca is where we host a lot of the content. We work across Alberta. We've pulled in funding streams from additional places to allow us to do that. And so we need to have this sort of central platform where anyone can get to it and it doesn't have to be in person. And when we were setting up the website, we knew we had to have sort of

key things that we were offering to industry to meet the goals that we had set out during our strategic planning. And so these are things like a central website where anyone can come in to list the events that they're going to have anywhere in the province. And so now if you were looking for anything related to emissions neutral buildings training in Alberta or capacity building, we want to be the hub, like the one place that you come and you'll find what you're looking for. We've got a resource page, which is really important where we're pulling resources that we're making

from comments from industry saying, I don't know if this would work in Alberta, can you do some research for us? We go out do some research, write up a report and publish it. Or we're pulling from existing stuff across the whole world. If it's relevant in our climate zone or in our current utility setup or whatever it happens to be, we're making sure to make sure that that information is available. So what we needed to do is set up this framework, the website and the background behind it. We have a ton of

that we host, not just other people's events, with these sort of key pieces of lines of work that we're focusing on. And once we had those set up in our work plan, it allowed us to go back to industry. So we had that framework set up. We could go back to industry and say, okay, so are we hitting things correctly? Are we getting the information you need out to you?

is the way that we're disseminating the information resonating with you. you want shorter events, longer events? Should we be feeding you lunch? All of these bits and pieces as we sort of go through everything. And it allows us to do what we've shifted to in the last, just in the last year now. The first year was testing out all sorts of different things. This last year we've got these four core values, or not values, but four core focus areas, I should say, that we do each year. We reevaluate each year.

Andrea Linsky (21:03.71)
What are we going to focus on this upcoming year? But we still have that framework of what we offer, how we offer it, how we engage with different players. But each year we can sort of morph those focus areas depending on what industry is asking for.

Gordon Sheppard (21:18.126)
Fantastic. So you can see it's an idea. You start to talk to people, but you say, no, we're going to actually bring, you want to help us fill in the strategic plan. And then somewhere in there, you need a hub. And you've got to, that doesn't happen in a day, what you've just described. And I think you, remember talking in an earlier conversation, there are like curated articles from Northern Europe. You know what mean? Where you folks have gone in and taken the time to actually point people to the few paragraphs or whatever it is that they need that are relevant, as opposed to having to sort of comb through

type, that's the level of care that's going into the resources that you're providing for people here in this jurisdiction. I think that's fantastic. Got that website up and running. That's a huge highlight, obviously, in the work plan along the way. I hear a couple years in play with many more years to come. I think if that work plan, it'd be fun to sort of see that future part of the whiteboard get sort of worked out. Strategy and work plan, you've described them well, which is super fun. It gets us onto people. And I always like to say, well, who are the key? If you have a win, you need sort of key people along with their

maybe a description of their attitudes. We've heard a little bit about you and your enthusiasm as sort of one of the key players in this. How would you describe your attitude through the process? Was it like, this is going to be simple, every day is easy? Like how does that work as you sort of got going and where you are now?

Andrea Linsky (22:19.184)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Linsky (22:33.872)
Yeah, no, think my attitude towards this has always been really optimistic. I think in general I'm an optimistic person. So even when things get challenging, I've found it sort of as a growing opportunity to learn. One of the things we've done over the last few years in standing this up is also growing a team, right? And so...

For Alberta Eco Trust, we've grown quite a bit over the last five, five, 10 years here, almost doubling in size every year for the last few years. I think for me, it's been really, I've been really lucky to be involved in a leadership team that's really compassionate, but also...

like strong and focused and able to say, okay, we're growing. Let's figure out how to prepare for this. Let's make sure that we're doing things that will help our team grow and help Alberta Eco Trust succeed in this massive boom that we're going through. So we've been sort of working through that as a team, which has been really interesting. And it's allowed us to make sure that the teams that we're building at Alberta Eco Trust and in the buildings team at ENBIX are really strong and bring a lot of really great skill sets

and talent so that we can be seen as experts as well as supporting experts, which I think is a really interesting thing to do.

Gordon Sheppard (23:59.791)
Yeah, and I've been at some of your events and it's funny, you walk up to somebody and you think they're maybe, you know, just sort of helping out, you know, put out the muffins or whatever. And then suddenly you're deep into their history and background and they've got all this experience coming from industry. Cause they're, you know, I'm seeing them front facing it for one minute in time. And in fact, they've got that depth. So it'd be fun to actually pull out all the resumes.

Andrea Linsky (24:20.09)
Yes.

Gordon Sheppard (24:20.116)
and see the gang that, know, the superhero team that you've put together at the Justice League or whatever you want to call it and made that happen. And then there's some, I just mean to mention, because we've talked about a few of the other stakeholders along the way, there's been some strong industry players too. And it'd be great to hear maybe you mention, you can mention by name or you can, you know, whatever you need to do, but tell us about some of these industry players that have been key players and again, their attitudes to making this win occur.

