John is from a long line of carpenters and builders. He remembers as a child being on his grandfather’s job sites straightening nails and being a “Go-‘fer” and has had every role in construction from pounding nails to raising 10's of millions of dollars for construction projects.

John grew up at the feet of Harold Orr, CM, PEng, his father, a mechanical engineer, who was instrumental in researching and developing energy-efficient housing development in Canada. Harold worked for the National Research Council of Canada and his innovations, which include new insulation techniques and materials, air sealing and efficient ventilation, blower-door testing, and heat recycling, still serve as worldwide models for energy-efficient housing today some 40 years later.

Naturally like father, like son, John has developed a keen interest in energy-efficient housing and learned much from dinner time conversations and working with Harold building energy-efficient structures. His first real job was working on a framing crew building super-insulated housing and when he was in university, he built a super-insulated home in Yellowknife. In 1994 John earned his civil professional engineering status and is currently registered in British Columbia and Saskatchewan and has been registered in; Alberta and Ontario. John has managed the construction of sewer, water, and road work for 6 subdivisions, poured over 50,000m3 of concrete, established 8 Redi mix batch plants, excavated over 60 million m3 of earthworks (cut and fill), built 9 bridges, managed a piling foundation company, 3 hydroelectric stations, estimated in excess of 200 buildings, and has been the construction manager on 3 large projects with a combined value in excess of $800m.