CANADIAN CONSTRUCTION ASSOCIATION
Construction in
Transformation
The new president of the Canadian
Construction Association
Submitted by the Canadian Construction Association
THAIVIEW / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
CANADIAN CONSTRUCTION ASSOCIATION
Mary Van Buren, MBA, CAE
Mary Van Buren started
as the president of the
Canadian Construction
Association in mid-October of last year. In
this one-on-one interview, Van Buren out-lines
some of her priorities.
What attracted you to the
Canadian Construction
Association?
I was searching for a leadership role in
a sector of national importance that im-pacts
Canadians. As I learned more about
the industry, it became apparent that con-struction’s
role in building Canadian com-munities
is undervalued. Our members
generate close to $119 billion in GDP and
employ almost 1.4 million people. And we
are facing a skilled trade shortage.
I’m an association executive with deep
marketing, communications, strategy and
digital expertise. The industry is undergo-ing
a transformation due to technology,
new best practices and a changing work-force.
As a change leader, my role is to help
our members adapt and continue in their
success. I am fortunate to be working in
partnership with a CCA board that is pas-sionate
about the industry, committed to
change and agile.
We recently completed a two-day strate-gic
planning session, and I was impressed
by the open dialogue, camaraderie and fo-cus
on what is best for the industry.
What are your priorities?
CCA will be celebrating 100 years as an as-sociation
in 2018. My goal is to set a path
to take the CCA forward into the next 100
years. There are many potential disruptors,
including technology, like 3-D printing;
the capacity of Canadian firms to com-pete
on increasingly complex projects; and
the attractiveness of Canada as a place to
do business.
Three important priorities are to in-crease
CCA’s profile with the government as
the national voice of construction, improve
construction’s image as an attractive career
and promote the adoption of technology.
In terms of CCA’s profile with the govern-ment,
we can be more proactive in bring-ing
constructive solutions to the table and
voicing our views, but we must be aligned
as an industry to have an impact. When it
comes to construction as a career, the in-dustry
is changing rapidly, and technology
is certain to have a profound impact in the
future. Therefore, we have a great opportu-nity
to bring in a more diversified workforce
thinkbigmagazine.ca | Quarter 1 2018 | Think BIG 45