Andrea Linsky (24:24.56)
Thank

Andrea Linsky (24:33.424)
you

Andrea Linsky (24:44.366)
Yeah, so our industry partners have supported us in a lot of different ways. So I mentioned the ones that helped us sort of kick things off. have our cities and Bill Black at the Calgary Construction Association and Pam Gertson from CERIA, the Smart, Sustainable, Resilient Infrastructure Association. They've been heavily involved all the way through. We actually have an advisory group. So when we said we wanted to be industry-led, we meant it. And so we've got this group of industry leaders who are supporting and advising us

on the work that we're doing. That includes lots of different groups. The construction associations I mentioned, members from Build, like the residential building associations. We've got large construction association leads like Jen Hancock at Shandos. And then we've got groups like Boma and the cities, some of the larger builders like Brookfield residential. And then we've also got post-secondaries like

SAIT and engineering firms, architecture firms. So we've got a really like all of the different groups that we know we need to engage with. We keep actively going out to make sure that our advisory group is comprised of all the groups we're trying to touch. And I think, you know, they're the ones that we that know our, you know, work plans. know what we're up to on a day to day basis, I would say, or maybe not day to day, but at least month to month for sure. But

They're just sort of a doorway in, I would say, to a lot of the strong partnerships that we're building in industry, which I think it goes back to one of our guiding principles that we had is about look and see what's out there already. Figure out who's doing this. Figure out how you engage with them and how you support them if they need the support. And so that's been a big part of what we've done. We have a fantastic partnership with the Carbon Leadership Forum of Albury.

which is a separate, was an entity that was started out of sort of a hub model out of Washington and they focus on embodied carbon in buildings or the carbon associated with the construction materials that you're building with. And in Alberta, there is a great group of volunteers running CLF, the Carbon Leadership Forum, but they just didn't have the resources to really do what they needed to do as a volunteer-based organization. So we said, okay, well, can we fund you? Can we support you? We've got team members that are doing this work.

Andrea Linsky (27:12.652)
We've heard from industry we need to focus on this. We're not going to reinvent a new CLF. We'd rather work with you. So we have a formal partnership with them to do the work that they're doing. Similarly with Serea and Pam, she's an innovation focus. anytime innovation related work comes through, we say, let's go talk with our partner organization, Serea. We partner a lot with the building associations, as I mentioned, because they're the ones that actually talk every day to the builders. They understand what's going on. They know what their needs are.

They have great connections with them. We've been really lucky to go to some of these builders breakfasts where they feed them a nice meal before they go out to site and we talk about we bring our wall assemblies these these mock-up wall assemblies that we've been carrying around in our trailer We let them come and touch them and ask questions about why they would put the air barrier here instead of there in these in these sort of In these different assemblies that we've we've built that show about how to build to the high high

performance buildings. So without those partnerships, we wouldn't have access to those builders, right? We wouldn't have access to the people that we're really trying to work with. So I think that's a really important part. It wouldn't be possible without all these other people that we're working with.

Gordon Sheppard (28:26.305)
love the thoroughness in every, I can't hit you with a question where you don't know, because you've taken the time to do the work. That long process of strategic planning, that long process of assembling the right people from all these different places, it just speaks so well to the success you've had to this point and just massively to the exponential success you know is coming your way as all these, you know, as you layer on and layer on based on the guiding principles.

that you have in your areas of focus. this is so interesting. Any time we have a win, the four step is operationally and we need to get things in place. We heard a lot about your website. Now we know you've got demonstration walls that you run around the province to show off to builders. And you know, that's sort of an operational thing to do. Any other operational highlights that you'd like to point out in terms of getting this win to occur?

Andrea Linsky (29:17.025)
You know, one of the sort of shifts I think in the last few months here is now that we've got these really strong relationships with builders and we're starting to ask them what can we help with, our operations on the resource side are starting to shift a little where it's not just us compiling stuff that's happening elsewhere, we're saying, you actually are missing something to be able to do your work effectively in Alberta.

things like designing new tools in partnership with web-based developers, parametric modeling tools we call them, where we're able to actually show builders if I switch out this window type, a triple pane window with a double pane window when I'm doing a project, what kind of impact is that going to make on my final energy and emissions results? And it's a tool where they can just play around with those things without having to pay someone to do energy modeling for them, without having to spend hours rendering new models.

every single time, just to give them the ability to start having those high-level conversations up front. So I think that the ability to sort of shift in the operations to provide those more direct resources are a really important one for our team. also, on my side, I do a lot of work on continuing our operations, which is an important part. We're a charity, so all of our work, all of our funding comes from elsewhere. All of the work that we've been doing

for the work at MBICS is free or very low cost to entry, just to recoup some costs of food, for instance, to be able to run events. But as an organization, we also have to have a charitable mindset, which means every time we're working out, walking and talking with other entities, we have to look for pathways to continue to bring in the funding to be able to do our work. it's almost like you're working as an entrepreneur, but for everyone, for the betterment of everyone.

