The association held its annual general meeting (AGM) and Best of the Best Awards recently at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto, bringing its 150th anniversary year to a close.
New TCA chair Albert Salvatore has been in the construction industry for 50 years and part of the association for 15. As a trade contractor and president of Sprint Mechanical, he brings a unique perspective to the role.
“I will do the best I can in this role,” Salvatore told the Daily Commercial News after the meeting. “I’m going to echo the work that has been done. I would like the association to bring new faces and I would like to focus on innovation.”
TCA president and CEO John Mollenhauer said he is pleased to have Salvatore on board.
“I think it’s vitally important for TCA that we have a trade contractor chair that is sensitive to looking at the world of construction through the lens of the trade contractor,” he said.
“He is progressive, notwithstanding that he has been in the business 50 years, constantly challenging the status quo in his organization and that will spill over to ours.”
Salvatore replaces Craig Lesurf, who was chair for two years.
Lesurf reflected on his experience during the AGM.
“I’ve met a lot of great people that I respect and industry partners that I work side by side with every day and that, to me, is what the association is about,” said Lesurf. “It’s about networking opportunities, getting together with people with like minds, a common interest, a greater goal. It’s about banding together and having a voice.”
One of his mandates was to foster safety and he said the TCA showed leadership by joining the League of Champions.
“I’ve been involved from inception with the League of Champions and I think it’s a worthwhile organization,” said Lesurf. “TCA got behind it, we were the first patron sponsor.”
The association also launched a new website, which includes a one-of-a-kind, fully integrated database.
“It automates a great many of the processes that would otherwise have been done manually,” said Mollenhauer. “It tracks in real time everything about a member. For example, we know all the products and services that a member uses during the course of the year. We know our members better now than we ever did before.”
Mollenhauer also highlighted the association’s advocacy efforts for modernization of the Construction Lien Act and prompt payment legislation, which has been ongoing for over a decade.
He says the Construction Lien Amendment Act, 2017, achieving royal assent in December was a major milestone.
“That’s something that was vitally important for the industry,” he said, adding the modernization of the act will roll out by summer and prompt payment and the adjudication piece will require an additional year to implement.
“We’ll help industry prepare, for example adjudication and prompt payment, and even some of the modernization of the lien act itself.”
The biggest goal for the year is to grow e-learning education, Mollenhauer stated.
“Toronto has become so heavily congested with traffic all day, every day, in every direction that we are bringing a focus to e-learning so that we can help with training and education without our members having to jump in a car and travel for 50 minutes to get to a classroom somewhere around the city,” said Mollenhauer.
Another priority, he said, is the TCA is looking to be leading edge in terms of new innovative products, technologies and methodologies.
“We’re trying to get out in front of that to better serve our members and not just be aware of innovative new technologies or methodologies, but to be able to share some sort of actionable intelligence with our members, things they can actually use and deploy,” he said. “Those are all things that will improve our industry and will improve the way we construct buildings.”
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