What’s Lurking in Your Walls? The Truth About Asbestos with Craig Williams

What’s Lurking in Your Walls The Truth About Asbestos with Craig Williams

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to milestone episode 170 of the business development podcast. And today we're chatting about what is lurking in your walls, the walls of your buildings, the floors of your house. Today, we're chatting with Craig Williams at A&M abatement, and he. Could save your life. Stick with us. You're not going to want to miss this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast.

And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to Milestone Episode 170. And do we have an absolutely amazing expert guest for you today. Today I bring to you Craig Williams. Craig is a multi faceted professional whose journey weaves through the realms of environmental science, entrepreneurship, and community leadership.

Graduating from Concordia University in Alberta in 2006 with a bachelor's degree in environmental science, Craig honed his skills in the building construction industry before transitioning into environmental consulting. His passion for innovation led him to establish Aspen IAQ Laboratories, a successful venture specializing in asbestos and fungal sample analysis.

Building on the foundation, Craig recognized a need in the industry for his experience and founded A&M Abatement Services in 2011. A company renowned for its commitment to quality and integrity in hazardous materials mitigation and removal. Beyond his entrepreneurial endeavors, Craig is deeply engaged in his community, balancing his roles as a business leader with a commitment to education and environmental stewardship.

He has facilitated cross curricular, land based learning experiences for children in an urban forest setting. Fostering a connection between youth and their natural world, committed to personal and professional growth, Craig has participated in business coaching programs and leadership development initiatives, including the contextual intelligence leadership program at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, with a dedication to excellence and a passion for making a positive impact.

Craig continues to lead by example, both in his business ventures and in his contributions to his community. Craig, it's an absolute honor to have you on the show.

Craig Williams: Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here.

Kelly Kennedy: It's it's super cool. You know, we connected back in February of 2024 when actually you reached out to me and that was absolutely amazing.

Amazing. We had a great conversation about business development. Had you been a listener for a while at that point?

Craig Williams: I hadn't, honestly, I did a Google search and I'm like, I need to find some help with this, your name popped up. And then oddly enough, I didn't call. And then I just happened to see your truck driving around and I'm like, and it jogged my memory.

I'm like, I need to call him. And so I talked to you and then, and then chatted with you for a few minutes. You gave me some amazing Free advice. You, you helped me, you helped me through a couple of tough questions and, and then I've been listening to your podcast since, so it's, it's, it's, I'm in.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, it was really cool.

It, I mean, ironically, it's not. That often we get a lot of people that actually reach out by phone directly. So it was very cool to kind of have that conversation and get to meet a local Edmontonian doing amazing things. And we got chatting about, you know, your industry and abatement. And I was like, Craig, you got to come on the show and chat about this.

Cause I think this is something that is everywhere, but nobody really knows what it is or what you guys are doing. And it's a cool industry.

Craig Williams: It's quite a niche market. I mean, it's the, the HDTV kind of made a little more prevalent, but there's still a lot of unknowns that even people have been working with it around it for years, still have a lot of questions and they're still not quite sure what it can be in or what it is.

Or, or there, there's a lot of misinformation about it as well. And so yeah, it's, it's definitely something that I feel anyone Lives or works on older buildings needs to have a bit of you know, two hour course on it to let them know what it is and what can harm them.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. And it's basically anybody who works on older buildings should know something about abatement.

Craig Williams: A hundred percent. Yeah. Anything kind of the, the rough timeline I've seen stuff put in after, but 1983 or older is kind of the, the end stop for the majority of, of asbestos building products that were put in, especially in Alberta itself.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. We're gonna get into that and I'm, I'm really excited to learn more about.

Frankly, asbestos, because, you know, none of us want to die from stuff that's in our walls.

Right, exactly.

But I want to get into who is Craig Williams? How did you end up on this? You're not, you're not an old man, man. You've been an entrepreneur for a long time. But take us back to the beginning. How did you end up on this journey?

Craig Williams: Okay. Yeah. So You know, as a kid, I decided I'm going to be, I was passionate about trees, forest. I grew up, I had a house at the end of the city, like last house on the block, alleyway, ditch, gravel road, forest, trees, farmland, ravine, river valley. And, and that was in the North end and Fraser and, and built forts, like.

Ramage, rummage through the forests made groups of friends. We had rival fights with other kids who were building forts, stealing resources. And, and, you know, just fell in love with the, with the trees. Anytime my parents would be like, do you want to join scouts? Or do you want to play soccer? Or do you want to play baseball?

I'd be like, ah, I'm good. And, and the, the. Thing my mom always said is she would just open the window, hear me hammering, building stuff in the trees or hear me with the friends and she'd be like, he's good. And I just knew to be home when the lights turned on and yeah, so that kind of childhood. And so it started there.

I had a passion for environmentalism trees, forest mainly was the primary focus for me. So I'm like, all right, I'm going to do this. So I, I finished. I went into forest technology at Nate kind of felt a little bit of pressure. It just felt like I need to make a decision. I was I'm a December baby.

So when I graduated, I was still 17. So I'm 17 years old, trying to decide what am I doing with life? What am I going to do? So rushed myself into this forestry program, went into it, spent six weeks in the woods at Kidney Lake by Swan Hills, and learned a ton. Learned ATV, forest firefighting bear awareness, did a bunch of stuff.

That was really cool. When I got back and realized it was primarily about how to log the forest and cut everything down, I kind of, you know, You know, I, I lost interest and, and I kind of pulled out. So then, then found myself doing sheet metal and some construction and, and decided, okay, I, if I'm going to do this, I better do it now while I'm like 18.

So started upgrading and and ended up getting into Concordia, took environmental sciences, had a blast. I met my now wife during that time when I was 19 and we were, we were dating and upon graduation, I'm looking at myself going, I am, my only jobs in forestry are going to be out counting. Elk or something in God knows where in the middle of nowhere.

And how am I going to make this relationship work? So I started applying, looking for jobs in the city, trying to find something. And I fell into environmental consulting for human environments. So kind of pivoted from that forestry a bit, but found that I was really good at human environment. So I ended up being at a consulting company called Cascade Environmental in the city.

We did asbestos assessments, indoor air quality, mold remediation, and mold remediation or mold treatment. microbial assessments when people had issues with mold and and basically the air monitoring and visual inspection services for, for companies that were removing it. Found I, I, I actually really enjoyed it.

I, I was quite good. I, I first got there, there was two senior managers, And realized that they made all the decisions of if I got to go on cool assessments or I was just carrying a pump to sites doing air monitoring all day. So I befriended them, chatted with them, they, I just asked, Hey, can I come on that assessment?

They gave me so much knowledge and, and it worked out well because after six months they quit, moved on to a new job. A larger company and here is, I was the only one that knew how to do these assessments. So I, I just happened to accelerate fast and yeah. And then upon completing that, I, I honestly, I, my wife and I had this plan.

