The Telephone Game on Site. How knowledge breaks down between housing policy and construction practice. · Best Practices in Building Systems

Title: The Telephone Game on Site. How knowledge breaks down between housing policy and construction practice.
Abstract: The paper argues that Canada’s housing industry—particularly in British Columbia—is facing a systemic breakdown as rising demands for affordability, sustainability, and building performance collide with a shrinking and aging construction workforce. It contends that the long‑standing assumption that knowledge will naturally flow from policy, building codes, and licensed professionals down to on‑site workers through informal, mentorship-based training is no longer viable. Using a systems perspective and the “telephone game” analogy, the paper shows how critical information, intent, and risk awareness degrade as they move through fragmented education, licensing, and subcontracting structures, resulting in gaps between policy goals and actual construction practice. These challenges are intensified by limited formal training capacity, heavy reliance on subcontracted labour, and exclusionary industry cultures that hinder workforce diversification. Rather than proposing a single solution, the paper identifies system-level conditions for more robust, inclusive training ecosystems that deliver knowledge directly to the point of action, positioning workforce learning as essential infrastructure for delivering safe, durable, and cost‑effective housing at scale.
Contributor: Shawna Henderson, CEO, Blue House Energy
Date Submitted: 2026/03/20
Format: PDF
Type: Text
Extent: 79 pages
Language: en-CA
License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License
Is Part Of: Transition, Not Arrival; Cross-cutting system threads; Process threads; Misalignment and Drift
Description: text, images, graphs, references
Identifier: 45

Media: How knowledge breaks down between housing policy and construction practice.