Course Description

Each year, HAVAN partners with BCIT's Zero Emissions Buildings Learning Centre (ZEBLC) to dive into the latest research and methodologies on high-performance homebuilding. Led by two respected BCIT School of Construction and the Environment faculty members, this course will share tools and strategies to help builders and other important collaborators involved in home design/construction, build better.

Topics:

  • Embodied carbon: Demonstration of the new carbon calculator from NRCan
  • Overheating: What can you do to reduce the risk of overheating in residential buildings?
  • Post-occupancy evaluation on acoustics of a passive house, and strategies to mitigate related issues


Approved for 2.0 CPDs in Construction Technology
Note: If you have already taken this course, repeating it on eLearn will not qualify for additional CPD points.

Thank you to our Sponsors:
Presenting Sponsor: FortisBC
Patron Sponsor: BC Housing
Speaker Sponsor: BCIT

Alex Hebert, Manager, BCIT Zero Energy Buildings Learning Centre

Alex is a professional engineer with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (Sherbrooke University). He completed a MBA with a focus in sustainability (UBC). Alex also studied at the School of Economics and Management at the Tsinghua University in Beijing and completed a certificate in Sustainable Energy Management at the BC Institute of technology (BCIT). When Alex joined BCIT (2009) as their first energy manager, both energy consumption and GHG emissions were on the rise. During his time as BCIT’s energy manager, Alex’s team managed to stabilize the increase and to reduce in-scope GHG emissions by 10% (by 50% in a pilot project covering six neighboring buildings on one of the five campuses). Before moving on to a new position as manager of zero emissions buildings, Alex worked directly with BCIT’s president to prepare and provide recommendations on how to reduce GHG emissions by 33% below 2007 levels by 2021 and by 80% below 2007 by 2050. In March 2017, BCIT’s Board of Governors approved a $7M budget to meet the 2021 target. In the last three years of his energy manager mandate, Alex led a team that completed 40 projects, saved BCIT more than $400K per year and attracted more than $4M of new capital. Alex manages the BCIT Zero Energy Buildings Learning Centre (ZEBLC). The ZEBLC provides a full suite of courses that are short and hands-on. The courses are offered at BCIT (at the High Performance Building Lab), on-the-road (with the lab-in-a-box kit) and more recently online (as we adapt to the new COVID-19 reality). He has authored courses such as Decision Making for Energy Manager and Hands-on Introduction to Zero Energy Buildings.

Doug McFarlane, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT)

Doug is an instructor in the Alternative Energy Technology program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT). He has been teaching and developing curriculum in the program since it started in 2011. Doug teaches courses in Life Cycle Assessment, Clean Energy Technology, Bioenergy, and Economics of Clean Energy Technology. Recently, Doug has worked with Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) developing learning materials for a short course on NRCan’s Material Carbon Emissions Estimator (MCE2) – a tool for calculating the embodied carbon in residential buildings.

Course curriculum

  • 1

    Chapter 1

    • Before You Get Started

    • Agreement to HAVAN Academic Integrity Policy

    • Part 1

  • 2

    Chapter 2

    • Part 2

  • 3

    Chapter 3

    • Part 3

  • 4

    Chapter 4

    • Part 4

    • Feedback

    • Declaration of Completed Work Assignment