We got married and we were going to go travel. So we sold everything. I quit. Went, went to Asia traveled for three months on our honeymoon. Basically just used up all of our money. We got back from taxes. And did it on a shoestring and, and then we had a job set up in Taiwan teaching my wife's a teacher.

So we taught English in Taiwan for a year and just kind of. Relax, save some money. Enjoyed that experience. And I started finding myself reapplying on that same kind of consulting job for when I returned. And, and I landed back at Cascade when I came back as a, as a project, senior project manager and, and fell into all that.

And. At one point I, I was, I was talking to guys on site and realizing that I'm having to continuously train a lot of these crews that were showing up to sites, especially when it came to mold they were proficient and good in asbestos, but when it came to mold there, it's just a different beast.

And you have to have a bit of a scientific knowledge of what can make or break a mold clearance and what can save it and, and. I, I was left on a vacation and I found myself searching up abatement equipment online and I started ordering it that vacation clarity got me browsing that and, and realizing where I wanted to be.

I go, if I have to keep training these guys, I can do this. And at least I'm putting the training to my own crews and my own company and I can, I can help to expedite this this lack of knowledge in the industry by providing a better quality of service and founded A&M that year.

Kelly Kennedy: And the rest is history, right?

Craig Williams: It is. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: It's been, it's, you founded A&M in 2011. So it's been what, 13 years?

Craig Williams: 13 years. Yeah. 13 long, but great years.

Kelly Kennedy: Man, a lot has happened since 2011. So, so talk about that journey, you know, like, obviously it's one thing to work for another company. And one of the things we talk about on the business development podcast is always that jump, that jump from employee to entrepreneur, because I think that's such a pivotal moment for a lot of people.

And it's usually. It takes a push, it takes a shove, something has to happen. There has to be a catalyst to make that jump. What was it that inspired you to actually take the jump in entrepreneurship and, you know, essentially take your own income into your own hands?

Craig Williams: Right, I mean, I guess it was we were starting to have a talk about having a family in the future and we were still on the fence whether we were going to have children or not.

And at that moment we're on this vacation and I'm not enjoying any of it. It's, I'm in a beautiful place. I'm down in, in Peru. We're doing the Inca trail. We, we did a one week boot over to Brazil, right? They were getting ready for the Olympics the next year. We were looking around there and I just found myself disinterested in any of it.

And at that moment My wife and I knew we were going to have a family and I knew I needed to make a go of this now before I had too much invested in family to take that risk, take that risk now, try and make it work. And so that gave me the push. I kind of knew I was ready to do something. I mean, I was, I had a pretty good gig.

I worked four tens Monday to Thursday and I got every Friday off. And I arranged that. My, like, my boss at the time was fantastic. He let me do that. I was working in the lab in the evening sometimes, but it, it, it was pretty, pretty good work life balance. And it was almost too much of a work life balance that I found myself itching to get into something new.

To, to busy myself and and then I pulled the trigger. I don't know. I'm I'm my own worst enemy sometimes.

Kelly Kennedy: There's something about free time that makes it no longer free time, isn't there? Right. You get stuck in your head. I'm the same way, dude. If like, if I end up with extra time, my mind automatically goes to What more could I be doing to either improve the business development podcast or capital business development or whatever else we're doing or to help clients.

It's like, I struggle with free time and I think it's an entrepreneur thing. I think we really do. We're, we value time in a completely different way.

Craig Williams: 100%. It's productivity. What could I be doing now to do this? And if you block your time, well, you know, okay, I'm going to have this time with the kids and family.

But I need to get all of this done. And this is my time. And if I'm not as productive as I can possibly be in this time, I, I, I like, I feel like I failed myself that day and I'm hardest on myself.

Kelly Kennedy: I know I, I have the exact same problem. I get so down on myself with like, and it's one of those things where it's like, if I feel like I'm wasting time or if I feel like, what am I doing right now?

Why? But the problem is, is that we can get into this mindset that can be a little bit toxic even on that level. Right. Because there are times when we should just be able to waste a little bit of time and enjoy life.

Craig Williams: That's the point of being an entrepreneur.

Kelly Kennedy: If you don't get to enjoy being an entrepreneur, if you don't get to enjoy the fruit of what being an entrepreneur brings.

But I think so many of us struggle with that. How have you, like, and I'll be the first to say I've struggled with it immensely. I still struggle with it on a daily basis. How have you been able to mitigate that work life balance and be able to find peace in the downtime?

Craig Williams: You know what it's, it's come to two factors.

I have some very, very trustworthy people who I leave in charge of a lot of the day to day in the office at this moment in the last four years, five years. Well one, one key man Amir, who works with me, he's been with me. I know how long he's been with him because he joined me the week before my first child was born.

So I just go, how long, how old is my son? Amir's been here that long, and he, he is just the most trustworthy person you could ever have work with you. He's an amazing friend, amazing colleague. And, and I, I have a lot of peace in, in when I can step away and have him take care of issues or day to day items.

So that's one so finding someone to trust to kind of release those reins. And it took me a while to give up. That bit of control. Cause again, as an entrepreneur, you want to have, you want to have eyes on everything you, if you can't see it or, or, or hear it, you, you assume it's not happening or, or it hasn't been done.

And, and so I've been, I take some advice. I heard years ago that if your business isn't successful, unless you can step away and it does better without you, like, you know, and, and so I've kind of taken. That to heart in trying to go, I've had some missteps along the way and we can get into that, but there's there's that.

And I just realized that the time when your kids are little is super important. And, and so I can, I can break that away. I mean, My brain still haunts me at 2 a.m. Every night I wake up just right out of it and, and I have, I have all these things rolling around in it that are undone or that I need to do problems.

But it's, it seems to be working more than not working.

Kelly Kennedy: I love that you said the 2 a. m. thing. I I relate to that so much and it's so funny cause I remember talking to one of my, one of my mentors and. Prior, prior bosses and you know, I used to work right under him and, and I would talk to him about, you know, what being, what being a business owner is like and what being an entrepreneur is like.

And he's like, Kelly, you know, you're a real entrepreneur when you wake up at two in the morning and you're thinking about, or you're worrying about work was what he said. You're worrying about work. And I was like, I, I started having those moments. I'm like, all right, I made it success.

I talked to so many entrepreneurs on this show and it's like, Oh yeah, wake up at 2am worrying about it. I'm like, yup, I get it because there's so much to worry about as an entrepreneur.

Craig Williams: Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Craig Williams: Yeah. Everything, the buck stops with you and no matter what, even if you have People, if they're sick or if, you know, there's a problem, eventually someone doesn't want to just talk to your manager.

