Blog

The Value of Continuing Education

Shawna HendersonSeptember 14, 2017

To be successful in residential construction, you need skilled hands on the tools. That’s the main reason people hire a contractor, a builder, or a renovator with knowledge and experience. But know-how is not the only reason a firm gets hired. To be successful, your construction firm needs the same strong skills as any other thriving business.

Three Things You Need to Know About Energy Efficiency in Houses

Shawna HendersonFebruary 20, 2017

If you work in home construction and renovation, you know about energy efficiency measures. But do you really know it? If you’re trying to figure out if you need this course or not, take a shot at answering these questions: What happens to the neutral pressure plane when you air...

What Grade Does Your Insulation Belong In?

Shawna HendersonFebruary 01, 2017

In the US, there’s a requirement for HERS raters to determine if batt insulation has been installed properly. There are three ‘grades’ of batt installation, with a Grade 1 installation being the best and Grade 3 being the worst. When batt insulation is installed properly, it touches all six sides...

Presenting? Use Adult Education Techniques To Up Your Game

Shawna HendersonSeptember 26, 2016

When you're presenting at a conference, you have a limited amount of time to engage your audience and offer experience or participation, but you can certainly engage your audience more directly by knowing something about adult education. This was part of the session I presented at RaterFest! The thing is,...

Building an Industry With No Capacity

Shawna HendersonMay 20, 20161 comment

After reading many reports and white papers on energy efficiency and the housing industry in North America, I am continuously stunned at how many times references to need for comprehensive trades training in energy efficiency comes up, yet there is little more indicated than it should be considered. Reducing energy...

11 Flavours of Sustainability

Shawna HendersonMay 19, 2016

This blog article first appeared on Shawna's Bfreehomes blog in April 2016. Please reblog as you want! Keeping track of what's going on in the world of low-impact, sustainable housing is, and was, a challenge. It's something that our CEO, Shawna Henderson, has been passionate about since the early 1990s....

The Value of Continuing Education for the Homebuilding Industry

Shawna HendersonMay 03, 2016

Shawna wrote about the value of continuing education. The article was featured in Tarion's latest 'Breaking Ground newsletter. Posted here for all to read! Competency training and continuing education/professional development are the things that fulfill Blue House Energy's mission to help build industry capacity. Gaps in training and knowledge have...

7 Areas of Business All Builders Need to be Successful

Shawna HendersonMarch 24, 2016

Builders need to be good on the tools. But they also need to know about construction technology and building science, building codes, have a certain level of business savvy, know about project management, the legal issues that affect their business, and they also need to cultivate mad customer service skillz....

How To Say What A Job Does, Part 2

Shawna HendersonMarch 15, 2016

Job Task Analysis can be a formidable challenge. It’s about breaking down a job into tasks and then analyzing them. How do you best say what a job does? There needs to be method, or it ends up in madness. Here’s a simplified version of the process for ‘just in time’ or ‘on the job’ training

How much of a building science wonk is BHE CEO Shawna?

Shawna HendersonMarch 09, 20161 comment

When they think you don't know but you know Got to love Marisa Tomei Posted by Hardcore Italians on Wednesday, March 2, 2016

How to Say What A Job Does, Part 1

Shawna HendersonMarch 08, 2016

One of the best ways to methodically say what the job does is to use a process called Job Task Analysis (JTA). Job Task Analysis (JTA) is not only used to create a training program, but it is also used to create accurate and valid job descriptions. Because JTA defines the required knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) for job performance, it is often the basis of a checklist of mandatory demonstrated requirements for recruiting.

Competency-based Training Levels Explained

Shawna HendersonMarch 01, 2016

Competency-based training is learner‑focused, and lends itself to independent study, allowing learners to study at their own pace, reviewing or practising challenging learning outcomes as they need, and moving quickly through the competencies in which they are more adept. In an earlier post, the four levels of complexity were outlined. These levels measure the student’s depth of knowledge.

What is Competency Training?

Shawna HendersonJanuary 13, 2016

Competency-Based Training is a way to teach concrete skills. Every individual skill or learning outcome (the competency), while part of a larger educational or training goal, is a single learning unit, to be worked on one at a time. The level of competency is determined by the organization requiring the...

Exploring the Solterre Concept Cottage

Shawna HendersonJune 10, 2015

  Here's an article that was just published in Home Energy Magazine (July/August 2015). To read the whole article, you must have an online subscription. It's about a very cool project that our colleagues Jennifer Corson and Keith Robertson at Solterre Design designed and built to test drive a range...

Learning Platform Needs - what do you want?

Shawna HendersonMay 06, 2015

 We're expanding our online learning services to include: Learning management system (LMS) implementation and management Integration of e-commerce Development of new content and conversion of face-to-face content for online delivery To make sure this fits with your needs, we've developed a short, anonymous online survey. Please take 5 minutes (or...