Chandos Construction’s Impact in 2021: Building a Better World

As the year draws to a close, Chandos is reflecting on the ways their teams across the country have pursued their purpose of building a better world.

Taken from Chandos blog post:

As Canada’s only B Corp certified commercial builder, our purpose and values are at the centre of everything we do. In 2021, we worked to not only meet goals and continuously improve, but more importantly to positively impact our communities, people, and the planet.

Social procurement

Social procurement is a way to leverage the buying power of our supply chain for good in Canadian society. And we are pleased to say that we spent more than $1 million this year with impact organizations – such as B Corps, social enterprises, Indigenous businesses. We’ve established a goal to shift at least five per cent of our addressable spend towards impact organizations by 2025.

In addition to using our supply chain for good, the construction industry has a unique opportunity to embrace more inclusive hiring. We have the ability to take someone with no experience, provide on-the-job training and offer a high paying trades job. In 2021, we’ve partnered with several organizations including Embers in Vancouver and Building Up in Toronto to make that happen.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion

We’ve established a goal to ensure, at a minimum, that our workforce reflects the diversity of Canadian society.

In 2020, we conducted our first ever demographic survey to understand the diversity within our organization. We used that data to pursue diverse talent and recruiting efforts. We will be conducting a follow-up demographic survey in the first quarter of 2022 to measure our progress. We will share those results publicly.

To support our efforts and build an inclusive culture, we’ve also dedicated a day of our annual leadership conference to inclusion and diversity – featuring speakers and workshops focused on the topic. And we hosted several other learning events throughout the year – specifically on Indigenous history in Canada, and the LGBTQ2S+ community. 

Indigenous strategy

We’ve put a significant focus on Indigenous reconciliation in 2021 and hired our first national director of Indigenous strategy. This will help enhance our awareness and understanding of the culture and our colonial past. It will also allow us to embrace and move forward with specific reconciliation activities as outlined in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.

Climate leadership

To fulfill our purpose of building a better world, we must be focused on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the face of a growing climate emergency.

We looked at the footprint our organization is leaving on the planet and in November 2021, announced that we will be net zero by 2040 – across our entire portfolio of work. That means, by 2040 every building or infrastructure project we construct will not add carbon to the atmosphere. 

We estimate that our total GHG emissions for 2021 were approximately 165,000 tons – 5,700 from our own operations. To offset this operational impact, we purchased carbon credits and 6,900 trees to kickstart our carbon reduction plan.

When it comes to making an impact and achieving our purpose, we’re proud of the work we’ve done. And we’re just getting started. 

We have exciting initiatives planned for next year. Join us on the journey—as a partner, customer, team member, or supporter.

Our community of like-minded people is what makes us successful.