Construction companies have been hit by what the AGC referred to as “a double whammy” due to rising fuel and material costs, which have had an impact on input costs overall. While many construction firms are absorbing a lot of the cost increases, there is no telling how long this can be sustained, as demand remains weaker in most segments besides data centres.

Petroleum products have been the hardest hit. The producer price index for diesel fuel more than doubled over the past year, up 115.2 percent, impacting transportation costs and the costs of materials like liquid asphalt. Tariffs have also wreaked havoc on metal prices. Aluminum mill shape prices were up 25.2 percent year-over-year, while steel mill products were up 27.6 percent and copper and brass mill shapes up 30 percent. Steel availability and pricing have been a challenge, with order books for some materials full through spring 2027, which impacts existing orders and limits the new orders that can be taken.

“Public policy uncertainty and instability impedes construction activity. Full stop. Having a new transportation bill is necessary before states plan for and launch major projects that boost demand for construction and create opportunities for economic growth,” said Jeffrey D. Shoaf, Chief Executive Officer of the AGC. “Resolving trade disputes will ease the price uncertainty that slows private construction.”

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Benjamin Hatton is a materials science and engineering professor at the University of Toronto and leads the Hatton Lab for bio-inspired materials and design. The lab is working on a window concept that borrows from creatures like squid, octopus, and krill and their ability to respond to the sun’s rays, moving pigments within their cell structures to change colours.

Hatton is working to design a pigment-shifting window that responds to light, letting winter light and heat in, scattering it for even distribution to keep buildings naturally lit, while blocking the summer sun and the heat it generates.

The panels are designed to move liquids containing additives (carbon black to absorb light and titanium dioxide to scatter it) through channels carved into thin plastic sheets, enabling improved performance without the need to replace the entire window. The goal is to develop a thin application for existing windows that sticks to the window like a fluid-infused sticker to support retrofit rather than replacement. The technology could be controlled by AI but first it has to be scaled for use.

Separate prototypes are being tested in buildings on campus, while a lab with a dedicated simulation room is currently under development. The research is promising. In 2023, research showed through simulations that one version of the windows with three fluid layers could reduce building energy use for heating by 75 percent, electric lighting use by 20 percent, and total operational energy use by 43 percent versus the best available electrochromic technology on the market, which is typically used in airplanes (though extremely costly and unlikely to be used in an entire building retrofit, especially where there is variable climate).

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The funds will be used to collect data about wind speeds and ocean surface conditions, setting the stage for additional research related to the conditions of the ocean floor, which are set to commence next year.

About $5 million will be used to deploy a network of floating light detection and ranging (LiDAR) buoys to measure wind speeds and ocean conditions, while an additional $3 million will support modelling activities such as plans for transmission lines, as well as underwater surveys for potential cable routing. The remaining funds will go toward subsea drilling to better understand the sea floor conditions.

If approved, the first phase of the project, valued at around $60 billion, could generate five gigawatts of electricity, doing so as soon as 2033. Nova Scotia requires only 2.4 gigawatts to supply the entire province. Close to $40 billion of the first phase spend is slated for turbine infrastructure, while $20 billion is targeted for transmission projects.

“Even at this level of ambition, the project could provide electricity for up to 1.5 million homes here in Canada,” Federal Energy Minister, Tim Hodgson, said during a news conference at Halifax harbour. “That’s three times the number of homes in Nova Scotia and creates an incredible export opportunity for Nova Scotian Power.”

The goal of this investment is to provide information upfront to improve the quality of bids, giving potential project partners valuable information about the subsea and what it will cost to bring the project to life. Nova Scotia Premier, Tim Houston, said the funding will reduce development timelines by at least a year.

If all phases of the project come to fruition, Wind West could generate upwards of 60 gigawatts of electricity. The excess electricity produced could be used to supply 27 percent of Canada’s total energy demand.

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This marks the manufacturer’s first entry into Europe’s sub-80hp backhoe loader segment. The EU Stage V engine uses a diesel oxidation catalyst and diesel particulate filter, without requiring selective catalytic reduction or AdBlue.

Featuring an extendable dipper arm with inline cylinder design for optimal visibility and reach, the front loader offers mechanical parallel lift and has a range of attachments to chose from. It also features a load-sensing hydraulic system with a variable displacement pump, a Powershuttle transmission, digital instrument cluster, LED working lights, Bluetooth radio, and air conditioning as part of the standard package. Additional options include Ride Control, hydraulic breaker lines, a bi-directional auxiliary hydraulic circuit, and a choice of loader buckets.

Likewise, Case’s new electric mini tracked loader, the TL100EV, expands its electric utility machine range for use in landscaping, urban use, and farming applications. With a tipping load of 1.3 tonnes, it uses three independent electric motors, two for ground drive and one for hydraulics, which promotes low noise and zero emissions. Attachments can be used via a Common Industry Interface coupling system.

The TL100EV comes in two track configurations: a narrow track version and a wide track version. The narrow-track version measures 890mm wide, or 914mm with a bucket, while the wide-track version measures 1,026mm, or 1,067mm with a bucket. Non-marking rubber tracks are available for indoor work.

Case has also updated its 221G and 321G compact wheeled loaders for greater operator comfort and visibility, chiefly a redesigned door featuring additional side glazing and a lowered front console, which improve sightlines, as well as ergonomic changes that were previously integrated on larger models.

A new deluxe cab has become the standard, as well as the seat-mounted control console, adjustable steering column, and improved control layout. Front windscreen glazing has increased by 20 percent, while glazed door surface area has increased by 71 percent. A redesigned right-hand door, additional side glazing, and a lowered front console are intended to improve sightlines.

Both the 221G and 321G are available in 20 and 40 kph iterations, while the 321G offers a choice of standard Z-bar kinematic or an Extended Reach (XR) loader arm.

