A growing topic in modern PPE use and design is ensuring that equipment matches the physical attributes of a diversifying workforce.

Robin Skillings, writing for OHS Canada magazine, purports that Canada is in the middle of a serious skilled trades shortage, a sentiment echoed by many employers and industry leaders today across a breadth of environments and locations. Exacerbating the issue, more than 250,000 Canadians are expected to enter retirement soon. These trends mean that more gender diversity will be seen in previously male-dominated industries and these recruits will be seen as assets while the old guard exits workplaces.

A report for REMI Network, a self-described “news and information source servicing the real estate management industry,” outlines that business sectors historically dominated by men, such as construction and other such trades, are seeing an increase in gender diversity. “Around 170,000 females, twenty-five percent of those in the industry, are employed in hands-on roles [in these sectors],” the report states. It notes that the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) fears that women entering these industries may find their PPE to be either uncomfortable or ill-fitting, which will mean that it cannot protect them to the extent that it should.

Skillings’ piece cites a 2016 study for the American Journal of Industrial Medicine which, much like the REMI Network report, found that “a majority of female construction workers reported fit problems with many types of PPE including gloves, harnesses, safety vests, and work boots.”

Steps are being taken by PPE outfitters to consider these factors when designing workplace equipment. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) blog post puts forth that truly equitable PPE “considers workers’ gender, race, age, shape, and size,” as well as factors like disability, occupational settings, and more.

In an article for occupational safety and health magazine EHS Today, Sayanti Basu reports that proper fit and comfort will ensure PPE is more widely adopted in trades and workplaces. “Incorporating flexible materials into mask production such as thermoplastic elastomers creates a final product that is soft to the touch and can stretch to fit different people.” This in turn minimizes discomfort. Basu also states that lightweight material can also aid in building higher filtration in breathing masks so that workers in trades where this protection is necessary can mitigate the build-up of carcinogens and heat in the material. Improvements like these go hand in hand with the notion that equitable PPE considers the bodies of all workers.

As part of its mandate to conduct research and recommend measures to prevent work-related injury and illness, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) looks at anthropometry, the study of the human body’s measurements and proportions, and how it relates to PPE. “It is important that anthropometry databases and other information used to develop PPE are based on measurements that are representative of current working populations,” the CDC blog post writes. Research by NIOSH has helped equipment manufacturers design PPE to provide better fit and comfort to today’s workforce.

NIOSH even goes a step further by holding competitions like ‘The NIOSH Protective Clothing Challenge,’ which takes submissions from workers and organizations industry-wide on solutions that “consider the broad spectrum of U.S. workers in relation to factors that may influence fit such as body size and shape, gender, race, ethnicity, religious or cultural practices, or specific work tasks.” For example, the 2022 competition yielded a top submission that created a self-conforming PPE gown with a contamination indicator. The gown is designed to fit a broad range of body types.

Progress extends beyond making equipment more comfortable or person-appropriate; in fact, future advancements will look to bring even more interesting and impressive improvements to what we currently think of as PPE. In a piece for Build Magazine, Evelyn Long highlights new moves in the field like investments in exosuits, wearable robotics that aim to prevent on-site injury to workers’ bodies by enhancing physical capabilities. Now in the early stages of adoption, exosuits reduce physical exertion significantly, supporting workers’ arms, shoulders, legs, and backs and allowing them to work under less physical strain and with potentially increased ability in lifting, weight management, and more.

Some exosuit technologies even sport built-in sensors that warn a user of an increased heart rate, temperature changes, machine overheating, and more. These come in the form of smart technology helmets, augmented reality (AR) glasses, or footwear with GPS technology.

Martin Banks for technology media site TechAeris reports that these are connected by the Internet of Things, which is increasingly becoming part of the modern workplace. IoT connectivity in PPE could allow for real-time updating of a worker’s condition and state of the equipment, allowing for dynamic problem-solving and avoidance of large-scale issues.

As exciting as these improvements in PPE technology are, Evelyn Long says that, while this segment of the industry is growing, this kind of equipment is expensive, especially in mass quantities and considering the economic fluctuations post-pandemic. Other innovations are not technologically advanced or expensive but face the issue of sustainability.

