The Building Resilience Coalition is a Sponsor of the 2021 PNWER Summit

August 15, 2021 – The Pacific Northwest Building Resilience Coalition will join delegates, speakers, sponsors, and other guests – both in-person and virtual –  at the 30th Annual Summit of the Pacific Northwest Economic Region in beautiful Big Sky Montana.

The PNWER Annual Summit is a leading forum where people in the policy and business world come together to identify solutions to regional challenges and to develop action plans for addressing these challenges.

William Larson, Chair of the Building Resilience Coalition, will be on-site in Big Sky Montana and will be introducing a keynote plenary panel on “Build back Better – Infrastructure for Recovery”  on Wednesday, August 18, sponsored by the Coalition.

Included on the panel will be Pete Buttigieg, Transportation Secretary U.S. Department of Transportation (Invited),  Premier Jason Kenney, Province of Alberta, Premier Sandy Silver of the Yukon Territory, Mike Cuffe Montana Senator and PNWER President, and James Rajotte, Alberta’s Senior Representative to the U.S., Alberta Washington Office.

The Building Resilience Coalition has been an active participant in PNWER for the last several years.

In 2019 the Coalition sponsored a keynote plenary panel at the PNWER Summit in n Saskatoon, Saskatchewan that featured a stellar panel of speakers addressing the need for resiliency planning to sustain the critical infrastructure that supports our trade and commerce.

In 2018 in Spokane, Washington, we sponsored a keynote address by Evan Reis, Executive Director of the U.S. Resiliency Council whose stirring address on the difference between catastrophic devastation and manageable recovery still ranks as one of our more popular offerings.

The Building Resilience Coalition recognizes the importance Of PNWER as the model for regional and bi-national cooperation, which provides a platform for collaboration among public, private, academic, and non-profit stakeholders to work together in pursuit of our common goals. ​

To this end, the Coalition is supporting a joint research program to develop a Roadmap to Resilient, Ultra-Low Energy Buildings by 2030.

The objective of this research is to interweave the synergies in building design solutions for new and existing buildings to better withstand anticipated risks associated with climate change, including extreme weather events.

In the lead-up to the 2021 PNWER Summit, the Building Resilience Coalition developed and delivered in partnership with PNWER a series of webinars on Pathway to Resilience and Carbon Neutrality.

These webinars brought together the world’s leading experts to address the rebuilding of resilient infrastructure and economies after COVID-19, and how do we build economies and infrastructures in ways that are clean, safe, and above all, resilient.

Speakers at the four webinars that took place throughout June 2021 included:

• Andrew Minson, Director of Concrete and Sustainable Construction of the Global Cement and Concrete Association:
• Richard Bohan, Vice President, Sustainability from the Portland Cement Association;
• Adam Auer, Vice President of Environment and Sustainability at the Cement Association of Canada;
• Tien Peng, the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association’s (NRMCA) Senior Vice President of Sustainability, Codes, and Standards;
• Randolph Kirchain, Co-Director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); and
• Evan Reis, SE, PE Executive Director and co-Founder, U.S. Resiliency Council.

Information on each of these webinars is available on the Building Resilience Coalition website and video copies of the webinars will be mounted soon.

More information on the 30^th Annual PNWER Summit is available here.

About the Pacific Northwest Building Resilience Coalition: The Pacific Northwest Building Resilience Coalition is a gathering of organizations, primarily in the cement, concrete, and masonry industries, committed to furthering the planning, development, and construction of buildings and associated infrastructure better able to recover from and to adapt to the growing impacts of an ever-changing urban and physical environment. Learn more here:

About the Pacific Northwest Economic Region: The Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER) Foundation is a statutory public/private nonprofit created in 1991 by the U.S. states of Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, and Washington and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan and the territories of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. Learn more here: