When it comes to safety, there's nothing more important in non-residential construction than the safety of the workers, period, end of story. Safety adds to the bottom line. Safety is the culture of any organization. It's exceptionally important.
When it comes to the technologies and how they impact the workers going forward, our members see technology as a tool to enhance the efficiency, not just of the construction process but also of training the people.
We are constantly looking at our training. As we know, Red Seal in Canada is the recognized trade training across Canada. Roofing is a Red Seal trade. We have two associations in Canada that train at the Red Seal level in British Columbia and New Brunswick. British Columbia's is outstanding. They do an exceptional job.
The irony is, notwithstanding the technology that we're seeing advance and push industry from our manufacturers and others, the training you can get in British Columbia to be basically what we'd call a tinsmith back in the day still exists.
There is still necessary work to be done on a roof or a wall that will require a human to do something. Are we at a place in time where maybe there will be more robotics? There's a possibility that the answer is yes. There is some work being done by a professor at the University of British Columbia who is of the opinion that robots could go on a construction site right now. I don't know about that, but having said that, we don't see an outright replacement of workers with new technologies.
We do see, as my colleague mentioned, that there will be a need for different types of training of people, absolutely, but at the end of the day, you're still going to need someone like my son, who is a superintendent with a roofing company, to coordinate in advance the people to do the work that's required.
What you don't see, when you look at a job site, are the consultants and the engineers. You don't see the superintendents. You don't see the estimating that goes on prior to the job even getting started. There are a lot of professionals who do a lot of work, and, yes, they're using technology—they use artificial intelligence to help them do their job—but at the end of the day, the chief estimator still has to take responsibility for that work. Technology will make work more efficient, but will there be an outright replacement of people? We don't see that.