In his writing for TechAeris, Martin Banks says that disposable PPE is becoming common in modern companies. “While these are often affordable and convenient, they’re starting to fall out of fashion as environmental concerns rise.” This has led to a rise in biodegradable PPE, equipment made from material that can naturally break down as opposed to that made of plastic. The use of biodegradable materials allows companies to reduce their environmental footprint which can, in turn, be used as a marketing tool, as more consumers demand environmentally friendly solutions. These also have lower disposal costs. New PPE does not always have to do with technological leaps as much as the smarter use of available and recommended materials.

Sustainability, equity, and reducing the physical tolls on workers are issues that are as important to employees and labourers as they are for the creators of the PPE technology that looks to support them. As many countries seek to counter an ongoing labour shortage, focusing on how to best accommodate workers and keep them safe can be a way to tackle the problem. Just as workplace demographics are evolving, so too is public understanding of how cleanliness, greener initiatives, and comfort can affect a workplace. PPE must adapt along with it so that the challenges of today can lead to the better workplaces of tomorrow.

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“We manufacture electrical equipment for industries that are growing in demand,” says David Evdokimoff, Chief Executive Officer of Boundary Electric. “A large part of our business is transformers and switchgear distribution. We manufacture that for multiple industries: oil and gas, hopefully hydrogen, data centres, crypto, electrical utilities.” A data centre is a secure location where networked computer systems store, process, and/or distribute gargantuan amounts of digital information.

Boundary, which also serves municipalities, maintains two facilities in Grand Forks and one in Trail, British Columbia.

“We’re an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), so we manufacture a majority of our equipment. We have subcontractors and some items we outsource to keep costs down, but most is manufactured out of our Grand Forks and Trail facility,” Evdokimoff explains.

In addition to transformers and switchgear equipment, the company also designs and manufactures metering kiosks, substation components, splitters, portable power centres, and motors. It offers testing, inspection, maintenance, repairs, and electrical servicing and contracting as well. While the company primarily works in North America, it has shipped its wares as far afield as Egypt, Greenland, South America, and the Philippines. The firm also installs equipment within the British Columbia interior.

A few years ago, Boundary developed a new specialty working with the budding cryptocurrency scene. New crypto coins are created or ‘mined’ by powerful computers that solve complex math problems to validate transactions. Housed in data centres, these computers require a lot of electricity.

“We had a company call and they said they want to put fifty megawatts into a building. That’s the equivalent of putting the power that would go to a city into a building. It didn’t make any sense. We were like, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ So, that was our introduction to Bitcoin,” recalls Evdokimoff.

After supplying electrical equipment to this client, “Our phone rang off the hook. From that point on, we manufactured electrical equipment for a few other major players in the game,” he adds.

Boundary Electric was founded in 1947 by Allen Napoleon Docksteader and his son, Wes Docksteader, with a focus on manufacturing and distributing electrical transmission gear. The company remains a family business, with Allen’s great-grandson Justin Docksteader serving as Evdokimoff’s business partner. The plan is to keep Boundary a family firm going forward. At present, the company has approximately eighty employees across all branches.

“I think for us it’s creativity, and attitude,” Evdokimoff says, regarding what the company looks for in potential hires. “Skill set, we can teach. We’re looking for people who are able to work on the fly, able to take on problems that come at them and see the opportunity as opposed to roadblocks. We’re looking for people that work exceptionally well in a team, especially in tackling new things. If you’re getting into crypto, if you’re getting into hydrogen, if you’re getting into these new markets, you have to be willing to be a problem solver.”

Boundary offers “a competitive pension and benefits program” and continuous staff training, he says. Clearly, the company is doing something right, having been certified as a Great Place to Work in Canada. Great Place to Work certification, which is largely based on employee survey results, recognizes firms with positive workplace cultures and satisfied staff.

