Features Business intelligence Contracting
Editorial: February 2016

After a shaky start, there are reasons to hope in 2016

I feel like 2016 has started out on an unsettling note. Oil prices have crashed, taking our dollar, stock markets and most of Alberta with them. China’s growth is slowing, sending a chill through the American growth forecasts. No Canadian hockey team is in a playoff position; the first time this has happened this late in a season. The cheapo Blue Jays are taking Josh Donaldson to arbitration over $450,000. I dropped my new iPad. Grim tidings all around.

As always, when times get tough, Glass Canada leaps into action. We are trying a number of new things this year to give you as many opportunities as possible to get the industry information you need in the format that works best for you.

We held our inaugural Winter Webinar in December, with Stephane Hoffman of Morrison Hershfield reprising his excellent Top Glass talk on thermal transmission through curtainwall assemblies. We attracted a nice audience of 42 attendees who logged in right at the start and stayed with us throughout, asking some great questions along the way. Stephane’s presentation was recorded and can be seen online by following the link on our website and entering some registration information (it is free.) By the time you read this, we will have held our second webinar with Louis Moreau of Agnora discussing large-format glass fabrication – a hot topic for sure. Watch for our last webinar of this season on Feb. 24 featuring Michael Mesure of FLAP Canada discussing the issues and technology involved in preventing bird collisions with glass buildings. Registration for that one is free as well, thanks to the generous support of Walker Glass, a Canadian pioneer in the field of bird-friendly glazing.

Safety while working at heights is an issue of particular interest to us as we send workers hundreds of feet up the sides of skyscrapers to manipulate modules and panels weighing thousands of pounds. Glass Canada will be joining several other construction industry publications in May of this year to host a special theme week dedicated to working-at-heights safety. Watch your Glass Canada newsletter and our Twitter and Facebook feeds for details about this awareness-raising event.

Another new initiative here is NicheTV, a short online video that will be delivered to your inbox and available on the website that includes industry news, feature interviews, project and plant tours and anything else we think you will find interesting and helpful. We promise to keep the videos short and on-topic, so don’t touch that delete button!

Finally, it isn’t exactly new any more, but Top Glass returns April 20 to the International Centre in Mississauga. Once again, we’ve landed a spectacular lineup of great experts to bring you up to speed on key technical and business issues. Check out topglasscanada.com for all the details and to register for free.

With all this going on, it is hard to stay pessimistic for long. Let’s put our heads down and get together as an industry to make 2016 the best year yet.