Andrea Linsky (31:17.532)
charities usually are set up and so we do a lot I do a lot of thinking about well how could I work with as I continue to work with these industry folks how do I show them enough value that they can start donating to us to be able to continue to do this work across the province and so that's a big piece our funding fundraising needs never end to be able to continue our work.

Gordon Sheppard (31:40.462)
I think that's my t-shirt, entrepreneur for everyone. I think that's what I'm going to get there. And you can hear so many good things, again, thoughtfully going into the operation. And where's the puck going? the builders need to be able to imagine what this is like. So we're going to get those tools in their hands. We're going to get the conversations in their hands. We're going to put the events in their hands. We're going to make them touch it and feel it and see it. Just how wonderful. And you can see why this win is occurring. But wow, does it ever take a lot of work on you and your team's part? And I'm sure everybody.

at the advisory level to make this occur. Finally, final steps, so we said strategy, work plan, people, operations. We get into results, quantitative and qualitative. I don't know which one you want to tackle first, maybe quantitative if you need to give us some numbers on the numbers game and then we'll talk about the qualitative part if that helps you.

Andrea Linsky (32:24.496)
Yeah, absolutely. It's been a very busy few years. One of the things I think we're really excited about is we've been able to get out on the road, as I mentioned, with the trailer and the wall assemblies. So we've run 19 training sessions in different jurisdictions across Alberta, in seven different cities. And that's formal training, not just workshops with 500 professionals. At those formal ones, we've hosted 115 events with over 3,000 professionals at them.

And one of my favourite numbers is the number of one-on-one meetings we've had with people just to talk about what we've been doing. And in the first year it was around, it was around 250, 300 people that we talked to. And in the first year, two years of doing this now, we're almost at 500 individual conversations with people just to let them know what we're doing. Because one of the things I've found is that, you know, it's really about those relationships, you the people that we've talked and we need to make sure they know what we're doing. And often they're like, why are you

this. I'm like well we're a charity or this is something we're focused on from a goal to do something about these buildings right and then there's the conversation changes a little bit. interesting you're not here to sell me something we're here to talk about talk about how to get there as a a province so it's pretty exciting.

Gordon Sheppard (33:43.487)
I love it. And you're reminding me even of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, a nonprofit that's out there to help a lot of folks switch into the AI world as they kind of do that. They've got to do a lot of education similarly in the way that you're talking about doing that now. Those are great numbers. You're reaching so many people, the one-on-ones. So you drink a lot of coffee. Do you know what I mean? you're out, right?

Andrea Linsky (34:01.36)
I'm sorry.

Well, in the world of Zoom, it's a lot of Zoom time. Not as much coffee, but yeah, it's been really great to sort of connect with people. And I think my two favorite sort of personal reflections on knowing that we're getting where we need to go was when we had a bunch of large residential builders come to us and say, you know, we're running into barriers to doing higher performance construction in Alberta.

a multitude of different angles. We would really love it if you could help us organize, bring together the top five builders in each of the big cities, unpack those barriers, figure out where they're coming from, share that information with the people who can help us remove it, maybe host some workshops with those individuals. And when they came to us asking us to do that, I knew we'd hit that win, right? Of being able to say, Envyx is doing what it's supposed to do, it's supporting industry and getting to these higher performance buildings.

things.

And the other good one that I really enjoyed was I used to say, you know, I will know that ENBIX has done what it needs to do when I sit down or meet someone who says to me, hey, have you ever heard of ENBIX? This is really neat idea. And someone I've never met before. it finally happened about half a year ago when I went out for coffee with an architect from Calgary. And that was a real coffee in that case. And she was like, yeah, you're doing some really interesting work. Have you ever heard of ENBIX? And I was like, yes.

Andrea Linsky (35:34.446)
So that was my win. It was fantastic.

Gordon Sheppard (35:37.814)
Well, you can hear the joy that you have for it. You can hear the joy that everybody that you've described has for it as well. And you can hear the mission driven part, right? It's one thing to be 30 years in Alberta, adjust the organization, support the ENBIX momentum and be on trend for an absolutely needed trend as your piece of the puzzle taking us all forward, you know, certainly in Alberta and then the global influence that you're gonna have along the way. Wow, it'd neat to talk to you in a couple of years

You know, you've got your cool software now and you've got your great website and there's gonna be even more, I'm sure, as you layer on and add on to making these things happen. And you've been winning the hearts and minds as a trusted place to go. If I've got some barriers, I'm gonna go to you first. So it takes a while to earn that trust and be that one that sort of folks can go to. I just, Andrea, if people need to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Andrea Linsky (36:29.82)
You know, our website has a ton of information on how you can get involved with ENBIX or even get a hold of our team. So that's nbics, e-n-d-i-x dot c-a. And you can get lost for hours in there if you're like me. So enjoy.

Gordon Sheppard (36:43.69)
Well, and I can't, I've been out to some of your events. I think they're terrific. I can't recommend it enough. Andrea, thank you so much for being on the show.

Andrea Linsky (36:51.226)
Thank you very much, boy.

Gordon Sheppard (36:56.01)
All right.