“There are two things we’ve done really well. We’ve always provided a quality product. That’s something internally we strive to do through our quality management systems and such, but it’s also something that has always been a staple of the company. Our name is on this, so we want this to be very good; that’s on the product side. On the market side… electricity is needed almost everywhere. We have followed the market trends. If oil and gas was doing well, we’re in oil and gas. If forestry was going really well, we’re doing forestry; we’re [now] doing data centres,” Evdokimoff shares.

As evidence of its commitment to quality, Boundary has ISO 9001:2015, Canadian Standards Association (CSA), and Underwriters Laboratory (UL) certification. Maintaining these certifications entails constant vigilance and frequent audits, and Evdokimoff praises the company’s management group, which holds monthly meetings to discuss and “create action plans for continuous improvement within our company.”

Unlike a number of other companies, Boundary Electric came through the COVID pandemic in relatively good shape. COVID “had an interesting impact in a lot of ways,” notes Evdokimoff. Boundary took great care to keep its workers safe by introducing robust health and safety protocols. While some business with customers in the oil sands of Western Canada dropped off, business picked up in other areas.

“We were lucky, in a sense,” he says. “We were building data centres in the midst of all of this. That kept our business thriving, and we were hiring [while] a lot of places were actually decreasing employees. We also saw an increase locally, with our service and construction team, as a lot of people were doing household renovations and staying home.”

According to Evdokimoff, the company does its best to stay flexible and diversified. These attributes have been central to its success, he adds. As such, the company is keeping a very close eye on the emerging hydrogen sector, which has been touted as the next big thing in alternative energy.

As the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy states, “Hydrogen is a clean fuel that, when consumed in a fuel cell, produces only water. Hydrogen can be produced from a variety of domestic resources, such as natural gas, nuclear power, biomass, and renewable power like solar and wind. These qualities make it an attractive fuel option for transportation and electricity generation applications. It can be used in cars, in houses, for portable power, and in many more applications.”

Needless to say, all of this is very appealing and companies are eager to get in on any future hydrogen windfall. Boundary Electric representatives attended the second annual Canadian Hydrogen Convention, held this April in Edmonton. The conference featured dozens of speakers, thousands of visitors, and plenty of interest in hydrogen.

“We’re starting to see some steps taken in the [hydrogen] industry with regards to having projects that are starting to make their way across the line. We’re starting to see that with vehicles,” says Evdokimoff. “We know there will be a massive demand in that sector and we want to support it with core infrastructure such as transformers, distribution, and switchgear.”

He describes hydrogen as one in a series of technologies including electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and data centres, that will be “the big drivers for the electrical industry in the next ten to fifteen years.”

Among the projects Boundary Electric has helped build for crypto clients, municipalities, and energy firms is a cryptocurrency mining site for DMG Blockchain in Christina Lake, BC. This project involved designing and manufacturing eighty-five-megawatt substations, twenty-four customized 2500 kVA substations, and a control centre, as well as cabling and wiring tasks.

The company also custom-built a series of 1,500 kVA substations for Access Pipeline in Redwater, Alberta and designed, provided, and tested a secondary unit substation for transportation network TransLink for the City of Surrey in British Columbia.

“The list of cool things we’ve supplied products for is big,” Evdokimoff wryly notes.

He is particularly proud of “the ability of our products and our transformers in reducing greenhouse gases in the world. That seems like an amazing thing, and that we can do this from the interior of British Columbia in small towns.”

As for the future, Boundary is looking around at other opportunities. “We’ll be starting on manufacturing liquid-immersed data centres for a customer out of the United States. That will be a little bit different than the air-cooled data centres we’ve been manufacturing to this point. We are also embarking on a panel program. We will be an OEM manufacturer of distribution panels that are five thousand amps and below,” he states.

Liquid immersion is a method of cooling servers and computer equipment at data centres and an alternative to more traditional air cooling.

“I think five years from now, our business will continue to be extremely strong,” adds Evdokimoff. “Whether that’s supplying utilities for traditional use or supplying commercial and industrial clients for their projects—i.e., crypto, data centres, hydrogen, electric vehicles—we know that for the products and services we have, demand is going to be very strong.”

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