The new Green Building Centre of George Brown College that received financial support from the Harper Government will benefit the southern Ontario businesses working on innovating sustainable construction.
The Honourable Diane Finley, Member of Parliament for Haldimand-Norfolk and Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, made the announcement at the center on behalf of the Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario).
Besides George Brown College's investment of $6.8 million, FedDev Ontario has contributed $6.6 million towards the center. The college will pool the resources in order to develop a full-scale technology development, applied research and industry service centre that will concentrate on green building construction, also called sustainable building or green construction.
The Green Building Centre will provide a chain of services initiated to provide small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the means they require to speed up the lab-to-market process and these include intellectual property management, product development, business development, third-party validation, venture creation and testing through the Building Science Lab, the International Business Office and the Business Accelerator and Entrepreneurship Centre.
SMEs will gain opportunities through this project test and develop new building products, materials and systems, including smart building automation and building retrofit materials. The improved training programs, offered by the college, will also help more number of job-ready graduates to enter into the market and progress the building section’s adoption of new methods, standards, technologies and approaches. This project will support almost 80 research alliances with industry partners. It will also generate 35 new high-value, full-time jobs.
Source: www.actionplan.gc.ca