Work. Family. Life.

Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers' new Burnaby headquarters wins prestigious real estate award

Canada NewsWire

New 15,000+-square-metre global head office wins award at the 2009 NAIOP Real Estate Excellence Awards

BURNABY, BC, Nov. 20 /CNW/ - Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers (NYSE and TSX: RBA), the world's largest industrial auctioneer, received an award for its new global headquarters at last night's 2009 NAIOP (Vancouver Chapter) Real Estate Excellence Awards, which recognized excellence in commercial real estate in Greater Vancouver. The Company's new head office, located in Burnaby, B.C., won the award for the best Office Development.

"We are very proud to receive the 2009 NAIOP award for Office Development," said Jeremy Black, Vice President of Business Development, Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers. "We love our new building - it's not only a work of art, it's our home. We would like to thank GWL Realty Advisors, Bunting Coady Architects, Ventana Construction and MHPM Project Managers for their involvement in the design and construction of an office that takes care of both our employees and the environment in which they live."

Mr. Black accepted the award along with Don Harrison of GWL Realty Advisors, Paul Reynolds of MHPM Project Managers Inc., Teresa Coady of Bunting Coady Architects, John Sharp of Ventana Construction Corporation and Blair Quinn of CB Richard Ellis.

Ritchie Bros.' new global headquarters is a 15,200+-square-metre (164,000-ft(2)) office with a wealth of work-life features, including a cafeteria, workout facility and a new corporate child-care center. It currently houses more than 300 employees, and was designed with environmental building practices in mind. As such, Ritchie Bros. hopes the building will achieve LEED Gold certification status from the Canadian Green Building Council - it will be the first LEED Gold building in Burnaby.

via www.rttnews.com

BC forum on the development of a public child care system in Canada

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - Nov. 20, 2009) – Child care activists and experts will share information and plan for action at the B.C. stop on a cross-country tour promoting public delivery of child care through school boards or local governments.

Across Canada, parents struggle to find good child care in a patchwork of services that is privatized, fragmented and expensive. And the tour comes to B.C. just as staff, faculty and student groups at the University of Victoria have come together to stop the University from contracting with private multinational child care provider Kids n' Company.

Speakers at the Vancouver meeting will discuss the benefits to children, parents and the economy of moving to publicly-delivered early childhood care and education system.

WHAT:	Free public forum on building a public child care system
WHO:	CUPE BC president Barry O'Neill, Susan Prentice, co-author of a new book, About Canada: Childcare, Susan Harney from the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC and the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, and Adrienne Montani, provincial coordinator for First Call Children and Youth Advocacy Coalition.

The event is open to all and will be of interest to parents, community youth and child care workers and activists, policy makers and others.

WHEN:	Tuesday, November 24, 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
WHERE:	Alice MacKay room, Vancouver Public Library, Lower Level
	350 West Georgia St., Vancouver

On-site child care provided

The Canadian Union of Public Employees is organizing the tour, which brings together community activists, parents, academics, child care workers and union members, as part of its national anti-privatization work. Visit cupe.ca/child-care for a backgrounder on public child care, provincial child care profiles and more.

via www.marketwire.com

Big move to Burnaby for Ritchie Bros. - "We want our employees and their families to be happy...."

EXCERPTS from Burnaby Now Article

Dave Ritchie takes no credit for the gleaming new 164,000-square-foot headquarters of Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers that officially opened on Oct. 29 in the Big Bend area of South Burnaby.

Ritchie, chairman emeritus of the heavy-equipment auction service, helped start the company in 1958 in Kelowna, but he's now content to let the new generation of Ritchie employees lead the company to heights not even he could imagine.

"It's a pretty cool building, and it's a pretty practical building," said Ritchie. "When we first came to Burnaby in 1963, we had a really small facility on the old Marine Drive. ... Who would have thought we'd end up back in Burnaby with a facility like this?"

Ritchie walks proudly in the building that currently houses 312 full-time and 30 part-time employees. The company, which had previously had its headquarters in Richmond, needed to find a place that could house up to 700 employees because, unlike most companies during the economic recession, Ritchie Bros. is thriving.

"We tend to do well in good times and bad times," said Ritchie Bros. chief executive officer Peter Blake. "In good times, companies are looking to upgrade, and in bad times, well, sometimes they have to sell off their machinery. ... And since we're a global company, we are selling product in Edmonton to bidders in Saudi Arabia, or we're selling product from Dubai to Australia."

