Who does the City of Kamloops approach at Thompson Rivers University when it wants to do research? City staff are trying to make that an easier process.

City manager David Trawin was speaking to councillors while discussing the Memorandum of Understanding between the city and TRU.

“I don’t want to say it’s a flaw of the agreement, but one of the things we’ve noticed coming out of the MOU, is city staff have difficulty understanding – and TRU the same way back – who do we approach at TRU in order, when a project comes up, to say whether they can research or not?” Trawin says.

“We’re looking, and a lot of it is done off the side of people’s desk in terms of trying to coordinate with TRU. We’re looking at someone who – and again, working through that – potentially knows TRU but also knows potentially some of the city, and can help us increase those links so we can get more things done.”

The topic came up at council, after councillor Arjun Singh asked about potentially using TRU’s expertise to help meet emission targets in the BC Building Code.

“I think a real issue right now is that there’s not a lot of people trained right now to do a lot of the sort of building efficiency stuff that is coming from the province’s mandate not too soon, in terms of the (Energy Step Code) and things like that,” Singh says.