February 2015
| Business World
47
"Accessibility is huge," says Andrea. "With all
of our constructions and renovations, we ex-
ceed the Ontario Building Code in regards
to accessibility for all of our constructions.
We have very specific architects, engineers,
and builders that we use to do this, and we've
been very consistent with them."
"We partnered with another public sector
organization to develop the Facility Acces-
sibility Design Manual," states Michele. "It
exceeds the building code to ensure that the
County of Wellington will be one of the
most accessible places for all of our public
buildings."
They also go above and beyond to incorpo-
rate sustainability into each of their projects.
Many of their current buildings feature so-
lar paneling, and every new construction is
done in accordance with their leading edge
green initiatives. For example, their recently
built rent-geared-to-income (RGI) housing
development in Fergus was "all done to a very
high green efficiency." As Andrea explains,
the County of Wellington is no stranger to
helping the environment.
"We've got probably the largest green initia-
tive in all of North America, and we've won
numerous awards worldwide for it," she pro-
claims. "It's called the Green Legacy. We have
two tree nurseries where we grow and propa-
gate all of our own trees, and these are dis-
tributed through many, many, many organi-
zations − one of the biggest being the Grand
River Conservation Authority, where we're
planting living snow fences. We've planted
over 1 million trees since the inception of
the Green Legacy."
"We're known as the largest municipal tree
nursery in all of North America," she con-
tinues. "We get thousands of volunteers for