They want to get right through to you. And, and eventually it comes to a, I had with you and you got to make the calls or the decisions. Yeah. Yeah. That 2am I wish it could stop. I did realize this last couple of weeks. I've been. Writing lists before I went to bed. Cause I just have so much on the go right around now, the spring startup.

So if I can rattle off, even if it's the most disheveled list and personal business, everything is all written down on that list. I found I had a full night's sleep, both nights. I wrote that list this, this last couple of weeks here. Everything amazing about lists. Is they get done right? And checking them is so like my OCD just loves checking off that box.

So I break it down into more micro lines just to get more checks in.

Kelly Kennedy: I absolutely love that you that you touched on that. Because actually, I've been using top things to do this week, both in my business and in any client work that I've done for the past 10 years. And It really you're right there's something about being able to just put it down on paper and say these are the priorities because there's there's something to about prioritizing them being able to say here's the priorities this week everything else is you know it doesn't matter right this is what matters let's get this done and if you get that done it moves the needle but if you don't have that written down all those other things that are going to come out and you know they're coming out you won't be able to prioritize them and the things you need to do aren't going to get done and you're going to end up dealing with a whole bunch of crap that doesn't move the needle at all.

Craig Williams: Definitely. As soon as you step in, you just have, you're bombarded with brand new stuff that wasn't even on that list. Then you completely forget. Just like yesterday, I'm I've had my list and I had it out, but I wasn't sitting at my desk because I was running some data cable for some new internet through my ceiling tower or whatever.

And I have my father in law come out to help me. And we're so into that, that I didn't look at my list for three hours. And by the time we got done, I go and look and I'm like, I look at my calendar and I look at my list and I'm like, Oh, like I missed, I had a haircut yesterday. Yeah, I missed it. Totally just didn't even go.

And that morning I'm like, yes, I'm so happy for the haircut. I'm going at 11 and now it's like three o'clock and I'm just like, crap.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I, I definitely feel you, I feel you, I, I have so much going on at any given time between two calendars that I run, plus a list that, you know what dude, that happens to me too.

So don't feel bad about that. You know what I mean? It is what it is. We can't, we can't catch it all, all the time. And that's the thing. It's like, I get so down on myself when I miss something that was on my calendar, when I miss something that was on my list. But man, like hearing that coming from you, it's like, thank God.

I'm just normal.

Craig Williams: Just human. Right. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: I remember calling somebody for a meeting that I missed and I was like, dude, I am so, so sorry. Like it was a meeting I really wanted to have for the show. Right. And I like, I called it. I'm like, I'm like, I apologize immensely. I want you on the show. I just, I, I completely missed me.

He's like, Oh dude, it's so okay. I'm so thankful that so many people are so like understanding of that, but, Yeah, I, there's almost nothing to me that feels worse than like missing a meeting that was on my damn calendar.

Craig Williams: Oh, I know. I know. And it's like, you, if you miss putting that hour before notification or, or it just somehow, sometimes you're putting it in a hurry and puts it on the wrong day or it puts the time for like 12 hours and you're just, and it doesn't buzz you and you're just like, what is this going to bed?

You look, what do I have tomorrow? Yeah. Oh, no, that was today I put on the wrong, Oh, yeah, yeah, it's, you know, but once a month I drop the ball and something like that, I'd say it seems these days.

Kelly Kennedy: One of the goals I always wanted to have with the business development podcast was just to bring like normality to entrepreneurship and just let people know, like, yeah, we make tons of mistakes.

There's lots of stuff going on. You are completely normal. That anxiety you feel on a regular basis, very normal, the fear to pick up the phone to make those phone calls normal, right? I wanted to just normalize humanity in business because I think people look at us as, as CEOs, as owners, as founders or whatever, whatever high level executive you are.

And they're like, Oh, that guy's got it all figured out. They got it. They got all their shit together. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Much mistakes, if not more than you do. And thank God we have a lot of people to help us clean up our mess.

Craig Williams: I don't know what I'd do without my team.

Kelly Kennedy: And it's funny too, because I talk to people who have incredibly successful businesses that are just that human too, that are just like, you know what, dude, I make mistakes too.

Every day, every week at least. And that's what it comes down to. It's just, thank God we have a lot of people to help us or people that understand, but understand that like us as business owners or as entrepreneurs or whatever level of executives that you're dealing with, they are just as human as you are, even if you're a new at entrepreneurship, right?

Like don't get down on yourself. We still struggle with a lot of the same struggles that we dealt with in the beginning.

Craig Williams: Definitely. Yes. No, we're just the same. Everyone else. It's such a good point. Yeah. And it's so nice to to hear all these other individuals share their moments. And I go, okay, well, yeah, that happened to me or, oh, that hasn't happened to me yet, but I'm sure it will. Like.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Craig Williams: It's very likely.

Kelly Kennedy: One of the blessings I think of the 2020s and I'm just going to call it the 2020s is this. I think the ability for entrepreneurs to be more human than we've ever been allowed to be. I think for a long time, entrepreneurs are kind of put on this crazy pedestal where we had to look a certain way.

We had to act a certain way. We couldn't be seen a certain way. We couldn't look like we made mistakes. We couldn't look like we're human, right? But I think like the, the, the podcast video like YouTube the socials, the way that socials have evolved since COVID have really shone a big, bright spotlight on, on business owners, on founders and entrepreneurs and executives and just said, look, we just want you to be you.

We want to see who you really are. This is the time where you can come front and center and just be yourself. And I think the key moving forward for all executives, all entrepreneurs. It's to stop trying to be something you're not and just show who you really are, be authentic. That is the key moving forward.

Craig Williams: Yeah, that's, it's, that's perfect. Yeah, I agree. It's, it's been an amazing transition in technology and, and exactly that's social media that you can relate to. All these famous people, all these business owners, and, and you just like, yeah, they're just doing their best.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, and there's a lesson in every journey, right?

The whole thing about the business development podcast is to chat about the journey, right? We, we all are on this journey, whether it's year one, whether you're literally under year one, maybe you're in year zero, right? Or maybe you're in year 13, like Craig. We're all on this journey together. And there's so many lessons that we learn, failures we have along the way.

Yeah. And it's so fun to have these conversations with all entrepreneurs from all walks of life to be able to come in and share that journey and just see that a lot of the journeys are similar. They rhyme.

Craig Williams: Right. Yeah. It's, it's this even though you haven't met them, but you're listening to their struggles and you can relate and it's that camaraderie.

Amongst business owners and entrepreneurs and, and they know that, right? Your path you're not the person laying this path. It's been laid before, but you have slightly different struggles in the one before, but you can all, you can all laugh about it, you know, and, and have a candid conversation about it and you can reflect and go, yeah, well, it should have done that different.

But. Lesson learned and oh well, like time and money, right? All it ever is.

Kelly Kennedy: One of the one of the biggest blessings from this show has really been the community that we've been able to kind of bring around the Business Development Podcast, right? The awards are great, the nominations are great, all these things are amazing.

