Our impact

Less than 30 per cent of Chandos is owned by senior executives. In fact, we have employee owners across every department, function, and level. It’s thanks to our employee ownership program allowing any employee to become an owner after one year.  And with only one class of voting shares, we all get an equal voice.

Chandos is one of the few – if not the only – construction companies in Canada to offer ownership opportunities to hourly employees. It speaks to our core value of inclusion – we all belong.

Being an owner at Chandos means embracing our inclusive and collaborative culture. But taking that first step can be hard. We want to make ownership at Chandos accessible to as many people as possible and that's why we've developed a flexible ownership program with multiple entry points. And we've seen our ownership grow every year, and more than ever in the last five years.

In July 2023, 58 per cent of eligible employees (those working for the company for more than one year) own a share of the business. 

Chandos simply wouldn’t be the business it is today without the people within the organization who pull together – year after year – to make every project a success. We believe the construction industry, and our company, can be even better by fostering a more diverse talent pool. 

We’re improving representation at every level of our organization, as we actively hire to increase the number of diverse employees who will go on to guide our teams and make every project a success. The bar graph represents the percentage of people in each category employed as of February 2024.

About half of Canada's population is made up of women. So shouldn't our workforce reflect that? We think so. That is why we've set a goal to see 40 per cent of our employees identify as women or non-binary. We're working to make our company more welcoming to women and non-binary employees. Representation has increased by 6.6 per cent since our first demographic survey in 2020. 

In 2023 we relaunched our women in construction employee resource group across the country. This ERG meets regularly to discuss issues and support eachother. It's an employee led group. 

Wellness is a key consideration of our compensation philosophy and we're proud to pay a certified living wage to every employee across the country. We've established new benefit programs that empower our employees to live their best life, including enhanced mental health supports, virtual healthcare options, health spending accounts, and retirement savings programs.

Operational emissions include the carbon we emit by operating our offices and sites. The following scope definitions are based on the GHG Protocol and reviewed by a third party, Radicle Balance.

Scope 1: Direct emissions from owned/controlled sources including natural gas, diesel, propane, gasoline for our fleet.

Scope 2: Indirect emissions from electricity purchased by Chandos.

Scope 3: Indirect emissions in our value chain including flights, staff commuting, hotels, waste, plus power paid for and controlled by clients. We do not currently include the embodied carbon of materials.

* 1 kt = 1000 t

Embodied carbon is all the carbon required to construct a building. So when we talk about reaching net zero by 2040 it means tackling every ton of carbon emitted across every process and material used on every jobsite across Canada. There's no mistaking it, Chandos and it's supply chain are embedding a massive amount of carbon into each building. 

Accurately measuring and understanding the embodied carbon in a construction supply chain is incredibly complex. We're focused on getting that calculation right. In the meantime, we estimate our current embodied carbon is ~300,000 tons. Once we have our baseline, we'll set an intensity reduction target in order to hit our goal of net zero by 2040.

* 1 kt = 1000 t

We measure our waste diversion on all projects over $2M and report out to the entire organization each quarter to create transparency and encourage continuous improvement through collaboration.

For the 2023 year Chandos diverted 93% of waste from landfills across the projects that track waste diversion (which is 87% of projects over $2M).

We've set the bar high, asking every project with a value over $2M to participate in our waste diversion program. In smaller, more remote communities waste diversion can be next to impossible but we believe in tackling the hard things. 

By using our years of experience, experimenting with new approaches and partners, and applying determination, we're confident that 100 per cent of projects can divert at least a portion of their waste. We've improved our score moving from 83 per cent of projects diverting waste in the first quarter of 2023 to 87 percent as of December 2023.

For some of our districts with more remote job sites and larger geographic footprints, it can be more difficult to reach our waste diversion goals, but we believe in the power of our teams. Collaboration and innovation are in our DNA and that's what we need to drive up our responsible consumption practices across the country. 

Here's a look at our waste diversion performance by district for the full year of 2023.

Our waste diversion program has been running since the early days of LEED certification. Our teams started to apply LEED standards to jobs, even when they weren't LEED. Back in the early days of waste diversion we didn't have the same goals we do today. We've continued to raise the bar and have included our current goal of 80 per cent diversion across the organization as a point of reference. 

Here's a snapshot of our waste diversion achievements over the last 10 years. 

Social procurement isn't easy. But it's worth the effort because every action we take has a ripple effect across our communities. By 2025, we aim to shift 5 per cent of our spending on goods and services to impact organizations. That includes social enterprises, non-profits, Indigenous and diverse-owned businesses, B Corps, and living-wage suppliers. In 2023, our goal is to reach 2 per cent.

The chart represents social procurement spend as of December 2023 compared to targeted social procurement spend for the same time period.

The National Centre for Indigenous Laws at the University of Victoria is a special project and one that we're proud to be a part of. In the spirit of 'by us, for us' our team has engaged the Khowutzun Development Corporation (KDC) owned by the Cowichan First Nation for significant scope of work. For the calendar year of 2023 we spent 14 per cent of the total project value with KDC.

Local economic development is an important part of community building. By supporting local, small, and independent businesses that are often family run, we are contributing to a stronger, more diverse, and inclusive supply chain. We're proud to source 68 per cent of our costs from local and independent suppliers within 80km of our operations.

When it comes to spending on goods and services, Chandos is aiming to keep 95 per cent of our money where it can do the most good. Right here in Canada – in communities across the country we’re part of.

The money we spend on everything from equipment to services can create vibrant, inclusive communities. We know that in our business it’s important to measure across the supply chain, too. That’s what we’ll be working on next.

Making money is important. It's not the only thing that matters, of course, but if we want to continue to make an impact, and use our business as a force for good, we must continuously grow revenue and improve our profitability. We manage our business with a set of repeatable processes and rely on our culture of continuous improvement to increase profitablity.

We're strategic and thoughtful about where and how we grow the top line. And we plan to keep it going.

The construction sector contributes $153B to Canada's economy with significant opportunity to impact social and environmental outcomes. In our experience, early contractor engagement - especially integrated project delivery (IPD) and progressive design build (PDB) - creates the best environment for owners to enhance ESG outcomes while keeping costs and schedules in check.

Pursuing work that allows us to build a better world is core to our strategy. That's why it is so important that 69 per cent of our backlog includes contracts with early contractor engagement (as of Nov 15/23).

Backlog is a common key performance indicator for construction firms. It includes the value of contracts that have been secured but not yet started. It's a good indication of future performance in that it represents projects that will generate revenue over the next two to three years. 

As of July 2023 we estimate that approximately 20 per cent of our backlog includes a social procurement target, helping us reach our goal of shifting 5 per cent of addressable spend to impact organizations by 2025. 

Being a B Corp means we prioritize people and planet along with profit. But it’s more than that. The B Impact assessment provides a framework for us to achieve our purpose. And that’s why we view it as a governance tool.

Chandos has been recognized as a best for the world B Corp four times including in 2022 because we score in the top 5 per cent of all B Corps in the worker category. The environment is our second highest scoring category.

We also use EcoVadis to assess and manage our ESG performance. 

For the second year our team has completed an EcoVadis social and environmental assessment maintaining our score of 63 of 100 which ranks us in the 83rd percentile of all companies assessed. Here's how the score breaks down:

• Environment 60/100
• Labour and Human Rights 70/100
• Ethics 60/100
• Sustainable Procurement 50/100