Community Workforce Response Grant BC Training

September 16, 2026 | Current CWRG Intake 3 deadline: October 23, 2026 at 4:30 p.m. PT

Current intake: B.C.'s Community Workforce Response Grant (CWRG) is accepting applications for workforce training projects beginning in early 2027. If you're putting an application together now, you need to identify the workforce need, proposed training, training provider and costs as part of your project planning.

If your project involves housing construction, renovation, energy retrofits or building performance, existing training may be able to fill some of that need without your organization having to develop a new curriculum from scratch.

The starting point is always: What workforce problem are we trying to solve?

For organizations working in housing construction and renovation, one of those problems may be the growing need for practical building-performance knowledge across the workforce. Not everyone working on a house needs a professional designation or industry certification. But achieving higher levels of energy performance under the BC Energy Step Code requires people across a project to understand why details such as insulation, airtightness and moisture management matter.

It's not enough for someone to know that a stud cavity needs to be filled with insulation because that's what the plans (or the crew chief) say. People working in the field benefit from understanding why insulation needs to be installed properly, why continuity of the air barrier matters, what happens when those details are missed, and how their work can affect code compliance, energy performance, occupant health and the durability of the house.

Read about the 5 Cs of Success >>>

That need can extend across a project. Project managers, estimators, supervisors, crew leads, carpenters, labourers and other project stakeholders like those in technical sales interact with a house differently, but decisions made across those roles can affect its eventual performance.

Housing performance also matters to professionals whose work intersects with occupant health. Occupational therapists, health-care providers, community health workers and housing-support organizations all work with people whose asthma or other chronic illnesses may be affected by indoor conditions. They can benefit from understanding how ventilation, moisture, humidity, air leakage and thermal conditions all work together to inform healthy indoor environments. The goal isn't to turn health professionals into building practitioners, but to help them recognize when the indoor environment may warrant further investigation and communicate effectively with the housing and energy professionals who can help.

Nobody in the world of housing needs the same occupational skills or credentials. They do benefit from a common understanding of how the house works as a system and how their part of the work affects the whole.

Blue House Energy provides applied building-science training for Part 9 housing. Our training is structured in modules so it can be broad enough to give participants a good understanding of how the house works as a system and technical enough to be useful in the field.

Participants build from fundamental concepts such as heat, air and moisture flows into their practical application in houses. They explore how those principles relate to foundations, walls, windows and doors, exposed floors, roofs and ceilings, insulation, airtightness, ventilation and other components and systems that affect building performance and occupant health.

The objective isn't to turn everyone on the project into a building scientist. It's to give people enough understanding to recognize why the details matter, what can happen when they go wrong and how the decisions they make affect the performance of the whole house.

BHE has delivered building-science, construction-technology and energy-efficiency training to housing professionals across Canada for more than a decade and is a recognized training provider for B.C.'s housing industry through BC Housing and the Home Performance Contractor Network (HPCN).

A workforce cohort doesn't have to consist entirely of beginners or entirely of experienced workers. Someone entering home construction or renovation may need to start with the fundamentals of building science and develop an understanding of how the different parts of a house interact. Someone who's been working in the field for years may already know how to construct an assembly but benefit from a stronger understanding of why it performs the way it does or how changing energy and code requirements affect familiar construction practices.

An estimator may need to understand the performance implications of materials and assemblies. A project manager or supervisor may need a broader systems-level understanding to coordinate work across a project. A crew member may need to understand why an air-barrier transition or insulation detail that looks insignificant can have consequences for the completed house.

BHE's modular structure provides enough flexibility to accommodate those different starting points. New entrants can build from the fundamentals, while experienced workers can fill gaps, update their knowledge and connect what they already know from the field to building science, energy performance and code compliance. Mixed cohorts and whole teams can develop a common building-performance language without requiring everyone to have the same job or level of experience.

BHE's supported cohort model combines self-study with weekly facilitated sessions. Participants work through applied building-science concepts in manageable modules over time rather than being taken off the job site for several consecutive days.

Weekly sessions revisit and reinforce important concepts, answer questions and connect the learning to what participants are seeing and doing in the field. The approach uses established adult-learning practices including repetition and reinforcement over time and opportunities to apply new knowledge in context.

For employers and workforce programs, that also reduces disruption. Participants can continue working while they learn. Someone can learn about airtightness, insulation or moisture management, encounter a related condition at work and bring that experience or question back to the next session.

BHE training isn't designed around earning a designation. Our applied building-science curriculum is product-, brand-, program- and certification-neutral.

Participants can use the knowledge directly in their existing jobs, use it as a foundation as they enter the sector, or carry it into more specialized training or certification later. The purpose is to build transferable knowledge rather than require everyone to follow the same professional pathway.

A certificate of completion is available to document the BHE training completed. It may potentially be useful as evidence in a Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR) process where accepted by the assessing organization, but a BHE certificate of completion is not itself a formal trade or professional credential.

Existing BHE training includes Construction Technology, Net Zero Energy for New Construction, Whole House Energy Retrofit, Building Science Basics, Envelope Fundamentals, High Performance Building Envelope and Home Performance Accelerator.

The right choice depends on the workforce problem rather than the course catalogue. Depending on your project, BHE training could be configured into a learning pathway, or incorporated into a supported cohort with weekly facilitated sessions, participant support and progress tracking.

If you are working on the training section of an application now, we can help identify appropriate existing training, determine how it could fit into the larger workforce pathway, develop a proposed training scope and provide a quote for the application.

Learn more about on-demand course volume seat options >>>

Learn more about a supported cohort package >>>

We love collaborating. We also know our place. We’re online, and we’re headquartered in Nova Scotia. CWRG requires trainers to have physical presence in BC, unless the offering is not available locally. We’re pretty confident that we provide a unique offering based on solid adult learning principles and proven delivery of engaging online training. While other organizations offer asynchonous course catalogues OR live training that’s limited to a few days, we blend the two in our supported cohort program.

BHE doesn’t cover every part of a training program, but we can definitely bring value to any training program via structured self-study curriculum that establishes a common applied-building-science foundation across the cohort, while a B.C.-based trainer or technical expert uses live or in-person time for local context, field application, discussion, troubleshooting and the specific needs of participants.

That can also make better use of limited expert time. Rather than spending much of a one- or two-day workshop introducing concepts participants can learn beforehand, the expert can spend more time helping people apply those concepts to actual houses and actual work.

Depending on the project, BHE could provide a single online course to augment existing local training, configure several courses into a pathway, or provide the self-study component around which a local expert facilitates recurring cohort sessions.

Where strong local training and industry expertise already exist, they should be used. We're not looking to replace that capacity. We're interested in helping fill the gaps.

Learn more about our commitment to building capacity >>>

If applied building science, energy efficiency, construction technology or housing retrofit knowledge is part of the workforce gap you're trying to address, tell us what you're trying to accomplish.

We'll look at what participants need to know, what they already know, what appropriate training and expertise are already available locally, and what's still missing. From there, we can determine whether existing BHE training fits, how it could be delivered and what it would cost.

That gives you a defined training component and budget to consider as you assemble your CWRG proposal.

Tell Us About Your Initiative

Book a call with our program coordinator, Carla, to discuss your project