But the real crown jewel of the business development podcast is the community of business owners, entrepreneurs, business development specialists, people that need to grow business who come in and get to be part of this experience and get to learn these journeys and realize they're not alone. And there's actually a gigantic community of people around them experiencing the same thing, willing to support them.

Like we have stories all the time of business development specialists and business owners who've been part of the show meeting up with each other. Starting their own shows like we've had, I think we've had around three or four past guests now launch their own podcast. Just amazing. Great show. And then they're going to bring on a bunch of people that have been on this show and it just creates this gigantic community.

And that's what it's, that's the power. That's the power of podcasting, right? Yeah. No, that's, that's amazing. It's it's been crazy, but Craig, Bring us into abatement. I think a lot of us have heard about abatement. We've seen the trucks. We know that we know about asbestos and we know, but bring us into it.

But like you started an abatement company, but why, what is it? What is the history of it? Why does it matter?

Craig Williams: Yeah. Yeah. So asbestos is, it's, it's, it's something unique. It was, it was amazing for industrial building products. Heavy industry, anything, basically it's, it's fibrous rock. And so it's, it's extracted from veins of rock.

The, we got the majority of ours from asbestos Quebec. There was, there's varying different varieties. So there's two types of asbestos. There's one called serpentine and one called amphibole. And serpentine it's the Greek name for a snake or, you know wavy. So that's the primary type of asbestos used in Canada and especially probably North America.

It was the main one. The amphibole is straight solid rods and that came from places like Australia some from Russia, China, other places around the world, South Africa and it It was basically it's fibrous rock. So it's heat acid resistant. It can absorb Watered quite well and not dripped. So sometimes it's weight water for, for serpentine asbestos.

It, it was great for an industrial revolution. We use the turn of the century insulation has no connectivity. So you can't, you can't get electric use. So it's great for insulating anything that would produce electricity or you could get shocked from a great for laboratory benches, tables, and it had a high tensile strength.

As well. So fibrous, fibrous. So they'd mix it in with tons of building products to add strength and durability, like floor tiles, ceiling texture, drywall, mud linoleum all those items. And so going back 2000 years ago, the ancient Greeks used to mill it and mine it. And then they realized that all the people who were working in this process started dying of strains, coughing up blood, started dying from strange lung diseases and dying really early.

So the ancient Greeks banned it. They said, Nope, we're done. So what do we do in the late 1800s? We just go, this is amazing. This is the best thing ever. Let's put it in all the industry. Let's put it in houses. Let's put it in schools. Let's put it in all our infrastructure. And the, the government was like number one supporter because it was locally locally mined product for, for Canada.

And so they, they put it into absolutely everything. So a lot of government buildings, a lot of things, they ended up getting it from that, that period. The 60s, 70s were kind of the heyday for buildings, especially Western Canada and, and North America. We decided that after. We had tons of Asbestosis cases, which is one of the only types of cancer that can be directly linked to exposure to one type of one type of one item.

And this item, of course, is asbestos. So it got its own name. And so they started seeing tons of asbestosis cases from shipbuilders. People who installed insulation, people who did industrial work with it, people from the mines and stuff like that. And the government started to ban certain products.

So asbestos is only dangerous if it becomes friable. So basically friable is the, the definition is its ability to become airborne when hand pressure is applied. So stuff like fireproof things, insulation. Around pipes and flues on chimneys and, and boilers, if that was extremely friable material. So if you touch it, it crumbles, highly friable.

So they started going, okay, let's ban any of these amphibole asbestos. So amphibole was things that was primarily used for fireproofing insulation. And that had trade names or names such as amicite, chrysidolite, anthrophilite, tremolite. And these products were those straight, solid rods. They were harder to remove out of the air when mining or when clearing it from buildings or doing installer renovations.

So what they decided is, okay, these will be the first ones shelved. And for asbestos abatement, when you get into it, The trick is to obviously keep airborne levels down low, and you want something that can be pulled out of the air as fast as possible. And they went through multiple ages of technologies and development of technologies to create what is asbestos abatement from dust masks and no masks to all the way up to now, these negative air machines that help Pull air out, filter it, and exhaust out the back.

But what they did find is that water helps when doing the abatement. So amphibole asbestos, because it's straight solid rods, it has no surface area or low surface area to take water absorption when you're spraying water in the air to help suppress the dust. And so they determined that one was too much of a risk.

It was too hard to suppress, too hard to contain, Too hard to deal with. So that one had a, that was the first shelf life kind of expiry. And that's somewhere right around the tail end of the seventies, seventies. 78, 79. And then, and this is more or less Western Canada standards. There are different provinces kind of let stuff slide.

There are states, Europe, they all had different rules with regards to this. But so that ample asbestos is eminent. Now, the other one, the one that was mined in asbestos Quebec is chrysotile asbestos and it, people call it the white asbestos. It, it, because it was serpentine and falling under the only one under the serpentine category, it had more surface area also was hollow inside.

So water was able to create was able to absorb into this and weigh it down. And because it holds seven times its weight in water, it was able to get, absorb it, become too heavy to become airborne, and fall to the ground, to where rags, vacuums, and things like that could pick it up. So that one stuck around a little bit longer.

We were still, I believe, getting floor tiles imported from places like Mexico, and other places around the world that hadn't banned asbestos yet, until around 1991 or so. There's rumors, that stuff. Coming now from overseas, from China and other places has it in it? I heard that there was makeup being sold at a, at a, one of these places that is predominant in most malls a few years ago, and it had asbestos in the eye makeup to make it shimmery and glittery.

This actinolite, tremolites kind of, yeah, they, they found it. So little girls putting this makeup on and there was crayons found with it coming from overseas. So it still comes across. Occasionally you hear it, it's just how fast we can sample these products getting imported in to find it, but yeah, around that 1991 is when I, I heard those floor tiles kind of stopped coming in, but.

83 is kind of the end date for most of the extremely dangerous stuff, so, and that Chrysotile asbestos.

Kelly Kennedy: But basically what you're saying is, right up until, let's say, the 80s, the early 80s, almost everything that we built buildings out of, floors, I think brake pads were another one. Right. But most things had asbestos in them.

Craig Williams: That's correct, yeah. Basically, anything that is an obvious fiberglass or wood, Or metal could have asbestos even like you're from every basically the ground up the roof down shingles came with it. You could have asbestos roofing, asbestos shingles, flat roofs, the tar paper, the, the layer, the waterproof kind of layer before right into your attic.

You had actinolite, tremolite in, in what's also known as zonolite or vermiculite. Attic insulation, the shiny flakes, little popcorn they look like. And so that can contain, the walls can have that in it, block wall and your drywall, mud, your ceiling, Texas, the linoleum, the backing, the paper backing is like 80 percent asbestos your ducts were wrapped in asbestos when you had those old gravity furnaces and older furnaces, whenever it hits structure, they would have to insulate to protect your house from burning down and overheating.

