As the demand for housing continues to grow, it is more important than ever to prioritize energy efficiency and sustainability in residential construction and renovation. Whole house energy retrofits play a crucial role in meeting these goals, while also addressing the need for resiliency in the face of climate change and upcoming regulatory changes.
The Importance of Whole House Energy Retrofits in Canada
Shawna HendersonOctober 20, 2023
This Must Be The Place, Season 3: Another 18 Episodes of BS*
Shawna HendersonJuly 06, 2022
Hard to believe, but 7 July is the launch of Season Three of This Must Be the Place: The Building Science podcast! With 36 great episodes under our belt, we decided to change things up a bit for this season. Our next 18 episodes will be broken into three themes,...
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 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.
A deeper discussion of deeper energy efficiency measures
Shawna HendersonSeptember 25, 20142 comments
Here's a good read from Nate Adams from Energy Smart Ohio, on problems associated with energy efficiency programs, single-action bias and low-hanging fruit. It comes with the above GREAT graph showing the fallacy of diminishing returns on energy efficiency measures. The red line indicates what we think happens...
Explaining Concepts without Using Your Hands.
Shawna HendersonSeptember 11, 2014
There's a fine line to walk between simplifying information and dumbing it down so that it's useless. Concepts need to be understood. That's the challenge for anyone in training, but especially so for on-demand training, where there is no direct contact between a learner and the trainer. In face-to-face situations,...
Producing online training
Shawna HendersonJune 06, 2014
We've been in the depths of production of our own courses for several months now, and we are now working with a few clients on some custom courses. We've ironed out a lot of the kinks along the way. Key to a successful and on-time deliverable? A strong project manager...
Why we need good training in building science
Shawna HendersonMarch 18, 2014
There are lots of horror stories out there about mold, rot, stink, decay, health problems and even death associated with energy efficiency measures and airtight houses. Most of them come from the early days of 'live' experiments where good things were done, with all the right intentions but only half of the concept was in place...house-as-a-system was not the by-word of the late 70s/early 80s homebuilding/renovating world. And in many instances where new horror stories appear, it's pretty obvious to those who are conversant in building science that 'house-as-a-system' is ***still*** not the by-word of the homebuilding/renovating world.X
Just in Time Training...what does that mean?
Shawna HendersonMarch 13, 20142 comments
Just in Time Training = giving people the training they need when and where they need it. The people who are actually carrying out the building and renovating, labourers, framers, insulators, those folks don't often (never) get invited to sit through days of in-class training to improve their understanding of building science and how to apply that understanding to what they are being asked to do on site. Why? Because they are so very valuable on site. If they are in class, the site shuts down. Or someone needs to step into their role for the days they are in class. X
Value Chain and Core Competencies
Shawna HendersonMarch 05, 20141 comment
Training in building science and energy efficiency is essential to moving the house building industry forward into Net Zero Energy, successfully. Many people in our industry do not see the entire value chain. It’s a complicated one – easy to see in this diagram how the home building industry is a hot, fragmented mess of experts and expertise, completely at odds with itself sometimes.
Online training and core competencies
Shawna HendersonMarch 03, 2014
Building a self-directed online training program is a real challenge...it's hard to determine what level of understanding your audience starts out with because you have no interaction with them. Unlike face-to-face training, you have no chance to gear the course to the learners on the fly, or offer other resources or extra explanations. In any case, when you are creating a program for learning, core competencies are what you want to establish and improve. A core competency is fundamental knowledge, ability, or expertise in a specific subject area or skill set. There needs to be a way of benchmarking understanding of the basic concepts so that you can create a foundation for a useful learning program.X