By Natasha Rombough, Director of Marketing and Communications, CHBA
It’s hard to believe you’re in the heart of Canada’s capital when standing on the terrace of Roy Nandram’s latest award-winning home. Suspended over a 20-ft. cliff and backing onto greenspace is delightfully closer to being in a treehouse than an urban centre. That connection with nature extends throughout the home, with oversized windows showcasing every leafy view, granting a refined combination of abundant natural light and cocooned privacy.
Sustainability with style is the driving force behind RND Construction Ltd., which has been serving the Ottawa-area for more than 34 years. Its President and Project Manager, Roy Nandram, originally started the company as a renovation business, but now it also builds custom and spec homes in addition to full-scale renovations. Nandram’s commitment to innovation and healthy living has led the company on a progressive journey from Energy Star, to R-2000, to LEED and now every new home it builds is Net Zero.
“I’ve always had an interest in the environment,” says Nandram. “We were getting training from all directions, but no one was focusing on energy efficiency. So, we decided that, as a small company, there was sufficient business for us within the energy efficiency niche.” With 22 homes labelled under CHBA’s Net Zero Home Labelling Program and another two coming shortly, the company has labelled more homes than any other in Ottawa. That accomplishment stemmed from years of actively striving to learn more, give back and make a difference.
FAST FACTS
Company Name: RND Construction Ltd.
Head Office: Ottawa
Number of Full-Time Employees: 12-15
Approx. Annual Gross Revenue: avg. $10 million
Projects per year: 15
Adventurous ambitions and education
Good marketing outreach brought Nandram to Canada in his youth. One of 10 children, Nandram was born and raised in a farming village in Guyana, a country on the Caribbean coast of South America, slightly bigger than New Brunswick with roughly the same population density. Having completed five years of secondary school focused on technical engineering drawings, one day he walked into a commissioner’s office and said he wanted to study in Canada. He was given a handful of brochures to look at, and one of them was for Algonquin College in Ottawa. Nandram made the leap and moved abroad in 1976, earning first a diploma in mechanical engineering technology and then industrial engineering technology.
From there, his story is like many others in the residential construction industry in that he worked his way up learning the business. Initially hired on an infill condo building to do architectural drawings, he also learned planning, permitting and marketing. While working, Nandram completed a Bachelor of Economics, setting him up with a solid foundation for running a business. He was a site supervisor by the time the company he worked for closed their doors during an economic downturn in the late 1980s.
Using his skills and the connections he’d made working for his previous employer, Nandram began RND Construction Ltd. in 1990. Keen for more education, he completed his first R-2000 training in 1995 and built his own R-2000 home a few years later. With advancements in construction coming quickly even several decades ago, Nandram retrained in 2013, and followed it up with building three more R-2000 homes. In 2015, he was given the R-2000 Builder of the Year Award by EnerQuality.
From there, RND Construction continued to improve the energy efficiency of its homes, and built three LEED Platinum homes before making the shift to Net Zero Ready.
Earning business without marketing
Running a business as an immigrant comes with its challenges. “Sometimes it’s difficult getting work because I don’t look like the typical homebuilder,” says Nandram. He prides himself on superior service and the relationships that RND builds with their clients, ones that go beyond business and turn into friendships.
Though the company maintains a social media presence, it does very little direct marketing. Instead, RND’s great reputation and impressive portfolio attracts clients, and most work comes through referrals. Awards, such as the one it won this year for Best Custom or Renovated Net Zero Home through CHBA’s National Awards for Housing Excellence competition, earn media attention and further boost that positive word of mouth. It’s not the first time the company has received national recognition for their Net Zero projects: It was a finalist in the CHBA competition’s Net Zero Home category in 2019, 2021 and 2022 before taking home a win this year during the awards gala in Saint John, NB.
“Winning an award improves our branding,” Nandram explains. “We get a lot of free press, and you can’t beat when someone else is writing about you.”
Pursuing and sharing knowledge
RND joined the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association (GOHBA) in 2002 to be able to enter a home in GOHBA’s prestigious awards program. But Nandram didn’t stop there. He went to a meeting, then another. In 2006 he and three others started up GOHBA’s Green Committee. In the beginning, it didn’t have much uptake, but after renaming it to the Building Innovation Committee, it prospered. By chairing the Green Committee for many years, Nandram became part of the GOHBA Board of Directors, and later served as its President in 2019. He’s still on the board today as Membership Committee Chair, and is very involved in GOHBA’s Renovation Council, as well as several other committees. Nandram is also involved at the national level of the association, and has been on CHBA’s Net Zero Council since 2016.
If you’re counting, that’s a lot of volunteer hours. It’s time well spent, according to Nandram.
“Our business is unique, and participating in all these committees helps us know what’s happening,” he says. “These committees help sort out bylaws and new requirements, and being part of these conversations helps us to get out ahead. It directly benefits my business.”
In addition to advancing his own education, Nandram is passionate about helping others in the residential construction industry to keep growing as well. To that end, he invites fellow members to come look at projects under construction so they can learn from what he’s doing. During the tours, he points out details that he believes make a big impact with customers, such as finishing the mechanical room to a level that’s on par with every other room in the home. Why? “When they walk in and see how good everything looks, it gives them confidence in the quality of construction throughout the whole home, even behind the walls.” So that homeowners understand how to care for their Net Zero home, they’re given a thorough tour of their home and a maintenance manual. Then, 30 days after the homeowners move in, the mechanical contractors come to their home and spend an hour with them.
Nandram also volunteers for the YMCA, teaching new immigrants how to thrive working in the industry. And poetically coming full circle, he is a guest lecturer for Building Science students at Algonquin College. The desire to give back to the community is a core value for Nandram and his company, and they support numerous charities through time and donations. Last year, RND raised more than $30,000 in its annual golf tournament for Diabetes Canada.
The business of building to Net Zero
Nandram wears many hats in his company: Project manager, architectural planning and design, finance, human resources, marketing, legal and client services, to name a few. Other small business owners can relate. After 30 years in business, building and renovating homes still excites him. “I’d love to spend more time doing conceptual designs, figuring out the best way to take a site and maximize the number of units, and how we should design the interior and exterior.”
RND has its own interior designer, and Nandram loves working with architects for the conceptual design. Many of the company’s clients are doctors living near Ottawa’s hospitals, looking for a luxury home with attention to detail and all the bells and whistles, Nandram says. “They want to control everything in their home with their phones. Every home we build is smart-wired throughout so that the homeowner can later install speakers, electric blinds and more.”
The company began building to Net Zero in 2017. Several years ago, RND built its Farmside Green project, a nine-home development situated in an established urban neighbourhood and backing onto a 427-hectare farmland belonging to the National Capital Commission. “That project was special,” Nandram reflects. “It was the first time we did a large project of multiple homes at one time, and it was done during COVID, so that was challenging.” The homes weren’t originally intended to be Net Zero Ready, but Nandram was driven to give it a try, and convinced all but one buyer to upgrade. “In the end, we had nine homeowners who were super happy.”
Since then, it’s been the company’s standard to build every home to Net Zero, though until this year that’s been a great selling feature but not been the primary reason homeowners hire them. This year, for the first time, a customer came to RND asking for a Net Zero Home. RND is the largest Net Zero Builder in Ottawa, and Nandram’s commitment to the environment is getting around.
Coming CHBA Events
Fall 2024 Call for Entries for the 2025 CHBA National Awards for Housing Excellence
Oct. 21-25, 2024 CHBA National Meetings, Ottawa
May 11-15, 2025. CHBA Home Building Week, Victoria