Conference Past & Present

HISTORY

The inaugural Canadian Conference on Building Science and Technology was held in London, Ontario in March of 1982.

The conferences continued biannually until the 6^th Conference in 1992. These six were organized under the direction of Dr. Eric Burnett and Mr. Vlad Stritesky.

In March of 1997 the conference (7^th Conference) was re-energized under the Directorship of Mr. Hitesh Doshi and the 8th Conference was presented under the auspices of the Ontario Building Envelope Council (OBEC) in February 2001, with Dr. John Straube as Director.

At an evening session at the 8^th Conference, a group of interested members discussed the future direction for the National Building Envelope Council. Since one of the purposes of NBEC is to bring together those in the building industry from across Canada, it was determined that holding a conference as a NBEC event would encourage national contribution and participation.

BCBEC agreed to accept the opportunity to host the 2003 9^th Conference on behalf of NBEC with Mr. Dave Kayll and Mr. Dave Mathieson co-chairing.

The NBEC Conference format has since been carried forward and improved upon by the Building Envelope Council Ottawa Region’s (BECOR) 10^th Conference at Ottawa, Ontario in 2005 co-chaired by Mr. Duncan Hill and Mr. William Brown, the Alberta Building Envelope Council’s (ABEC) 11^th Conference at Banff, Alberta in 2007 co-chaired by Mr. Mike Dietrich and Mr. Anton Vlooswyk the Quebec Building Envelope Council’s (QBEC)12^th Conference at Montreal, Quebec in 2009 co-chaired by Mr. Mario Gonçalves and Dr. Dominique Derome, and the 13^th Conference at Winnipeg, Manitoba in 2011 chaired by Mr. Ryan Dalgleish.

The most recent Conference, the 14^th CCBST, was hosted by the Ontario Building Envelope Council (OBEC) at Toronto, Ontario in 2014 chaired by Mr. Gerald Genge and Mr. Kim Pressnail.

OBJECTIVES

The objectives of these thirteen Conferences on Building Science and Technology have been to:

• Provide a forum for the presentation, discussion, documentation and sharing of relevant building science knowledge and experience for those directly involved in the building industry in Canada, and now the rest of the world.
• Provide a focus for all stakeholders in the design, construction and operation of buildings and building enclosures such that any gaps between various groups and professions may be bridged.

FORMAT

Conferences are generally held every two years and are sponsored by a regional Building Envelope Council. At an NBEC Board of Directors meeting during each Conference it is determined which regional Building Envelope Council (BEC) will host the next Conference. The host BEC will then establish the date, venue, and theme of their Conference.

A typical Conference will have the host BEC Organizing Committee issuing a Call for Abstracts approximately 18 months before the Conference. A process employing a Technical Committee comprising various specialists drawn from the National BEC membership who have volunteered to Chair the specific Sessions will then review the abstracts and select the papers as appropriate to meet the requirements of the Conference. The intent being that the papers accepted provide relevant information on the breadth of current academic, R&D, field experience and construction topics and keep within the theme of the current Conference. For the Peer Review process, Session Chairs are tasked with obtaining the assistance of two to three contemporaries within the building science and building technology community to provide commentary on the content of each paper. This commentary is then forwarded to the authors to allow them to modify and correct their papers, as they deemed appropriate. This process is intended to ensure that Conference papers are appropriate for presentation at a National technical forum and inclusion in the written Proceedings.