Construction in Focus

Canada’s Building Trades Unions (CBTU) is advocating for a standardized safety training approach in the construction industry, noting that the current system where individual provinces and territories manage their own safety training programs is plagued by inefficiencies and fragmentation.

Amazon will invest another $10 billion to build a data centre campus in Montgomery County, Missouri, a project that not only includes the campus but also improvements to roads and water infrastructure in the region, including a new bridge over the Norfolk Southern Railway and a water system that Amazon plans to transfer to the local utility after construction.

As another summer season promises hot weather and lots of sunlight, it’s important for many of today’s homeowners to have their favourite outdoor spot be one that’s closer to home—in fact, to have that spot be part of the home itself. Generations have centred their summer activities around the fabled backyard and patio space, and as time goes on, new improvements and approaches to outdoor living are being introduced to make it the ultimate place for rest, relaxation, and recreation.

Part of the “Jobsite of the Future” initiative, Suffolk Construction plans to embed artificial intelligence (AI) into the construction process to improve on-site operations. Using an AI engineer, per a new company directive, construction sites countrywide will have a new layer of support to solve pain points in the building process. According to CEO John Fish, cost increases and continued labour woes require new solutions, which he hopes to overcome through the initiative.

Heavy civil contracting is an unforgiving business. Margins are tight, weather and soil conditions can derail a schedule overnight, and the work itself—moving earth and preparing sites for everything that comes after—rarely gets the spotlight. For RAWSO Constructors, a Tennessee-based earthwork and utility contractor that has grown from a single rented skid steer into an operation of roughly 200 people, that lack of glamour is part of the point.

Meta has earmarked $115 million for a workforce development program designed to fast-track the delivery of free skilled trades training and the attainment of industry credentials. Dubbed America’s Workforce Academy, the initiative will offer guaranteed job opportunities on data centre construction projects upon completion.

When Sean McDonald describes Erland Construction, the company his grandfather, an Air Force veteran, and his father helped build, and which he now leads as President, the language he reaches for is not about square footage or contract values. It is about foxholes. “You could go to another company and work on a similar project with a different logo on your shirt,” McDonald says. “What makes the experience different is the people.

A Montreal-based consortium of Sid Lee Architecture, Rosefellow, and the Tsatas Group are offering several floors in a planned downtown tower for Nato’s Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, a proposal that it hopes will give Montreal the edge over other cities in the running for the project, including Vancouver, Ottawa, and Toronto.

Building up Individuals and Communities It is said that play is the work of the child, and so it must be that playgrounds and parks are some of the foremost places where this critical work can take place, particularly when safety, accessibility, and inclusion are designed into the built environment.

Since its founding in 1907, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) has served as the national voice for architecture. Over more than a century, that mandate has evolved alongside the profession itself. Today, architecture is no longer confined to aesthetics or individual buildings; it is deeply embedded in conversations around housing, climate, infrastructure, and community well-being.