.....For both Blake and Ritchie, their favourite place in the entire building is the child-care facility, which has room for 45 children."It kept on coming up in our surveys that child care was important," he said. "I've got two young children myself, so I heard what everybody was saying.""I think it really speaks to the family atmosphere we want to create," said Ritchie."We want our employees and their families to be happy, so having their children taken care of safely is important to us because it's important to our employees."

via www2.canada.com

The Mompreneur Articles - Kids & Company, Victoria Sopik

Q: What made you start Kids & Company?

As an entrepreneur,   I’m always looking for business opportunities and as a mother of eight, I was looking for something with flexible child care.  Our goal is to guarantee a space for your child at the location of your choice when given 6 months notice eliminating the stress for parents. 

via www.themompreneur.com

UVic mulls 'big box' childcare

Child-care groups are accusing the University of Victoria of trying to solve its daycare problems by bringing "big box" child care to B.C.

At a meeting Nov. 24, the UVic board of governors will mull over information about Kids and Company, a large for-profit firm with 25 centres in most other provinces in Canada, including several universities.

One of the few points of agreement in the debate is that more child care is needed at UVic. With 300 children on the waiting list for an acclaimed campus child-care program, many children are kindergarten age before they are offered a place, said Gayle Gorrill, UVic vice-president of finance and operations.

"I know we are not alone and this is challenging for parents everywhere, but we are hearing from faculty and students who are concerned about the waiting list," she said. "They said we need to increase capacity and we said what are the options?"

UVic provides an annual subsidy of $3,200 per child, and parents then pay slightly below the market rate, with infant care costing $958 to $1,037 a month.

Under the Kids and Company model, the university would pay a fee and the company would guarantee the waiting list is cleared within six months.

The care would be in addition to the centres already run by UVic. "We are not considering closing or reducing, in any way, our capacity on campus," Gorrill said.

But Lynne Marks, co-chairwoman of the UVic Childcare Action Group, said there is growing concern on campus and in the community that private, corporate child care will lower standards.

"Studies done across Canada and internationally show that privatized childcare leads to lower quality because they need to make a profit," she said.

Major concerns are that there will be less staff who are qualified early childhood educators, a higher ratio of children to staff and high staff turnover, Marks said. A letter from the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of B.C. being circulated on campus says the child-care community is "shocked" that UVic is considering the "false fix of big-box, corporate child-care chains."

Victoria-Swan Lake MLA Rob Fleming is also speaking out against the proposal. "Why would the University of Victoria even consider it when we have many early childhood educators in our community?" he asked.

There is a child-care crisis in B.C. because the provincial government has cut child-care subsidies and chipped away at other funding, Fleming said.

Victoria Sopik, president of Kids and Company, said the critics know little about how the company operates.

"We provide very high quality child care in centres across the country," said Sopik, a mother of eight, who said she founded the business because she knows the importance of flexible child care.

All staff are highly qualified and parents can watch their children on webcams, Sopik said. The corporate model evolved to enable the company to provide high-quality care without charging sky-high fees, she said. Companies pay a fee and, in return, their staff have access to child-care spaces.

via www.timescolonist.com

Video of new family friendly headquarters - Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers

From Vancouver Sun article

Child care costs economy 'millions' - Scotland

A BBC Radio Scotland investigation has found that Scotland could be earning millions of pounds more a year if parents were given additional support.

Experts have told the programme that spending on child care needs to become an urgent priority.

via news.bbc.co.uk

Ritchie Bros. auctioneers move into spacious new home - which includes workplace child care program

Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Inc.’s first Lower Mainland headquarters was a house on Bridgeport Road in Richmond — homey, but it would be a bit cramped for today’s home-base operation of 312 employees overseeing the operations of 39 auction sites around the world.

In fact, the company has twice outgrown Richmond locations, which eventually sprawled to three corners of the municipality.

To that end, the company has just moved into an expansive, 160,000-square-foot global headquarters replete with fitness centre, cafeteria and in-house daycare centre more fitting for the world’s largest industrial auctioneer.