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Permits for multi-tenant buildings also experienced growth, coming in at $5.8 billion, while the total value of permits for single-family homes was down to $2.6 billion. The value of non-residential building permits crept lower by $29.8 million to $5.1 billion.

Commercial construction plans were down $380 million to $2.2 billion, while the industrial sector experienced gains of $317.3 million, totalling $1.1 billion. Institutional building rose $32.9 million to $1.8 billion.

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Housing development cannot be arbitrary, as the unique needs of communities must be met, but conversely, developers need return on investment (ROI) to be encouraged to build, and as it stands, current market conditions are not ideal to achieve the lofty goals of governments and meet acute housing needs.

The stark reality
In Canada, the national housing agency Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) projects between 417,000 and 469,000 new units will need to come online annually through 2036 for a total of 4.7 million new homes to restore housing affordability, but the reality is that only half of that is coming to fruition, meaning the country is on track to face a cumulative deficit of 2.4 million homes.

According to CMHC, more than 1.5 million Canadian households (which represents nearly 10 percent of the total population) live in housing that is unaffordable, overcrowded, or in major disrepair, which is in direct contradiction to their right to housing in accordance with Article 25 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

South of the border, the reality is much the same.

In the U.S., the housing deficit is estimated to be between 4.03 million (Realtor.com) and 4.7 million units (Zillow), though when it comes to affordable housing for low- and middle-income families, the demand is greater, with a structural shortfall of between 7.1 and 7.2 million units; metropolitan areas, as well as the South, are disproportionately impacted.

Approximately 35 affordable rental homes are available for every 100 extremely low-income households in the United States, which means nearly two-thirds of those households are housing insecure. This means housing is no longer a challenge, but a crisis, one that requires immediate action from all relevant stakeholders.

Facing the problem head-on
In order to address a problem, it must be understood foundationally, and in the case of the persisting housing shortage, there are countless factors influencing the trends being experienced.

For one, the market has experienced more than a decade of chronic underbuilding, a construction slowdown that continues to worsen with high mortgage rates, high interest rates, growing material costs, and difficulty securing skilled talent. This is especially true of the multi-family segment where high borrowing costs and increased material prices render these forms of development less profitable, thus forcing developers to focus their efforts on other market segments with better return on investment.

Currently, the market is being driven by data centre construction, the first time in history that billions of dollars are being invested in infrastructure and technology that is likely to be obsoleted in the next decade or so, given the rapid rate of technological advancement. All the while, more than 70 percent of U.S. housing stock and infrastructure was built prior to 1990, which demonstrates the decades of underbuilding and the stark reality that housing and infrastructure are in dire need of updating and modernization.

Further, repeated financial crises, ongoing geopolitical challenges, restrictive zoning rules, and growing demand from the millennial and Gen Z cohorts who are reaching homebuying age are exacerbating the downward pressure on the market.

As with the laws of supply and demand, when demand outweighs supply, prices rise and that is true of new construction but also rentals. Where rent is high and thresholds to entry into the market burdensome, this is disproportionately impactful to lower- and middle-income earners.

Because of chronic the chronic undersupply, affordability has become a major issue. The National Low Income Housing Coalition has found that millions of extremely low-income families spend over half their income on rent, which is extremely burdensome, especially as only one in four eligible households have access to subsidies to offset the pressures. This is why governments are working with developers to kickstart supply to ensure the right kind of supply is being built in the right places. The government is also taking action of its own.

Stepping up and stepping in
To kickstart developments and ensure that targeted needs are being addressed, governments are working with the private sector to ensure that more housing units come online each year.

Coordination is required across the various levels of government as federal, provincial/state, and municipal governments hold different responsibilities in their respective jurisdictions. Municipal governments are tasked with zoning, creating and enforcing bylaws under the authority of provincial or state legislation, and there is a push to reduce strict land use policies that restrict high-density and affordable housing developments.

In Canada, municipal governments are also responsible for completing housing needs assessments (HNA) where a community has more than 30,000 residents to qualify for federal infrastructure and housing dollars.

Provincial governments hold primary jurisdiction over property, civil rights, and municipal institutions, therefore, the responsibilities entrusted to them include setting the legal, regulatory, and financial framework for housing including land-use and planning laws, building codes, municipal delegation, tenant and landlord regulations, and the delivery of social and affordable housing relevant to the needs of the city and region.

Overarching these jurisdictions is a federal housing policy—the National Housing Strategy—which is backed by more than $83 billion in funding targeting community housing protection, repairs, new unit creation, and dedicated building agencies to administer those programs and funds, with programs that include the removal of taxes on new rental construction, funding local zoning reforms to scale up housing completions, and supporting first-time home buyers, among others.

Of mention is the Build Canada Homes agency, which acts as a developer and project manager to leverage public lands and financing to kickstart affordable and middle-class housing.

Taking from the successful WWII-era Wartime Housing Limited, essentially a federal developer that would eventually become today’s CMHC, the strategy leverages public land and prefabricated or modular housing options procured in bulk to bring pre-approved standardized blueprints to life, enabling the rapid scalability of affordable home construction. Paired with financial and tax incentives, including low-cost capital loans, municipal development charge reforms, and revived rental-construction tax allowances, it seeks to kickstart construction for tangible results.

Alternately, the Housing Accelerator Fund is a multibillion-dollar program that supports local governments in removing red tape, updating zoning rules, and expediting building permits, as well as providing other loans and support to help meet housing goals.

