The Construction Association of Nova Scotia is frustrated by the outcome of the Halifax Regional Municipality’s Community Planning Economic Development Standing Committee (CPED) meeting on June 16.
 
The HRM has changed the operating hours for construction projects from 7 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., something the Construction Association of Nova Scotia says has detrimental implications.
 
Duncan Williams, the president and CEO of the association, says the changes will impact the housing affordability and attainability crisis. 
 
“It may sound simple enough, cutting seven and a half hours out of the work week to control noise, [and it] may not seem like a lot, but if you multiply that by 100 people on a site, you just removed 750 productive hours of time,” Williams said while speaking on The Todd Veinotte Show.

Williams explained that the changes would increase the development time by approximately 15 to 17 per cent – or another eight to 10 weeks on a year-long project site. 

And time to completion isn’t the only aspect affected by the change. 

Williams says with increased time comes increased costs, and those costs will be passed on to buyers and renters. 

“It’s the equipment that’s rented and leased for a longer period of time, the carrying charges, the finance charges – all of these things go in, and we did an extrapolation of a 10 million dollar project with 25 units in it and essentially what it came out to was about 1.5-1.7 million dollar addition to that, and there’s no value added,” Williams explained.

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