So right there all the way through to it's in leveling compounds in concrete, it's, it's in duct mastic. So that caulking that seal seams on metal ducting, it can be a mat, window caulking, floor tiles. Wow.

Kelly Kennedy: This is, this is ridiculous. So hold on, hold on. Like we're in Edmonton. Yeah, I would argue that 50 percent of the houses in Edmonton were built pre 1980 or right around that time, I would also argue that a lot of the industrial area, at least the older industrial area is definitely before that, probably 60s, 70s, 80s, you're saying a lot of the buildings in in our city.

Likely have asbestos in them in one way or another.

Craig Williams: That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. Probably in one to two things on average in, in houses and, and I can look at a house. I've just from sampling so much and doing so many abatements over the year and years and so many assessments of structures and buildings that I can look and I can go, okay, it's, Going to be this, this, maybe this 50%, 50 percent chance it's in this and, and I can go and, and even though the heyday of sixties and seventies, where they put in almost everything if you had a house older than that, it got renovated at some point and chances are it got renovated in the 60s, 70s, and they added that new flooring over top where they patched that old plaster wall with some drywall compound or, so there's a, there's a lot of randomness.

To it as well, I'll still colleagues in the industry, they'll still send me weird things that they found it in and, you know, I found it in actual cinder block. Someone sent it the other day that the block was soft and he couldn't figure it out and he gouged it out and it was like a, a wall in a gymnasium and he gouged out a big piece and.

Yeah. Contained asbestos.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Wow. I didn't realize it was that prevalent.

Craig Williams: Yeah. It's, it's, it's quite common in anything. And I, and the big thing is here not to go panic and tear down your house and burn it down. I mean, all you'd be left with is the asbestos cause it's fireproof, but you you, you'd still have the problem.

That's where it goes. I'm just going to burn my house down and call it. I'm like, you still got to clean up all the ashes. Like you're not going to get away with it. But Basically, if it's in good condition, it's not, it's not breaking, it's not damaged, you're not disturbing it, you're not knocking things down, you're not doing any renovation, you're just living in it.

99 percent of the houses are perfectly safe. No one's going to be getting asbestosis, no one's going to be getting the other type of cancer, mesothelioma That is related to asbestos exposure. It's when you decide to scrape that popcorn texture and not wear a mask and, and just do it all over your, your house and then not do a cleanup job or, you know, it, it's stuff will, it'll, it'll kick around in the air for some time before actually filtering out or settling dust.

So it's just, it's just get things sampled. You're going to do a renovation. You can drop it off. There's. About five or six labs in the city that take it. It's usually around 50. You take a sample in, there's tons in, in the States that are much more, more much cheaper when you're, when you're sending it to them as well.

And, and so you ship it, you send it there, you get a result pretty quick. And it, and it just tells you if there's anything in there and you can have that peace of mind. But Then again, there's, there's different things. There's, there's renovations done in houses. So someone got it, all the interior walls, but not the exterior walls, exterior walls are original and contained, but the interior ones done by the last owner are new.

So if you sample an interior wall and it comes back clean, and then you start to dive into the exterior walls, you think you're doing it well. So it's better to get an environmental consultant or someone out, if you're doing anything significant, if you're just removing your flooring, you're only touching that flooring and.

And so you can break a piece off, wet it, break a piece, put it in a Ziploc, ship it down, and have that peace of mind.

Kelly Kennedy: Interesting. Okay, so would your recommendation be that if your house is, say, or building, is older than 1990, that you should be getting this testing done?

Craig Williams: There's a bit of a disagreement amongst colleagues.

83 is where everyone kind of agrees. But. 91, I know some consulting companies will still sample just to give you still had lead paint and things as well. So the consultants will come and they'll sample that if, if anything, but they'll also check. I mean, they, they banned it in 83, for example, drywall, the asbestos and drywall mud, but the guys who really liked it.

The asbestos in the drywall mud, they swore that it's sanded better, which is the worst thing you can do with asbestos fiber, but they, they argued it's sanded smoother and much better. And they might've had a stockpile. They might've had 50 bags in a shop somewhere that they just kept installing for the next five years.

Like we've, we found a few in 85 when they shouldn't have, we found one floor contained in a house and the main floor didn't, so it was, he ran out, use the different, didn't put it in the main floor, but put it in the second floor or a different guy came to do it. There's such weird anomalies that, you know what, I, that would be a safe bet.

I would at least test if you're a facility owner or you have a larger building, that lead is going to be your next concern. And so they, they really didn't cut down the levels of lead. In, in paints and, and other items, glazing on tiles and stuff, it kind of had a big suppression in the mid 2000s here so far.

But in the nineties, they were still having what would now be considered elevated levels or so. So if you're doing a big rental in a facility, I would a hundred percent sample that 91 residential. I would, I would, I would say, yeah. Like 85, kind of give it a range, 83, 85. And and if you know that those ceiling towels in the basement, things have date stamps, drywall has date stamps on the back.

So if you pull one down and it says an older date and you thought your house was a certain date, or you thought the rental was, you can stop and have a sample. Ceiling towels usually have a date stamp. They can contain asbestos, like these wonderful things.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow, dude, this has been so, so beneficial. Thank you so much for telling me all about this.

You know, we've talked all about asbestos and you know, when you should consider it, what it is, why we used it. But we talked just briefly about the health effects. You mentioned it causes cancer. What is actually happening?

Craig Williams: For asbestosis, it's asbestos fibers. You breathe them in, and the human body has a bunch of natural defenses to particulate viruses and other items that might make its way into your lungs.

So you have nose hairs, kind of the first line of defense, you have branch passageways, and so those branch passageways basically cause forks in the roads and things get jammed up there. But asbestos fibers are so small. They can make it past a lot of these natural defenses and they get right into the lungs and into what's called the alveoli sacs.

And the alveoli sacs, you have about 300 million of these and that they're the location where oxygen is brought in and it diffuses into your blood to feed your body. And then all of the carbon. Dioxide is absorbed back out and you breathe it back out. And what happens when these fibers go into the lungs, into the alveoli, they sit there.

And because they're rock, basically fibrous rock, if your body didn't react to it, they could have just sat there and everything would be much better. But your body checks this off as a foreign invader. Something that's coming to harm you. And so your immune system kicks into overdrive. So it attacks it.

Attacks it, and eventually as it gets exhausted, 'cause it can't break this down because again it's, it's rocked heat. Yeah. It's a piece of rock. Your body isn't dissolving that so it eventually decides it's gonna protect you from it and it builds a scar tissue around it. Basically rendering that all the Alveoli sac useless.