South of the border, the U.S. housing strategy, the 21^st Century ROAD to Housing Act, is a federal law enacted to lower housing costs by boosting supply, streamlining local permitting, and restricting large institutional investors from buying single-family rental homes. The program includes incentives for local and state governments to reform restrictive zoning and land-use rules and reduce the red tape to get more projects permitted, approved, and built. There is also a focus on alternative housing provision including manufactured and modular housing options through the updating of codes and financing frameworks. The Federal Program Alignment seeks to reform Housing Choice Vouchers, block grants, and rural housing initiatives to bring together federal funding that is tied directly to local production metrics.

Certainly, the approaches are varied, but they demonstrate a multifaceted, concerted effort to simultaneously mitigate challenges. Now, if only there was something governments could do about high interest rates, rising material costs, skilled labour shortages, persistent geopolitical challenges, and the economic woes these conditions create, which reinforce the housing challenges in the first place related to supply, demand, and rising costs.

Collaboration in action
There are many paths forward when it comes to addressing North America’s housing shortage, which is dire. A crisis in every sense of the word, governments and the private sector continue to work together to ensure that housing developments are kickstarted and that the housing needs of communities are being met.

As always, the greatest challenge remains balancing the needs of the community with the profitability of the sector, but given that housing is a human right, efforts need to continue to focus on bringing more units online, particularly those that are affordable where they are needed most. Housing is a right, not a commodity, which makes it very difficult to navigate the social responsibility of providing affordable and adequate housing with the market dynamics of supply and demand economics.

As market dynamics related to labour, land, and material costs exacerbate affordability issues and worsen the crisis, only time will tell if the measures enacted by government to encourage activity in the private sector will produce the desired results, creating supply to ensure that the right to housing is upheld and affordability is restored.

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Modular construction moves much of a building’s production into a factory. Modules are manufactured off-site and assembled at the building site, a method Canada’s national standards body calls volumetric modular construction. The idea is decades old, but what gives it fresh urgency is the market it now serves, with home prices near record highs and an unhoused population that remains close to its peak.

On a single night in January 2025, 745,652 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States, and 266,320 of them were living unsheltered, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) points out that the count was up 165,190 people from January 2020 and that the pandemic accelerated a longer-term climb as rents rose by double digits. Chronic homelessness has nearly doubled since 2016 to almost 170,000 people, which JCHS says reflects the ongoing shortage of affordable homes and insufficient support for people with disabilities.

The cost figures show how that pressure builds. Median new and existing home prices both sit above $400,000. The monthly payment on a median-priced home reached about $3,100 in late 2025, up from $1,700 in early 2020, and a household now needs an income above $120,000 to carry it, compared with $66,000 in 2020. Renters at the bottom of the market have it worse. Over the last decade the number of rental units priced below $1,000 a month has fallen by 7 million, lost outright or converted to higher rents, and 11 million extremely low-income renters compete for 3.8 million affordable and available units. The 13 million renter households earning less than $30,000 a year have a median of just $210 a month left for everything else once housing is paid for.

The link to homelessness follows from those numbers. When rents and prices climb faster than incomes and low-cost homes disappear, households with the least margin lose their footing first, and few affordable places remain to catch them. JCHS researchers add that the supply of low-rent housing is shrinking and that market forces alone are unlikely to meet the need for deeply affordable homes. That gap is why public agencies and non-profits are looking for faster ways to build.

The Modular Building Institute (MBI) reports that the U.S. permanent modular construction market reached $20.5 billion in 2025 and projects growth of 6.5 percent per year through 2030. Its 2026 reports, developed with FMI Consulting, find that multifamily housing remains the largest U.S. segment, that office and data centre construction is emerging as a significant opportunity, and that the U.S. West leads in market size, bolstered by housing affordability pressures and disaster recovery needs. In Canada, multifamily residential makes up nearly half of the projected modular market.

Tom Hardiman, CAE, Executive Director of the Modular Building Institute, says modular is gaining ground because it addresses “housing shortages, limited labor, rising costs and schedules that cannot keep slipping.”

Production is becoming more automated. A Siemens case study on the Admares smart factory describes 26 production lines where 141 robots perform skilled tasks such as welding, cutting, clamping, tiling, and carpentry. Digital twins let the company design and validate house parts, including heating and cooling systems, before production begins, and Admares is planning a first Australian smart factory in southeast Queensland, with investment of hundreds of millions of dollars and potentially 3,200 new jobs. The case study is written from the company’s point of view, so these figures describe capability and intent rather than independent results.

Research is pushing further. At the University of British Columbia (UBC), the Smart Structures Lab, headed by Dr. Tony Yang, combines artificial intelligence, robotics, and modular assembly to automate key stages of construction and monitor structural health in real time. The lab plays a central role in an $8.27 million national initiative, led by UBC Civil Engineering, to address housing supply through sustainable modular construction. UBC reports that modern modular technology can raise a 15-storey building in six days, with two days for the framework and four more for the envelope and utilities (real project schedules will of course vary).

Speed is the benefit of modular construction cited most often. MBI’s reports find that factory production can shorten project timelines by between a fifth and a half, while improving quality control, reducing onsite disruption, and helping owners reach occupancy sooner.

A factory also removes much of the uncertainty of building outdoors. UBC notes that making components offsite in a controlled setting bypasses delays and bottlenecks caused by weather and complicated logistics. CSA Group adds that governments and industry leaders increasingly look to modular construction to accelerate delivery, reduce waste, improve worker safety, and create more predictable outcomes.

Flexibility matters most for housing providers. Supportive Housing of Waterloo (SHOW), a Canadian not-for-profit housing provider in Waterloo Region, Ontario, offers round-the-clock wraparound support to people who have experienced long periods of homelessness and describes housing as a fundamental right, and it lists speed, durable materials with accessibility features, and the ability to add, move, or reconfigure units as demand changes among the reasons it chose modular.

