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As a child from a large family in Guyana, Nandram says he had no choice but to learn
early in life the benefits of conservation, resourcefulness, and reuse.
"We were a very big family – 10 children – and grew up poor," says Nandram, "While we
were always well-fed, our parents couldn’t afford to buy us toys so we had to make our
own." Nandram tells of how he and his brothers would volunteer to help shop owners in
exchange for their old codfish boxes, which the future builder would fashion into carts
and toys. Nandram says his family lived a green lifestyle by necessity. Everything that
they could possibly re-use, like those codfish boxes, was transformed into something new.
These principles have remained important to him to this day.
Nandram arrived in Canada in 1976 and studied Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at
Algonquin College, later obtaining a degree in Economics from Ottawa U. He started his
own contracting outfit, RND Construction, in 1990 and is now celebrating their 20th year
of serving the Ottawa area with pride and environmental responsibility.
In 1999, Nandram and a colleague had an idea for a system that would allow offices to replace
their carpet without removing all the furniture. They founded Accu-Lift Flooring, a company
that mechanically raises cubicles and installs new carpet tiles underneath. The lift system
is patented in the United States and in Canada.
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While he sold his interest in this second business to his colleague two years ago, Nandram
is proud of the environmental initiatives he was able to lead. "We set up a carpet recycling
program in Ottawa, which has (as of December 2008) diverted over half a million square yards
of carpeting back to the manufacturer for recycling instead of going into our landfills," he
says. "RND Construction also built an 8000 square foot green warehouse and showroom to house
this flooring business." The facility was certified under the Canadian Building Incentive Program
(CBIP) and was designed to be 42% more efficient than the Model National Energy Code for Buildings (MNECB).
RND Construction was "green" long before it was trendy to be so. In Nandram’s office hangs a
framed certificate from 1982 showing his certification from the Canadian General Standards
Board’s course on Insulating Homes for Energy Conservation. In 1998, when LEED® was still on
the USGBC’s drawing board, Nandram built a house for himself that surpassed the R2000 standard
and was measured to be 47% more energy efficient than an average house built to code. In 2009,
Roy earned his LEED® Accredited Professional designation.
"What he was building back in the eighties was just as energy efficient as what he’s building
today," says Ross Elliot of Homesol Building Solutions, who does all of Nandram’s eco-audits.
"Roy was really ahead of his time."
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