And just entombing this piece of asbestos as fiber of asbestos inside that alveoli sac. And so you get an exposure of 10 fibers. Is it going to kill you? No, that you have 300 million alveoli sacks, but you get dose after dose after dose over a period of time, like a mine worker or renovation specialist or or one heavy dose.

Could be as well. You get an extreme exposure. There was lots of talks after 9/11 when the buildings collapsed, they were full of asbestos and you had a lot of first responders who survived it, who passed away later of just all the stuff that was breathed in all those business people downtown and things like that.

So there's there's extreme one time doses and extreme exposures. That could, that could build those sacks and you have basically about a 25 year onset on average, and that's more research done on before the scar tissue forms and you start to find your immune system isn't up to snuff because it's constantly exhausted attacking this.

And you start to find your breathing issues and eventually you get that diagnosis. So individuals in our industry Once you've been determined an exposed worker, so you've worked in the industry long enough, you then go for chest x ray and pulmonary function tests every two years. And so you go for these tests just to get ahead of it to see, is there scar tissue building?

Am I still taking enough capacity into my lungs? And just to monitor, basically. Now, 25 year olds, that's the average. They say smoking, of course, with anything. If you smoke Only your, your, your chance of getting lung cancer is, is there. But when you add asbestos and smoking, you're, you're almost, you're about, I think it's seven times more likely to get cancer than if you just smoked or you just worked with asbestos, like the, the numbers are crazy for just that correlation.

And now those are older statistics from eighties, nineties. I mean, there was less. Less concern back then. And I'm sure there was the drywaller throwing this asbestos into the mud, spinning it while having a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, not washing his hands. So again you're getting the asbestos from the hand right up to the cigarette.

I mean, there used to be asbestos in cigarette butts for a short term as well in the filters. So, Oh goodness. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yeah. So the other one is mesothelioma and that's the one you'll see those class action lawsuits and stuff. If you watch a lot of American TV, you'll see those on daytime catching, catching a lot of people who are retired and, and worked in shipyards and other things.

If you dodge the 25 year asbestos, asbestosis. Mesothelioma is 30 to 40 years on set after kind of your dose curve and your exposure kind of is met. And that is cancer of the pleural lung or the abdominal lining. So it basically breaks down that buffer you have when you breathe in and out. That kind of cushions and softens your chest and your lungs together, like between them.

And, and so that one is also related to asbestos exposure. And so you're starting to see the 25 year asbestosis from those trades prior to it being banned tradesmen, tradeswomen, and the people working in the mines and shipyards, they. They, that, and that time has now passed for large amounts of asbestosis cases.

Now the Mesothelioma is kicking in because now there's that 10, 20 year gap from that wave. And now you're on that new wave of the retirees who worked while it was still pretty rampant in the construction and the industrial sectors. That's too bad. So. Yeah, yeah, it's, I find there's less data on it now.

You used to have to report it your health, your chest x rays and your pulmonary function. You used to have to report it in so they can track the numbers. They went away with that about 10, 12 years ago, maybe even more actually. I still went as a consultant, so it has to be over 13 years ago.

They went away with collecting that data. So the stats probably are now maybe getting reported by the health. department from each area, but who knows how far those make the, they make it. So yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Either way, it's just showing how critical what, what your work is like. And then it's so funny. It's like, it's not, that's that thing that nobody sees, but it's like, man, it's like saving lives all around the country.

Craig Williams: Right. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, I'd like to think of it as that. No, I'm just kidding. You are, right? Like that's the reality of it. The reality of it is that stuff is everywhere. And unless we have people like you out there doing that and doing that cleanup, because that's frankly, that's a job that a lot of people are not qualified to do or want to do or want to, you know what I mean?

The reality is you're like a first responder in a lot of ways. You're out there. You're out there taking the risks. So we don't have to. Right. Yeah. Fair enough. You're right. It's true. It's true. You know, one of the other things you talked about was lead paint. What's the risk of lead paint?

Craig Williams: So, lead paint, it's, it primarily affects, the main concern with lead paint would be for children, people who haven't developed neurologically 100%.

So, it's, Lead paint becomes an issue in older homes schools, and other places, just in areas of wear and tear. So, if it's on your window latch, and that gets opened and closed and opened and closed, door hinges are painted, or the door. It builds up in little bits of dust everywhere. And And children being the most susceptible, they haven't developed neurological.

And so what happens is they breathe in that lead dust from the paint, and it can stunt some of these neurological developments and it can affect kids as they mature and grow into adulthood. And, and there was some interesting, there was an interesting show I watched. It might've been the nature of things with David Suzuki.

I can't quite recall, but they were talking and interviewing people and they were chatting about how how the world was kind of crazy in that 1980s 90s, there was, that's when the dawn of like 70s, 80s, 90s, dawn of the serial killers and all these things came out and they, around that time, we had leaded gasoline.

And every exhaust pipe was sputtering out lead dust everywhere. And what that, right. And so all of these people born in that time were highly exposed as children. And basically that. That absorption of that it prevents from my understanding prevents a lot of the frontal lobe development in that frontal lobe development comes males in their 20s mid 20s females a little bit earlier on and that's what makes us think before we go bungee jumping or before we ride our bike off that ramp as kids you're fearless and that's what makes kids fearless is that it's my understand the frontal lobe is the place where you become More human, you're, you be, you, you, you become a part of society and more respectful and you, you're, you think before you act, you don't just bunk someone over the head, bunk someone over the head with a bat and and then go, Oh, why, why, why were you yelling at me?

Or, you know, like, or why are you staring at me? And so kind of that spontaneity, the, the violence and, and what I learned from this documentary was that about 10 years after the cancellation of lead and gasoline. Crime stats just fell off and all the police kind of patted themselves on the back that's North America wide and they all found themselves on the back and said, Hey, we're, it's our tuff on crime.

We did this, this was it. And what this documentary kind of realized is they saw the exact same fall come 10 years after Europe. It was a different time before Europe pulled theirs up. And the same stat drops happened 10 years after on that as well. And what they determined was The lead exposure had diminished now, and all these children are less exposed.

And as we, that frontal lobe developed, we became less, less likely to just assault someone and, and then think about it after. And, and so they said, honestly, if you just put all the money you put into policing and jails, they said, which I don't know, but they said, You take all that money and you put it into just cleaning all the playgrounds and schools and homes of lead paint, you would, you would actually be better off in your expenditures on having to police people then do it.

It was, it was a fascinating read. A fascinating documentary. And I don't know, like. I don't know a hundred percent their statistics and where they get all the stats, but I was just fascinated by that. So if we can avoid lead exposure in children, it's, it's obviously better overall for kids development, developmental abilities, and so it's.

Right. And we find it in, in lead glazing on ceramic tiles and paint on everything and, and different levels are allowed threshold levels or amounts of lead in paint is allowed in different provinces throughout Canada. So it varies between Canada and I'm sure it varies between states and the states and other places.