The clearest evidence for modular’s role in combating homelessness comes from British Columbia. In 2017, the province committed $291 million to build 2,000 modular homes for unhoused people, with more than $170 million over three years for round-the-clock staffing and support services. 600 of the homes were planned for Vancouver, on city-owned land. By 2018, nearly 700 supportive homes had been completed across the province and a further 1,400 were underway. By 2019, the final set of temporary modular homes the province had committed to in Vancouver was opening, including 52 homes at 258 Union Street. Kennedy Stewart, then Mayor of Vancouver, said, “the fastest way to build homes is by investing in modular housing.” The province described the units as interim homes while permanent solutions were developed, which illustrates both the speed of the method and its limits.

Canada’s federal government has taken the approach national. Build Canada Homes, launched in September 2025, has a mandate to double housing construction, restore affordability, and reduce homelessness, with an intense focus on factory-built, modular, and mass timber methods. It plans to prioritize six federal sites for 4,000 factory-built homes, with capacity for up to 45,000 units across the portfolio, and to deploy $1 billion for transitional and supportive housing for people who are unhoused or at risk. In Nunavut, it is partnering to build more than 700 public, affordable, and supportive units, about 30 percent of them off-site. The agency says one of its objectives is long-term, predictable demand for Canadian factory-built housing so the industry can scale and the time and cost of construction can fall.

At community scale, SHOW demonstrates how this plays out on one site. It reports 2,371 people experiencing homelessness in the region and 630 waiting for supportive housing, with older adults the fastest-growing segment of the waitlist, up 120 percent in a year. SHOW already operates 64 units across three buildings. Its next step is Waterloo’s first modular supportive housing project for older adults, 10 fully accessible homes with 24/7 support at 362 Erb Street, with another 68 or more units in the pipeline for 2027 and beyond.

The project also shows the funding reality. As of early September 2026, SHOW was still raising money through its Moving for Good campaign to build the 10 units. Factory production can shorten the build, yet the schedule still depends on capital arriving first.

MBI’s reports identify financing gaps, permitting and regulatory inconsistency, uneven project pipelines, design coordination challenges, and a lack of modular experience among some project teams as obstacles to wider adoption. Each has a counterpart in the examples above. British Columbia’s modular homes needed years of operating funding for staff, not just construction money. SHOW’s units depend on fundraising. And the Waterloo project, like the federal agency’s purchasing plan, is a reminder that manufacturers need a steady pipeline of orders to justify their factories.

Codes and lending rules matter as much as technology, and CSA Group says clear and consistent standards help build confidence among designers, manufacturers, and building officials. In the United States, lenders and insurers still treat modular as an unfamiliar product, which is why Congress has asked for a federal review of the problem.

Policy is beginning to address those gaps. The 21^st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law on July 11, 2026, without the President’s signature. Its Section 302, the Modular Housing Production Act, requires the Federal Housing Administration to assess barriers to FHA-insured lending for modular housing, and Section 303 updates mortgage lending standards for manufactured housing. The law contains 12 titles and 59 sections, and most of its modular provisions call for study rather than immediate funding, so the practical effect depends on how HUD implements them.

In Canada, CSA Group has released CSA Z251, Design of volumetric modular structures, a new National Standard of Canada that establishes a common technical framework for designing volumetric modular buildings. It complements the National Building Code of Canada and addresses structural design, building services, environmental separation, fire protection, manufacturing, and architectural considerations. A technical committee of architects, engineers, modular manufacturers, and provincial and municipal building officials developed it.

MBI observes that long-term demand is supported by population growth, aging public infrastructure, school capacity constraints, healthcare needs, labour shortages, housing affordability, and climate-related disaster response, and UBC’s Dr. Yang predicts that within five years, modular factory production and robotic on-site assembly will be commonplace. That is an optimistic timeline, and the housing figures above suggest the need will outlast it.

Modular construction is a delivery method rather than a cure. It cannot lower land costs, replace rental assistance, or provide the support services that keep formerly unhoused residents housed. What it can do is turn funding into finished homes sooner and with greater predictability, and the British Columbia and Waterloo examples suggest that is worth a great deal to the people waiting.

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In the United States, it is reported that an estimated 2.1 million skilled trades openings across 135 core professions are posted each year, but a talent gap of 1.3 million persists, meaning that for every single person completing a relevant training program, three new openings are posted.

Driven by retirement and attrition, and decades of discourse that promoted a degree over hands-on work and the removal of hands-on learning from classrooms, the renewed push to promote careers in the trades is reactionary at best and will take years to produce the necessary results. According to research by JLL, by 2030, 2.1 million skilled trades positions could remain chronically unfilled, the economic losses from which could reach $1 trillion annually, which means action needs to be taken, and taken swiftly, if a turnaround is possible.

And, if you ask Dr. Temple Grandin what needs to change, it has everything to do with updating education, attitudes, and approaches to embrace different ways of thinking.

Thinking differently
Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to think about it from a different perspective, which is exactly how Dr. Temple Grandin approaches her work and the world.

Many people are unaware that there are three distinct cognitive styles of processing information (visual, verbal, and pattern) and while most people use a combination of these to interact with the world, as all three are important to the function of our market and society, some individuals experience one or another in a more dominant sense.

Visual thinkers or object visualizers like Dr. Grandin have an innate capacity to solve problems. Using images or diagrams to organize, comprehend, and communicate thoughts and ideas, they often notice fine details that others might miss. Visual thinkers make great diagnosticians, artists, mechanical designers, architects, and similar, excelling in roles that require spatial recall, though they may struggle with abstract concepts like higher mathematics or long-form essay writing, skills that are heavily weighted in academics.

Despite the odds being against her as a person on the spectrum in the 1950s, Dr. Grandin did not let her diagnosis stand in the way of becoming a world-renowned scientist, animal behaviorist, autism advocate, and award-winning author. At a time when children with disabilities were institutionalized, Temple was engaged and empowered to find her place in the world.

