By Mark Buckshon
Ontario Construction News staff writer
The 2019 Buildings Show starts today at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto, and Ontario Construction News will be there.
The three-day event includes exhibitors, seminars and special events, attracting thousands of owners, designers, contractors, subtrades and suppliers.
“This will be our first year at the show as a daily construction newspaper,” says Construction News and Report Group publisher Mark Buckshon. “We’re at the same booth – 3027 – as when we published on a monthly cycle, but things will be much more intense as we meet the daily publication schedule.”
“While the Ontario Construction Act allows Certificates of Substantial Performance (CSP) and other legal notices to be published in electronic format newspapers, we knew we had to publish a real newspaper with at least eight tabloid sheet pages to comply with the regulations and statute law underlying the Act,” Buckshon said. “And that means lots of editorial content – upwards of seven to eight articles every day, along with bidding and tender information provided by DataBid.com and various public sector agencies.”
The Buildings Show/Construct Canada is a powerful event in part because it attracts so many participants, including a variety of direct and indirect business competitors. Perhaps significantly, Ontario Construction News occupies booth space previously occupied by another publisher (started by a former employee of the Construction News and Report Group) who set up a competing publication with the same OCN name in the late 1990s. “That publication closed several years ago, so we retook the trade name for our own business,” Buckshon said.
“I’m glad that, while the daily Ontario Construction News is new – we started publishing it each day on May 1 – we’ve been in business overall for more than 30 years, and participated at the Buildings Show for close to three decades.”
Buckshon and Chase will be at the booth, when they aren’t meeting other exhibitors or attending some of the show’s many seminars.
Some of the seminars highlighted by show organizers for today include:
- WS300 9:00 a.m. 2020 A Construction Tech Odyssey
- WS301 9:00 a.m. Digital Twins Bring Smart Building Benefits
- WN600 9:00 a.m. Understanding Today’s Lighting Systems: 10 Most Commonly Asked Questions
- WS302 10:30 a.m. Intelligent Buildings Can Improve Organizational Productivity
- WS303 10:30 a.m. Enough Talk, Practical Smart Building Applications
- WN118 1:00 p.m. Database Collection and Point Cloud Integration to BIM
- WS124 1:00 p.m. Do More in Less Time: How to Integrate Technology into Your Residential Construction Firm
- WS208 1:00 p.m. Smart Cities: How Technology is Aiding Sustainable Development
- WS304 1:00 p.m. Connectivity of Digital Buildings: What it is, Why do it and Network Design Considerations
- WS305 1:00 p.m. Virtual Facility and Property Management for Class B and C Properties
- WS306 1:00 p.m. Construction Software Overview: What’s Right For You?
- WS115 2:30 p.m. Social Media Analytics in Community Engagement
- WS503 2:30 p.m. Water and The Built Environment: How to Leverage IoT Technology for Risk Mitigation and Efficiency (Eddy Solutions)
Exhibitor hours in the North and South building today are 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with roundtables, seminars and workshops from 7:00 a.m to 4:00 p.m.
The show occupies both MTCC buildings, including:
- South Building: Construct Canada and PM Expo
- North Building: HomeBuilder & Renovator Expo and World of Concrete Toronto Pavilion