But yeah, if. That's just another unknown thing that's just lurking in your house. You go and scrape a wall, you scrape a window, you sand something, and breathe it in.

Kelly Kennedy: Man, it makes you just wonder what other environmental factors are out there affecting our lives right now that we haven't identified yet.

Craig Williams: Right, like what's killing me now? What is it that I'm doing every day?

Kelly Kennedy: I'm looking around, what's going on in here?

Craig Williams: Definitely 50 years from now, there'll be someone on a podcast or something talking about the crap I'm putting on my skin or doing in my house. This rock's all rock wool. It's. I put it in my house and I should know better.

But it's basically a fibrous rock fiber insulation again. And you're just like, like, should I be doing this? I bought it already.

Kelly Kennedy: I'm doing it right now. Yeah, that's wild. Hey, well, one of the things that, that it really has me wondering right now, Greg, is what is the legal obligation? If you have a house that is like this, or that's full of this stuff, or if you have a building and you have workers, are you?

Are you legally obligated now to do that renovation?

Craig Williams: Yeah, there's, there's, I can speak for Alberta in its entirety, so, because every province has different rules, and every state, I believe, has different rules as well. So we have what's called the Alberta Asbestos Abatement Manual. And so it's a best practice on asbestos abatement.

Now, there is certain components that make it legislated. So it is it is, You do have to follow it by law, certain aspects of it, and the rest are just extra, like, you should be doing these steps as a minimum kind of best practice. So there's some gray areas. So we have occupational health and safety.

In Alberta, and they cover province wide. And so you, when you're going to do an abatement or you're doing a reno and you're hiring outside forces, it's not just you and your buddies, you're buying beer for them and you're going to reno your house that day or your office or whatever As soon as you hire a company, now OH& S is, Occupational Health and Safety is now involved.

So now, prior to doing that, your obligation as the company coming in and the person who's hiring should be very clear that, Hey, this is a building of that vintage. What do you need? I'm a little, as the building owner, you might be, I don't really know. What do you need to do prior to? Doing this. And the problem is a lot of companies don't know they should be sampling.

And there's still like a gray area of what they know contains and what doesn't. And so they might just go, Oh, I've seen it in the floor before. So we'll test that. Or some are just like, no, no, we're good. Because if they test it and it comes back, Then they may be the, the guy who gave a cheaper price may come in and just do it.

Yeah. You know, so, but in those cases, as soon as the company is hired to do it, occupational health and safety takes precedence on that. And so they can be fined if they don't sample and they expose workers and cause they're there to protect the worker. Occupational health and safety not really the building owner or the homeowner, their job is with that, with the workers, make sure they're not getting exposed to make sure they're not going to have long term lingering effects from, from the work that they're doing.

Now they get communicated by us. So when we get called in to do a job or to an abatement, we self report. So we send them what's called a notification of project, and we let them know the location that we're having air monitoring by a third party company to check our work. And here's all our paperwork.

And here's the hours and days that we're, we're anticipating we're going to be working on this project. And they can then choose to send an officer to review your documentation and review site. Or they might just call you later and just ask for you to send that air monitoring and leave that onus kind of on that third party consulting company.

Now the problem with self reporting is if you don't report it, they don't know what's happening and so they can't follow up. So for Alberta Health Services, who is the other entity in Alberta that kind of can step in, they, they come when there's an employee complaint about a facility they're working in, or a health concern, or a rental house, maybe where the landlord is, is maybe negating some duties of a leaking ceiling and there's mold or delaminating material.

So they, Alberta Health Services can then step in and determine the place unfit for human habitation or write orders on the property that, that must be complied with. And unfortunately, Alberta Health Services and OH& S don't communicate together with each other at all. And so, there's no kind of cross talk and coming to a solution or figuring things out in these cases.

Now, the other one that we can talk about is, so, the municipality that you're working in. So, they issue permits for demolition, renovation, things like that. So, City of Edmonton, for example, they, they will follow it. If you're knocking down a property. That is the instance where they will ask for an asbestos abatement report from a consultant showing that you removed it all or done it prior to getting knocked down.

Now, the municipalities don't communicate with OH& S, nor do they communicate with Alberta Health Services unless They can't share information. We've asked before, like, why don't you guys communicate to catch the ones that are knocking down these houses and kind of budging their reports or, or the landlords that are maybe coming in and just hiring a bunch of people to just rip the house apart and, and then re rent it, like the telecanyon, anything checked, stuff like that.

But unfortunately it's, there's, there's bureaucracy comes into play and stuff like that can come across. Now, if you are, it's your own house. And you live in it and you decide to reno and if you're renoing it and you're creating exposure for you and your family, there's really nothing that any of those parties can do until it shows that maybe your kid has some sort of health issue due to something and maybe Alberta Health Services can step in and report maybe some sort of negligence or something, but by then it's too late, right, right, so you can have your buddies over with beers, you can expose all your friends, you can expose your whole family and Do a big reno without sampling and no one's wiser.

And then it just goes in a bin and that one just gets shipped to sorting at the landfill and you expose the people at the landfill and, and it kind of is a, is a vicious circle. Wow. Yeah. So there is rules and regulations. It's just, unfortunately, it's a self reporting system. There's, if someone wants to just, Kind of budget or they don't know enough.

It just gets done all the time. There's tons of work. We get called in for numerous cleanups from improper removals. When someone finally showed up and go, Hey. Did you sample that? And then I go, no, it can contain. And they're like, Oh wow. Like, yeah, I just had that exact same line. I'll remove from my house, like from a abatement company.

You should get that sampled. Then they do. And then we come in and clean up and you know, that's a better case than, than to just getting removed and then. Vacuumed with a regular vacuum, kicking more dust into the air.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay, let's, let's save some lives here. Okay, great, great. If you have a house that's, say, older than 1985, and you are doing renovations of any kind, what are the specific things that they should get sampled before they go to town on this thing?

Craig Williams: Oh god, yeah. Yeah, there's there's a whole whack. Any plasters? drywalls, textures of wall texture, ceiling texture any kind of textured material that like sample that any flooring other than hardwood. I've seen it in the tar paper layer underneath hardwood. So anything paper like insulation other than Pink bat insulation that won't have it, but anything other than wood looking materials, if it's wood, but any kind of white paper wrapping you see over ducting, if it's not shiny metal ducting, and it has this white paper over it, even strips, that will be asbestos insulation.

If it's not just obvious wood chips. Or bat fiberglass insulation, get it sampled your shingles it's, it's rarer and rarer because most roofs have been re shingled over the years. If you're removing a fireplace, sometimes the mortar contains in the brick, the brick itself inside boilers, fireplaces, things like that.