Non-verbal until the age of three and a half, she has been a professor of animal science at Colorado State University since 1990, served as an industry consultant, and tours the world addressing auditoriums of people who pay to hear her insights; remarkably, through this work she has revolutionized animal handling practices to create a more humane world for animals and people alike.

This was not without struggle. Dr. Grandin has noted that she faced more barriers in industry as a woman than she did as someone on the spectrum, but believes she would not have the same success in today’s standardized educational system.

“I don’t think I could pass an algebra test today but I know how to do all my practical math like find the volume of a tank, figure out the square footage of the cattle pens, and things of those sorts, and I think education has really gotten off-kilter with some of this stuff,” says the woman who couldn’t become a veterinarian because of higher math requirements but educates future veterinarians today.

Barred access
For visual thinkers like Dr. Grandin, the very systems that are meant to educate can also be the source of barriers to access to career paths that would suit their capabilities and interests. Hiring practices, too, can bar access for many.

While Dr. Grandin was able to build a portfolio of drawings to sell herself and her skills in the market, online applications and AI screening tools paired with more stringent educational and job requirements make it much more difficult to break through into a career, especially if you are neurodivergent.

“I’m very concerned that our visual thinkers—the ones that I call the clever engineers, really good with mechanical—we’re screening them out and we’re screening out all the best diagnostic people,” she says of the higher math requirements.

Dr. Grandin notes that there are two parts to engineering: the mathematical engineers and what she refers to as “the clever engineers who tend to be the mechanical geniuses that just figure out how to make something or make something work,” she explains. “I can remember when I worked out in industry, the ‘weird’ guy in the shop who could fix anything, definitely was autistic, but we don’t have that guy anymore, and we need them. We need the weird guy in the shop.” Traditional educational and career pathways, however, have changed, as have attitudes and liabilities, which limits how far some people can go.

True diversity, equity, and inclusion
As employers and education systems have worked to integrate policies around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), in many ways they have failed to address the systemic barriers that prevent full and equal participation in learning environments and the workforce, particularly for those on the spectrum. In Dr. Grandin’s opinion, changes need to be instituted earlier to ensure that children, both neurodiverse and neurotypical, are exposed to more at a younger age, which begins in the home. Children are taught to build with blocks but seldom graduate to hand tools, which leads to a concerning loss of skills. Dr. Grandin has encountered some students who have never even used a ruler.

“We need to get these hands-on things back into the schools and we need to do it at younger ages. I realize we can’t take an eight-year-old on a construction site, but there are places where they can watch safely,” she explains, from which they can still be engaged and inspired.

Dr. Grandin was given responsibility at an early age and encourages parents to do the same with their children, be it a dog walking job or selling candy for charity. She encourages kids to get off the computer and get outside doing something with their hands where they can build social skills as well. And, acknowledging that access to formal therapies can be limited or costly, Dr. Grandin suggests parents do something similar and call it by a different name: riding clubs as equine therapy, intergenerational experiences at seniors’ residences, church groups—they all have a role to play.

“I think a lot of parents get too much into the Autism box. I think that’s a very big problem,” explains Dr. Grandin, which can limit the possibilities for children. Moving past this requires a great deal of advocacy and understanding the rights of the child to help them find a place to fit in the economy based on their unique interests and abilities.

Advocating for change
For Melanie McIntyre McGregor, RN, BScN, a registered nurse, mother, and advocate who completed Orton-Gillingham classroom training to support her child with dyslexia when the educational system could not, “Access often depends on parents who know how to navigate the system,” noting that this in itself creates inequity.

The role of educators is to meet children where they are, but with limited funding and strained resources, many children with special needs tend to slip through the cracks.

“One of the most difficult realizations has been seeing how much time, money, and energy families spend fighting for services that research has already shown are effective,” McGregor shares. “Parents shouldn’t have to become investigators, educators, legal researchers, advocates, and fundraisers simply to ensure their child learns to read or receives an appropriate education,” she says.

“Foundational literacy, writing, communication, and numeracy will always matter. Those are essential life skills. But beyond those foundations, I believe education should spend far more time helping students discover who they are, how they learn best, what they’re passionate about, and how those strengths can contribute to their communities.”

Says McGregor, “Imagine if schools invested as much energy into identifying children’s strengths as they do identifying their weaknesses. Imagine if every child left school believing they had something valuable to contribute,” beyond test scores that emphasize memorization over critical thinking skills.

And, if a child isn’t learning, try teaching in a different way. For McGregor, accommodations are important, but “they should never replace effective instruction.”

Similarly, if a child is accustomed to receiving accommodations throughout their educational journey, it is reasonable to expect those accommodations to continue through their professional careers, though much of the support available ceases to exist once an individual turns 18.

When it comes to accommodations, employers who hire individuals on the spectrum must be aware of their limitations, but also their strengths. Dr. Grandin notes that they will likely pour themselves into their jobs for the right employer and the right environment and will become superior performers, but a few things need to happen first. They must be insulated from social situations that may lead to breakdown and be guided by what Dr. Grandin refers to as on-the-job “pilot’s checklists” that break down the various tasks chronologically using simple to understand language and steps which are repeatable, referenceable, and can set individuals up for career success (rather than simply being given oral instructions).

Bridging the gap in skills and society
Certainly, there are individuals on the profound end of the spectrum who are not able to fulfill the requirements of jobs, particularly the skilled trades, but there are many more who are being screened out because of test results or the inability to learn in a standardized environment, though they have the skills and capacities so sorely needed in the market.

By systematically barring entry to these positions, many of the best and brightest minds are being eliminated from roles where they can shine. The loss of economic benefit therein cannot be ignored either, as many of these roles come with high wages and a sense of pride in workmanship, enabling these individuals to add tremendous value to the economy and to their own lives.