The gleaming glass and steel structure is still on the banks of the Fraser River, but upstream in Burnaby in the Glenlyon business park — at the bucolic end, bordered by trees and riverside park trails. It is officially opening this Thursday.

“We just want to make a nice place for people to come to work and enjoy their time here, and maintain the culture that we have at Ritchie Bros.,” president Rob MacKay said in an interview, adding that he hopes the company will be in the new location for a long time.

via www.vancouversun.com

I have previously written about the Ritchie Bros.child care program here and here.  We are continuing to recruit staff to work in the program.  For further information on careers with RBA click here.

The Korea Herald - workplace child care lagging

Except for certain conglomerates and state-run companies, a majority of companies do little to meet the childcare needs of their female workers.

Under the current law, companies with more than 300 full-time female employees or more than 500 total employees are required to establish an employer-supported childcare facility, which can accommodate children aged between one and six.

However, according to the data by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Labor, 51 percent of the companies out of the 533 companies, whose number of female workers exceeds 300 or that of total workers exceeds 500, failed to establish an employer-supported childcare facility, as of the end of 2008.

While child-care centers including public, private and family day-care centers totaled 33,499, the number of employer-supported childcare centers was a fraction at 350, as of the end of 2008, the government data showed.

via www.koreaherald.co.kr

Businesses in Hawaii impacted by school closures - some pitch in to make things easier for parents

From Honolu Advertiser

Across Hawaii yesterday, business productivity may have dipped a bit as some working parents stayed home or put in fewer hours on the job because they had to care for their children on the first day of public school teacher furloughs.

The productivity loss, even if stretched over all the state's 17 planned teacher furlough days through May, probably won't amount to any discernable drop in the state's gross domestic product, because parents will mostly be using time off work they otherwise would have taken at another time.

Still, the relatively short notice of the first "furlough Friday" challenged numerous companies to maintain services and production.

Why investing in the early years is critical...

HELP is pleased to announce the release of a new report entitled "15 by 15: A comprehensive Policy Framework for Early Human Capital Investment in BC".

This report dramatically illustrates why all of us - individuals, businesses, and governments - should care about the real brain drain in BC resulting from early vulnerability.

More on Kids & Co at Uvic

From The Ring

By Robie Liscomb

Child care was again on the agenda for UVic’s Board of Governors at its Sept. 29 meeting.

Making a special representation to the board was Dr. Lynne Marks (History), speaking on behalf of the Childcare Action Group, a group of concerned faculty, students and staff.
Marks briefly presented some of the findings of the group’s recent survey of child care needs on campus. She also urged the board not to be hasty in making a decision on the direction the university should take in addressing the need for more child care spaces and to involve all stakeholders in the process.

The board also received a report on child care expansion from the vice-president academic and the vice-president finance and operations, prepared at the request of the board’s operations and facilities committee.

The report reviewed the status of the current operations of UVic Child Care Services and outlined four options for future expansion.

UVic now provides high quality child care for 154 children in six centres, and in August there were approximately 300 children on the waiting list. The university provides an annual operating subsidy of $500,000, and approximately $300,000 in deferred maintenance costs have accumulated. While the university is committed to the current level of child care on campus, there is minimal potential for expansion within the existing facility according to the report, so this is not a viable option.

Another option identified is closing or reducing the after-school program and repurposing Centre 6 to provide 20 to 30 full-time, pre-school or mixed-age care spaces. This would entail renovation costs of $600,000 and require an additional $100,000 in annual operating subsidies.

A third option would be a new purpose-built facility to provide 50 spaces. This would entail capital costs of $1.75 million and additional annual operating subsidies of $187,000 to $314,000.

The fourth option explored is expanding local community capacity through third-party child care providers. In particular, the report identifies Kids & Co., a national child care provider, which has expressed interest in expanding into the Victoria area. It already provides child care for employees and students of eight universities and other large employers, including NSERC and SSHRC. Kids & Co. has identified a nearby building site and would cover full capital and operating costs and, for an annual fee from the university, guarantee access for all faculty and staff (and a similar arrangement could be negotiated for students).

The report was discussed in a meeting of the board’s operations and facilities committee and brought to the board with a motion, which carried, that requested the administration provide further information and options to the board at its November meeting.

