Canada faces an urgent need to build an estimated 5.8 million homes by 2030, a 35% increase to the current housing stock, to meet affordability targets while navigating fragmented building systems and outdated practices. The Best Practices in Building Systems (BPiBS) initiative responds to this challenge through a collaborative intelligence approach designed to support whole-system transformation in housing.
Led by BC Housing, in strategic partnership with the University of Victoria and funded through the Government of Canada’s HICC-RKI program, BPiBS aims to help accelerate whole-system alignment in industry, regulatory and education spheres towards addressing existing challenges and emerging needs for quick adoption of emerging best practices to meet Canada’s housing needs.
In essence, while the need for more housing is clear, it is equally vital that we not only build more, but build well—housing that is affordable, adequate, high-quality, and environmentally sustainable, meeting the needs of today and into the future. This imperative is at the core of why BPiBS was created.
BPiBS revealed the need for new approaches that could connect technical insight with lived experience, and innovation with action. This led to the development of KIND—short for Knowledge Integration Networks for New Directions and Designs.
KIND supports collaboration across sectors by bringing together diverse forms of knowledge, community-based wisdom, and technical expertise. Its goal is to support more thoughtful designs and processes to guide more effective, inclusive directions for housing and infrastructure systems.
This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada through the Research and Knowledge Initiative (RKI), delivered and supported by Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada to advance housing and infrastructure projects across the country.
Our team works across the unceded territories of many Indigenous Peoples, including the Algonquin Anishinaabe (Ottawa), Mississaugas of the Credit, Haudenosaunee, and Huron-Wendat (Toronto), Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh (Vancouver), kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Coquitlam), lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples (Victoria), and the Tla-o-qui-aht and Nuu-chah-nulth Nations (Tofino).
We recognize that land acknowledgment is not the work itself, but a reminder of our ongoing responsibilities—relational, material, and ethical—to the peoples and places that continue to steward these lands.
We commit to unsettling extractive habits in our work and to walking, with humility, toward deeper accountability.