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Under Their Own Power

The world is in a period of growing energy insecurity, and municipal and business leaders are focusing attention on improving the energy resiliency of their…

Renewing Renewal

Many designers and builders of infrastructure are motivated by the public good; they appreciate that their water treatment plants, sewer systems, electrical networks, and other…

Too Hot for Comfort

As cities grow, they get hotter—and without proper mitigation efforts, they are projected to heat up even more. Researchers at Arizona State University and the…

A Guide to Change

The new ISO 55000 standard identifies four fundamentals of proper asset management: value, alignment, leadership, and assurance. Of those, some of the biggest challenges are…

Room to Grow

When the Ontario government passed Greenbelt legislation in 2005, with the stated goal of protecting sensitive, beleaguered forests and waterways surrounding the Greater Toronto Area,…

Your P3 Policy Framework

The next decade will be a period of significant public-policy and program-delivery transformation as governments—particularly municipal governments—balance the public’s expectation for high-quality, responsive, and affordable…

Aboriginal Power

From coast to coast, Canada’s Aboriginal communities are flipping a clean-energy switch—and this story, which is still unfolding, is a classic Canadian tale filled with…

Smart Assets

The long-awaited ISO 55000 series of standards was officially released in January 2014 and is composed of three separate standards. The first—ISO 55000, “Overview, Principals…

A Smarter City

By Jim Dobbs Urban theorist Jane Jacobs called cities “problems in organized complexity.” Consider Jacobs’s example of a public park: a park’s use depends on…

Silent but Deadly

A massive explosion rocked the Regina Consumers’ Co-operative Refineries in October 2011, injuring 52 people. Investigators concluded that there was “a catastrophic failure” in a…

What Lies Beneath

In 2012, the Damage Information Reporting Tool (DIRT) reported more than 230,000 incidents of underground utility damage during excavation across Canada and the United States—up…

In Line

The City of Ottawa is embarking on the largest infrastructure project in its history. Expected to cost around $2.1 billion, the Confederation Line (No. 18…

The Future of Renewables

At a national level, when Canada is compared to other countries, the renewable energy forecast appears to predict a safe, steady increase in capacity. However,…

Stand Up to Sprawl

The sprawling, outward expansion of Canadian cities to provide lower-priced houses to growing populations threatens the financial future of many Canadian local authorities and pushes…

Finding Your Way

Canada’s urban centres are moving—or at least, they are investing heavily in moving people for the future. Almost every municipality in the Greater Toronto Area…

Beyond the Money

Public-private partnerships (P3) are often viewed as a way for cash-strapped municipalities to meet increasing fiscal challenges. It is true that P3s—or alternative finance and…

Data Overload

There is great value in big data if you know where to look—and that’s especially true for the electricity sector, which is well positioned for…

From Vision to Reality

Communities across Canada are grappling with concerns about energy security, global warming, and environmental impacts of energy. In the search for ways to plan for…

Slow Uptake

A common theme among Canadian municipalities is the struggle to maintain, repair, and replace deteriorating municipal infrastructure like roads, water, and sewer networks. Traditionally, communities…

All Wrapped Up

The number-one question asked at every construction industry function is whether government plans to bundle. Project bundling, or combining a number of smaller projects into…

In the Know

It’s not rocket science. Effective communication  with the public about infrastructure decision-making, service disruptions, and ongoing projects is a no-brainer and not terribly difficult to…

Future-Proof Cities

This year may well go down as the year of the flood. For people living along the Red River in Manitoba, and many other waterways…