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Jim introduced today's guest speaker, Murray Smith, talking about his role with Better Building Solutions. Murray lives in Ayr with his family and loves to canoe as well as back country camping. Murray is also the Chair of the Board for the Chamber of Commerce Murray owns Blue Canoe consulting, and he was helping BBS to organize and provide the direction, and management that they needed. Of course the many solutions he helped to build out and provide the company made Murray the obvious choice to be the Project Manager to execute all of his suggestions - he was made an offer he could not refuse. For Murray it was an excellent choice and he is enjoying the challenges- they are quite the logistic challenges! Better Building Solutions provides all the supplies to build housing and maintain 1st Nation Communities. These communities are basically between North Bay and Thunder Bay . Current communities they are building in are 400- 600 km North of North Bay - very remote areas with pristine lakes, and wild life. In these norther communities they build housing, help maintain structures and schools if required. One job could take a few years as there is no Home Depot or Home Hardware around the corner, goverment Bureaucracy - supplies and equipment are trucked up over the winter on seasonal Ice roads - mother nature plays a big part to challenge logistics and execution on timing. The cost to get equipment three times the price to truck and 10 times the price to fly in supplies- not to mention labour. Most of trucking goes through bush and ice roads during end January and March - any deviations from these roads result in costly damage and delays to equipment and trucks. Other challenges is dealing with the Indigenous Services Canada- and housing shortages - in extreme cold conditions. Murray did touch on the Ring of Fire and the vested interest the government, international organizations and private companies have in excavating this mineral rich area. Nancy Y. summarized how important the role Murray has and presented a wonderful Thank you. President Paul had a great joke and it only took a couple of sex/secs |