Espousing equality and operating with equity are two different things, and at the end of the day we need to do better to engage the entirety of the workforce. This can only be done if we start at an earlier age, reintroducing hands-on learning in the classroom and rethinking how we view those on the spectrum, especially at a time when addressing the skilled labour gap is so critical.

This article was inspired by An Evening With Temple Grandin hosted by the Algoma Autism Foundation (AAF) in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. A big thank you goes out to AAF and like organizations, including Future Horizons, for their work to reshape discourse around, and improve outcomes for, those who are on the spectrum, their families, and their carers. Different, not less.

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25 years on, the Warsaw, New York manufacturer of fine wood doors and windows employs over 90 people, operates approximately 100,000 square feet of manufacturing space in Western New York, has invested in a robotic finishing line, and has expanded its window capabilities through a Boston-area operation. It has opened a state-of-the-art corporate office headquarters complete with a showroom, as well as a new Design Center in Nantucket. And now, the questions have changed—oversized doors, trendy new hardware, and intricate details on buildings more than a century old are all part of a normal week. But the appetite for solving that kind of problem is the same as it was at the time of the company’s founding.

Fontaine launched Upstate Door in May 2001 with a short customer list of custom home builders, architects, interior designers, and high-end building material dealers. The first location was a 12,000-square-foot facility in Cowlesville, New York. By 2003, the company had outgrown it and moved into a 46,000-square-foot building in Warsaw, where it is still headquartered.

Making a good wood door was the baseline. The ambition was to become the place people called when a project was complex or unusual. “We wanted to be a company where people could come to have something different or difficult to accomplish,” Fontaine says. The company’s first tagline, Distinctive Door Solutions, came straight out of that idea. At the ultra-high end of residential work, he explains, nothing is simple, and the architects he spoke with in those early years had no shortage of problems that needed solving.

The company grew from a handful of employees into a team of more than 90, and it did so in steps. In 2008 it added impact, fire, bifold, and lift-and-slide doors to broaden what it could offer. In 2015 it installed a solar array at the Warsaw plant. In 2017, the company launched Fine Finishing Solutions, a factory finishing program designed to provide greater finish consistency while saving time on jobsites.

That shift fed into what the company now calls Designed for Distinction®, which Fontaine describes as an evolution of the original idea. “We’re still solving challenges, but we’re involved much earlier in the design process,” he says. An architect, builder, or designer might arrive with a drawing, a photograph, a historical detail, or only an idea. Questions about proportions, profiles, species, hardware, finishing, and performance follow, and the Upstate Door team works through them with the customer. That process of taking an architectural idea and working collaboratively through the details is at the heart of where Designed for Distinction comes alive.

Fontaine points to the company’s three pillars of Rapid Collaboration, Concierge Service, and Enduring Generations. Rapid Collaboration reflects the company’s ability to bring customers and its internal experts together quickly to work through complex design and construction details. Concierge Service describes the hands-on support provided throughout a project, from early design discussions through production and delivery. Enduring Generations reflects the goal of creating products that are built to endure—both physically and architecturally, to which end Fontaine says the products are meant to belong in the home long after its owners have moved on.

The company’s footprint has grown through acquisition as well as from the ground up. In 2011, Upstate Door bought Sun Dor, a door maker in Newton, Kansas, and moved its equipment to New York. The same year it bought a 50,000-square-foot building in Castile, which became its second manufacturing site. The Sun Dor products turned into a new line in 2013, Sun Dor Classics, renamed Classic Door Solutions in 2016.

Today, Upstate Door’s primary manufacturing operations are based in Warsaw and Castile, New York, with its Boston-area operation providing additional window expertise and capabilities. The workforce spreads across the shop floor, office, and the field, where business developers work with architects and builders.

Perhaps the most significant expansion in Upstate Door’s 25 year history is now underway: fine wood windows. That expansion accelerated in 2024 with the acquisition of Architectural Openings, a Boston, Massachusetts-based custom window and door company founded in 1987. The acquisition brought decades of window knowledge and craftsmanship into Upstate while providing a foundation for developing a broader window offering. Fontaine’s reason for the acquisition is practical. Customers have asked for wood windows for years, Fontaine says, and the company’s old tagline, ‘Fine Door Solutions, One Source,’ left an obvious gap. Upstate Door could handle everything on the door side in wood, yet any project that needed wood windows too meant matching its profiles to another manufacturer’s product. “Lots of times, when we only did doors, we were matching the profiles to the windows to the other manufacturers,” he explains. “So now we can match it easily, because we can do both ourselves.”

The larger vision is to design doors and windows as one—carrying proportions, profiles, species, finishes and architectural details consistently throughout a home. Rather than treating doors and windows as separate product categories, the goal is to help architects think about them as part of one architectural composition. While many manufacturers offer windows and exterior doors, fewer can carry those same details into custom interior doors. For Fontaine, that creates an opportunity to help architects and designers establish continuity from the exterior architecture through the interior spaces.” Plenty of companies make windows and exterior doors but skip interiors. “It’s the concept of taking your masterpiece that you might have in one room and combining it through the whole house,” says Fontaine. When a project runs from the front entry through to the custom interior doors and every profile lines up, the result is a source of real pride.

Upstate Door has historically concentrated on markets it can serve with its own delivery fleet, minimizing product handling and helping protect highly customized products in transit. That footprint has continued to expand along the East Coast and into selected Midwest markets.

The company’s geographic reach has continued to expand, particularly along the East Coast, with growing activity in markets from New England through Florida as well as selected Midwest markets. The aim is ease of ordering for complex projects, and Fontaine explains that most of the industry measures with the wrong clock, with lead time typically counted from sign-off. But every Upstate Door job comes with drawings, and the time to produce a proposal, issue those drawings, and get them aligned with the architect and builder takes real time too. Investment in software has shortened that stretch, which lowers the overall wait from the first quote request to a finished product.