There's fire brick that has, can have asbestos. Filaments on those super cool gas ones can have it. There's, you name it. Yeah. And then you go to the painted materials it has it. When it comes to plaster, it's either in that scratch coat behind it or the finish coat or sometimes both. Like caulking's around your windows.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Craig Williams: Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. So, to me, what it sounds like is it's probably not even realistic to just take one thing and go get it sampled. You should really call in a specialist like yourself and just say, look, we're going to do rentals in this house. Can you just take a look and see if there's anything we need to be concerned about?

Craig Williams: That's right. You go, Hey, here's what I'm touching during this rental. So if you're touching three walls and the basements are usually developed different from the upstairs, so it could be different materials. So we always say you take a minimum of three samples of each drywall. Types. So main floor three, second floor, three basement, three kind of thing.

If it's one kind of flooring, take a sample of one sample is fine, but they, they do say take a minimum three, just in case you get some false positives and false negatives, certain sample. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's best to call an environmental consultant, or if you already have lined up the construction, we're happy to sample as an abatement company as well.

It's always nicer to have that third party come in, sample it, then they're, they, you know, then there's a trust in that report, and because we're gonna be Bidding on anything that contains I prefer to just leave that someone else sample, then they get the, the, the bad news or the results. And we go, okay, now we'll price on it.

And it kind of gives us a little bit of a separation. So we're not, you know, people don't think we're falsified samples to generate work. Right. Yeah, that's fair. I want to keep everything honest and on the up and up.

So, yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, Craig, this has been super informative, dude. I really appreciate you coming on and this opened my eyes.

And I bet you we've opened a lot of people's eyes listening to this. You were like, holy crap, I had no idea. And they're going to be probably thinking I need to get my building checked or I should maybe check my rental house or whatever.

Craig Williams: Right, right. It'd be better to be proactive than reactive. Exactly.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no kidding. It's a lot better to deal with that than when somebody's sick. Right, right. Talk to me about A&M abatement though. What are, you know, we've talked about abatement. We've talked about, you know, some of the services that you guys do, but tell me about all the services that you guys provide.

Craig Williams: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we started originally with the asbestos abatement mold remediation and, and then had a few interesting lead paint removal jobs over the years. Like the trolley cars we did. We helped aided them in one of those for the the can railway society or rail car society or whatever.

And then, so we did some work on that and then we diversified about four years ago into just interior demolition. So we'll remove facades and things like that on buildings. Nothing kind of structural. Just didn't want to get into that beast yet. We, we were partnered with a few knockdown companies, so we didn't want to kind of want to stay separate and make sure that we were working together well still and didn't start cutting their grass, so to speak.

And so, so interior demolition and that's, Interior demolition and asbestos abatement are our primary primary wins right now. We're working on some stuff, assisting restoration companies right now. And that's kind of our newest revenue stream. I have a really amazing person that joined us is Dave from the restoration world, and he joined me a month ago.

And he's building some traction on just, Hey, like you're short on people with this. We can train, we have trained people like we can, we can help you when there's big floods and fires and stuff like that. And we can aid on your emergency calls and, and we can help supplement your workforce and, and we can build relationship together.

And, and I mean, the nice thing is. If we, we help them with that and maybe, you know, and then maybe it leads to doing their asbestos abatement for them and other things down the way. So it's, it's been it's a journey and, and salvage has taken off for the last couple of years. So, you know, kind of trying to, the environmentalists in me tries as much as I can to grab things from construction sites, whether we just use it, you know, Plywood re removed and we'll use it to put under the bins at the next job.

So we don't scratch the asphalt or the driveways or, or pulling, you know, tables from a restaurant or kitchen equipment. And at least trying to see like, Hey, can someone use this? We've given, we've given some away to some Churches and, and we sold some stuff. So it generates a good party fund, the, the salvage.

Kelly Kennedy: You gotta have that.

Craig Williams: Right, right.

Kelly Kennedy: That's awesome. And what, like, I know you're in Edmonton, but are you, could you service, like, across Alberta, across BC, across Saskatchewan? Is there any limitations to how far you're willing to go?

Craig Williams: The, the, Excited Craig says, no you know, the optimistic the realistic side of me right now says, yeah, we, we're, we started in Calgary last year.

We have a man, it just, it just. A key individual from a company. It just worked out well. His wife was getting transferred. He found himself in, in the mountains more often than not every weekend. He enjoys camping and he's just like, look, Calgary's calling me. My wife's going there. Can we make a goal of it?

Or should I start looking for a job in Calgary? And I said, honestly, let's, let's do it. And so we we had a year and a year there and utilizing the resources of the Edmonton office. And, and I feel like it was, it was a good learning experience and a good, a good first year down there. We did. Decent amount of revenue.

And, you know, we had a few hiccups and a few problems with getting people to get down there to aid and do it without committing to kind of full time crews at this moment, using the Edmonton resources down there. And but yeah, so we, we we're happy. We've gone up to Fort Smith in the Northwest territories.

We've gone up to Nunavut to do work before and Fort McMurray, tons of work. High level. Middle of nowhere communities, high north down south, we've been in Lethbridge and other places. Gone to Saskatchewan a couple times and we've been a lot in BC, kind of the interior of BC, but we haven't quite picked one up there yet.

So.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay, maybe, maybe we can change that with this show. That would be great. No, that's cool. So it really doesn't sound like geographically, as long as there's a need for it and you guys are called, you'll do what you can to make it.

Craig Williams: That's right. Yep. Yeah, as long as it makes sense for them and us to, to make it there, we'll, we'll do it sometimes are cheaper than the local person and, and we have, you know, living away expenses and travel.

And, and so sometimes there's only one, one show in town and, and they've been kind of able to price high and, and we can come in and they've been impressed or happy and we've done it for, you know, a significant percentage less than the local boys.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. No, you see that happen more often than you'd think, Craig, it was an absolute honor to have you on the show today.

If people want to get ahold of you, they're like, we need some abatement. We need some, some A and M from Craig. How do they get ahold of you?

Craig Williams: They can go on our website. We have a main number and if for some reason that doesn't get through, I'm, I'm happy to take calls. I can I don't know if you want to leave my number on You can leave it right now.

You can just give it out to the world. All right. So the main number is area code seven, eight, zero, eight, zero, three, three, seven, seven, four, a team member. One of our, one of our office staff would be happy to assist, but if you're not getting traction there, which I hope you do, my personal cell phone number is 780 903 1847 happy to take any calls.

Kelly Kennedy: And Craig, like, obviously we're talking to a big business audience. Almost all of them are on LinkedIn. Are you on LinkedIn?

Craig Williams: I'm on LinkedIn. Yes, you can also hit me up there. I'm more than happy to respond on there.

Kelly Kennedy: Perfect. Perfect. Craig, thank you so much for joining us. This has been episode 170 of the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales. Sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists. For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the business development podcast.