Concert Properties

f PBS were a developer, that would be Concert Properties,” Dave Ramslie, vice-president, sustainability, says with a laugh. But he's not really joking.

Concert's tagline is “a developer with a difference,” and it's hard to argue that the Vancouver-based residential and commercial builder isn't dedicated to living up to that slogan. Having spent its first 30 years with an eye toward the environment—constructing dozens of buildings that meet LEED standards and creating a top-of-the-line waste diversion program for all of its properties— the company has committed to more rigorous standards for the next three decades.

“We've gone through a year of reflection on our sustainability framework, where we've committed to hard targets on greenhouse gas reductions—an 80-percent reduction by 2050, and that also includes growth, which is really significant,” says

Ramslie, who spent almost a decade with the City of Vancouver devising green building and carbon reduction programs. “Only one other developer in Canada is committed to those reductions that we know of.”

Concert, which has 250 employees spread between Vancouver and offices in Toronto, and Brampton, Ontario, is also committed to constructing zero-carbon buildings and has pledged to report annually and publicly on its sustainability accomplishments. “It's pretty huge for a developer to actually put out concrete goals like that. Lots of developers shy away from that kind of thing,” Ramslie maintains.

“We've spoken to, I think, 148 different points of engagement in terms of developing that sustainability framework,” he adds. For Ramslie, that “shows good commitment in terms of creating a shared vision around how we're going to change our company and make it better.”