The motion specifically requested further due diligence regarding Kids & Co.; an analysis of the need and demand for child care at UVic; a set of questions of principle for the board, including whether it is appropriate for the university to provide child care, and if so, whether it is appropriate to subsidize child care and at what levels, to identify any opportunity costs and, depending on the board’s answers to these questions, consider what options are possible and what form of multi-stakeholder consultation might be appropriate. Regardless of the outcome of the discussions, the university will continue to provide childcare at the current levels.

UVic needs child care and is considering Kids & Co

There is a desperate need for additional child care spaces in the Victoria area. According to a recent report submitted to the Board of Governors; Kids & Co (a national provider of corporate child care services) are being considered.

This has resulted in mixed reactions here in BC.  Here are some links to recent postings regarding this issue:

UVic Child Care Action Group

From the group's Facebook Page -

As you may be aware, faculty, students and staff with young children face a particular challenge of finding adequate childcare to support their families and their careers. While childcare facilities on campus are excellent, they come nowhere near to meeting the demand; incoming faculty are told that the wait-list is two years or more, and many are never called. As a result, we have formed a group of concerned faculty, students and staff – the University Childcare Action Group – to organize an awareness campaign across campus, with the long-term goal of creating more childcare spaces on campus. We have been inspired by a similar initiative at the University of British Columbia, which succeeded in doubling the size of the childcare programme. We are moving in several directions to increase awareness of this issue, bringing scores of individual stories, needs and concerns to the attention of the administration.

Child Care Advocates of BC - BC government inaction invites big box, corporate child care at University of Victoria

Looking for Montessori educators for workplace child care program

You may recall that I have been working on the development of a new workplace child care program for Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers.  We are currently searching for additional staff members for this program...

Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers recently opened a combined philosophy  (Montessori, Reggio & Traditional ECE) corporate child care facility in conjunction with the move to it's new premises in south Burnaby August 2009. Our state of the art facility and child care team offer a child centred, nurturing environment for infants, toddlers, preschoolers and school age children. They are currently searching for dynamic, creative, energetic individuals to join our team as Montessori Educators.

The Montessori Educator's role is to support the integration of the Montessori philosophy into the program through the presentation of materials and lessons to children, role modeling of grace and courtesies and by providing care in a manner that is consistent with the overall program philosophy.

Looking for great ECE's for new workplace child care program

As some of my readers are aware, I have been consulting on the development of a wonderful new workplace child care program for Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers (RBA) in Burnaby, BC.  Below are a few pictures of the new RBA headquarters, which has been under construction for the last year or so, and is scheduled to have employees begin moving in next month.

I am happy to report that things have been moving along very nicely and this new child care program, which will accommodate infants, toddlers and preschool age children, will be opening in the Fall 2009.  The child care centre has been designed to serve RBA employees and their children and will offer exceptional quality child care programming that incorporates the best aspects of multiple early learning philosophies.

The Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Child Care Program will be responsive to the individual needs of the children and families that it serves.  Qualified, experienced Early Childhood Education and Infant-Toddler trained staff will ensure that the physical, emotional and social development of each child is supported through the provision of an environment that truly respects the needs of young children.

Program goals include (but are not limited to) the following:

• To provide very high quality early learning and child care experiences for all children and families who enroll.
• To create a safe, warm, inviting and nurturing environment where young children can develop, grow and learn in a way that best supports their individual needs.
• To provide a program that supports the ongoing professional development of all staff that work in the program.

Currently RBA are recruiting Early Childhood Educators, Infant-Toddler Educators and ECE Assistants for this new child care program.  If you are a BC or Alberta qualifed Early Childhood Educator I encourage you to submit your resume for consideration via the RBA Careers webpage.  Please share this information with your colleagues or anyone who you think might be well suited for a position in this new program.

Established in 1958, Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers (NYSE and TSX: RBA) is the world’s largest industrial auctioneer, selling more equipment to on-site and online bidders than any other company in the world. Headquartered in Vancouver, BC, Canada, Ritchie Bros. has more than 110 locations worldwide, including 39 auction sites. Ritchie Bros. conducts hundreds of unreserved public auctions every year, selling a broad range of used and unused equipment for the construction, transportation, agricultural, material handling, mining, forestry, petroleum and marine industries.

Ritchie Bros. offers an excellent total compensation package including health and dental benefits, education allowance, Group RRSP and Employee Share Purchase Plan with company matching.