The next step is entering a job’s details once and sending them straight to the factory floor. That cuts the chance of errors and gives the company consistency on difficult work, Fontaine says.

On the floor itself, the team recently invested in a robotic finishing line. The new line incorporates a six-axis robotic sprayer designed to scan each door or window to learn its depth and applies the finish consistently. A second robot picks up doors that can weigh 100 to 200 pounds and flips them, a task that used to take several people, and CNC routers have already taken hands away from blades. The company’s long-running approach to handling heavy products has the same purpose. Fontaine wants fewer injuries and less exhaustion, and he wants employees using their minds on the production floor rather than only their backs. “We’re utilizing the mind in combination with the handwork to get something special,” he says.

The result is a range organized around three product lines, each designed around a different level of customization while maintaining Upstate’s standards for construction and craftsmanship. Classic offers a curated selection of profiles, species, and options, allowing greater efficiency and value while remaining made to order. Distinctive opens the possibilities considerably, with extensive choices in profiles, dimensions, species, finishes, and architectural details. Tailored is reserved for highly specialized solutions developed collaboratively around unique architectural, performance, or project requirements—often for designs that fall outside conventional product offerings. Fontaine says architects continue to push the limits of what can be built, and projects that fall outside conventional manufacturing capabilities are often where Upstate’s collaborative approach becomes most valuable. The more a design pushes, the more likely something unexpected shows up.

In practice, a finished door reflects dozens of decisions made earlier. Material selection comes first, including color match and grain patterns. Then comes the construction method, the type of glue, dowels, machining precision, sanding, and fitting. Finishing comes last.

Historical work puts all those skills to the test. When a door needs to match one that is 100 to 150 years old, Upstate Door may bring the original back to the shop and, sometimes, cut it apart. A century of repainting can leave 10 or more coats on a door, and the profiles under that paint rarely match anything. Cutting the door open shows what is underneath.

One such project sits close to home. Fontaine studied at SUNY Geneseo, a short drive from the shop, and when the college called about a historical door match, he worked directly with the architect and builder on the specifications. He recommended a construction method that would stop the panel from cracking. The team insisted the original was solid oak, a common material in Western New York, so they pulled the panel out to examine. It was veneered, which explained why it had never cracked and matched what Fontaine had recommended. The door is now a spot where graduates have photos taken.

In terms of sustainability practices, the company pays close attention to responsible wood sourcing and can incorporate FSC-certified materials where project requirements call for them, while the finish is a water-based Italian product, which Fontaine says is safer for employees and suits New York, where spraying urethanes is difficult. Sawdust and scrap are ground up and sent to local farms as cow bedding, in a county he jokes has more cows than people. The solar array at Warsaw, installed in 2015, was the first in town, and it has since grown to roughly four acres, feeding the grid. Fontaine says it alone comes close to covering what the Warsaw facility uses.

The rural setting does bring challenges in hiring, Fontaine shares, since graduates don’t find a big-city environment in Warsaw. But people with a love for nature tend to feel right at home. The company runs internships with colleges, primarily on the office side in engineering, drafting, sales, and accounting, and several current employees started as interns. It also trains people for the shop, looking for alignment with its culture, a strong work ethic, and a willingness to learn. 30-plus high school students from the local BOCES program have toured the plant.

As Upstate enters its next 25 years, Fontaine sees the company evolving from its roots as a custom door manufacturer into a broader architectural resource—bringing fine wood doors and windows together with design collaboration, craftsmanship, and increasingly sophisticated manufacturing technology. Technology and automation will play a larger role in how products are designed and manufactured, but he doesn’t see them replacing craftsmanship. Instead, the goal is to give the company’s people better tools, improve consistency, and create more time for the collaboration and problem-solving that have defined Upstate from the beginning.

Asked what he is proudest of after 25 years, Fontaine answers without hesitation: the people. Many of them have built their careers at Upstate Door and, he says, sometimes spend more waking hours there than at home. After the people he cites the accomplishments of the company, and then the team’s willingness to keep adjusting and adapting, whether to new materials, new hardware, or new technology.

Looking back on what the company has built since 2001, Fontaine says, “In some ways, it’s very humbling. The shop has more people, more years of experience, and more technology than it did at the start, but the foundation still remains.”

A round-top door with a round-top transom was enough to make one architect assume the job couldn’t be done. 25 years later, Upstate Door still hears that kind of doubt and still treats it as an invitation. Its team has grown from a handful of people in Cowlesville to more than 90 individuals across five facilities, yet the habit of saying yes to the hard job has stayed put. For any builder or homeowner with a design that others have turned down, the company’s story offers a simple reminder: the right partner can turn “you probably can’t” into a door someone walks through for generations.

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The duo made a commitment at the start: to treat staff and clients alike with the utmost respect, provide the finest customer service, and make North Point a place where men and women wanted to work and build their careers. In the first year, the business made about $450,000 in revenue and earned positive reviews from satisfied commercial and residential customers. Now, 17 years later, this Derry, New Hampshire-based company has grown to over 120 team members and over $25 million in annual revenue.

Earning hundreds of five-star reviews, North Point has garnered the trust of clients of all sizes, including FedEx, Hanover Company, Walmart, Target, Dunkin’, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Evergreen Management Group, Tuscan Village, and many others.

Award-winning service
Since it was founded, North Point Outdoors has received praise from clients and numerous regional, industry, and business entities. In 2025, the company was voted the Granite State’s best landscaping and snow removal business by NH Business Review. That same year, North Point was featured on the cover of Landscape Management and made its Rising Stars List. The Snow & Ice Management Association (SIMA) has also nationally recognized the company as an ASCA Top 100 Snow Contractor.

Of all the company’s awards, one really stands out for Pelkey: being acknowledged by SIMA as one of the Best Places to Work in Snow & Ice the last three years in a row. “That’s something we’re really proud of,” he says. Businesses were judged in several areas, including company culture, managerial effectiveness, personnel engagement, trust in leadership, and demonstrated success in professional development and support. According to SIMA, the award “recognizes snow and ice industry businesses that are focused on being a great place to work and promoting the industry as one in which people can build successful and rewarding careers.”

Widely acknowledged as one of the largest and fastest-growing commercial landscaping and snow management businesses in New Hampshire, North Point’s trusted management team includes project managers, account managers, crew foremen, territory managers, and operations and production managers, along with sales. “Our true feeling of the reason behind our success and growth is that our strong team and employee retention creates strong client retention, which allows us to sell and build without having to replace lost accounts,” Pelkey explains. “For the last three years running, we’ve had a 97 percent retention rate with our employees, and a 96 percent retention rate with our clients. So we feel that those two go hand-in-hand with each other.”

For Pelkey, who serves as COO, and CEO Fairburn, attracting and retaining staff in an industry where workers often come and go isn’t all that complicated. “What we created was a place where workers are respected, treated fairly, paid a fair wage, and have the little things that make a day in the landscape world go well,” Pelkey says. This means investing in top equipment and ensuring it is always properly prepared, safe, well-maintained, and ready to go. Instead of holding on to machinery for years, lawn mowers are swapped out every three years, and workers always have the latest new equipment.

Taking aim at commercial growth
Instead of having to source and manage multiple contractors, North Point Outdoors offers comprehensive professional landscape solutions for its many clients. Soon after the business was founded, its services expanded to include hardscaping and planting on top of landscaping and irrigation. In the winter months, the company grew its residential snowplowing services and expanded into commercial snowplowing. “We self-perform about 90 percent of our snow removal, and sub out about 10 percent of it,” Pelkey shares.

For its residential customers, North Point’s services include landscape design and landscape lighting; turf care; irrigation; and hardscape and softscape installation. On the commercial side, the company offers landscape maintenance; landscape construction; turf care; irrigation; and snow and ice management. The team handles management and oversight of large-scale construction projects and maintenance for clients ranging from industrial distributors to high-rise condominiums and Class A office buildings, which attract top-tier tenants.

Today, about 80 percent of North Point’s clients are in the commercial sector, with projects including new installation work, maintenance, and snow removal for clients ranging from homeowners associations and apartment complexes to industrial customers. “We are actively trying to continue to grow our commercial sector,” states Pelkey, “and foreseeing more growth with our landscape maintenance and snow contracts. Residential isn’t our desired target market; the commercial world is.” Areas served by the company from its Derry headquarters extend north to Lake Winnipesaukee, east to Portsmouth, and south to, essentially, Boston North.

Introducing CrewHero
Built over the first 15 years of scaling North Point Outdoors to $20 million in revenue, the company released CrewHero two years ago. A proprietary software “built by landscapers, to help landscapers,” CrewHero was created to address operational issues, which were costing the company money and lost time in waiting for crew assignments, equipment decisions, and truck allocations. This chaos wasn’t merely frustrating; it cost the business in non-billable labor and lost productivity every day, says the company. “Landscape businesses often lose valuable employees not due to a lack of dedication but because of the stress caused by disorganized operations. CrewHero is built to change that.”

Now on the open market for other landscapers to use, CrewHero improves communication and streamlines dispatch assignments to help businesses operate with greater efficiency and profitability. Says North Point: “CrewHero isn’t just about optimizing operations—it’s about hearing and meeting the needs of the people who drive these businesses forward. By reducing chaos and improving efficiency, we help landscape companies retain and empower their most valuable asset: their people.”

Thanks to CrewHero, company staff members understand daily assignments and know what equipment they’re using and who they’re working with. It allows staff to access company documents and other resources all in one spot. “Basically, it makes working here easy,” says Pelkey. “If you have a repair request for a piece of equipment, somebody sees it. We took everything we learned over the last 15 or 16 years and built the CrewHero app that executes it all, now at a much higher level.”

A promising future
On the residential side, North Point often works on projects valued from $10,000 all the way to half a million dollars or more. Commercially, the company’s sweet spot is about $250,000 to $1 million in size, but the team is open to doing smaller jobs as needed.

“Just recently, we completed our largest landscape installation project to date, the Target distribution center in Hudson, New Hampshire. It was a two-and-a-half year project, and the price point was $5.2 million,” says Pelkey. “Our team is really proud of that one. Target, and the general contractors on site, had very high standards of safety and job site coordination standpoints,” he shares. “We did a great job meeting those standards, and were told by the general contractor that our team was the best landscape firm they had worked with across the country so far. It was a really cool project.”

The entire project required specialized personal protective equipment (PPE), and there were daily safety, reporting, and other requirements far beyond those of other general contractors, which were all met successfully. “It turned into one of our bigger landscape maintenance and snow contracts, as we were awarded the landscape, maintenance, and snow contract as well,” says Pelkey.

This year saw Dave Fairburn turn 40, with Andrew Pelkey also celebrating his 40^th in a few months. With their milestone birthdays upon them, it is a time for the partners to reflect not only on their many years in business, but also on the decades ahead for them and the entire team.

“I think in the next five years, we’re going to continue to max out our current headquarters location,” comments Pelkey. “A second location in another saturated work area could be on the horizon, with some additional continued growth. We’re around the $25 million revenue size now. I think in five years, we will probably be around $30 to $35 million.” Not bad for two men who started out in their 20s with a few pieces of landscaping equipment and a dream.

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