Quick Facts
Owner: Adam Anderson
Location: Corner Brook, N.L.
Date Started: Anderson started the business in 2007, after seeing gaps in the forest management industry.
Services They Offer: Resource Innovations offers GIS solutions, resource management, innovative tech solutions, environmental management, and other data-driven solutions.
Where They Work: The team at Resource Innovations isn’t limited to Newfoundland. They partner with other companies to work on projects throughout Canada and worldwide.
As owner and founder of Resource Innovations, Adam Anderson wants to sustain forests for future generations. “So, by focusing on the forest’s management, applying sustainable practices from growing trees, to harvesting, to reforestation, and having an impact on ensuring resources stay sustainable for future generations—that’s really why I started and the basis of the business to this day,” says Anderson.
Anderson’s business is located in Corner Brook, N.L., and he says his love for forest management comes from spending a lot of time in and around the forest with his father. “He introduced me to a lot of good things there, and that plays a big role in a big part of who I am and what I do in my work and my personal life,” he says.
After working out of province, Anderson moved back to Newfoundland and noticed different needs on the silviculture side and potential forest management gaps. One particular issue was a mill he was working for not having enough tree planters. “And that was becoming a problem because we’re harvesting forest so we have to be replacing forest,” says Anderson. “So, I saw opportunities coming in that respect, and I knew that if I kind of got involved and capitalized on some small opportunities that some bigger opportunities would come.”
Anderson says when someone starts a consulting firm, it’s usually after retiring or years of experience in their field. However, he started his business in 2007, not long after graduating from school, and says growing this success is something he considers his biggest win. “To everybody I went to see, I was just a young guy having to prove myself,” he says. “So having that grit, having that patience, being committed to quality work, treating all my clients with respect and just being focused on good work all of the time, being respectful to everybody and seeing that turn around over the years, to having people rely on me because of my past experience—that really is the biggest win over time… it took a lot of time; it took a lot of effort.”
Resource Innovations has about 10 employees made up of forest technicians, foresters, GIS and tech analysts, and they work from Newfoundland to B.C. and into the far Canadian North. During the summer of 2022, they found themselves working in the Arctic Circle, and they’re currently doing work in the Northwest Territories. There they are looking at the impact of large-scale fires in the North and the impact they have on the vegetation, as well as the vegetation type response to fires around the Arctic Circle.
“The climate is changing, and I think it’s really in the last number of years that it’s really coming forward and getting the attention it deserves. And forests have that role to help curb some of that; it’s super important,” says Anderson. “It continues to motivate me, in that the work we’re doing can have such an impact on some of those major issues. That makes it exciting to come to work every day and motivates my team knowing that we’re having big impacts.”
One of Resource Innovations’ current focuses in Western Canada is to get into more fire management work. There is a business out west they are in the process of acquiring with years of experience in the fire management field. Anderson says the acquisition of the business will add another three or four new employees to his company in the short term. “We’re bidding on a couple of projects that are trying to help look at these large-scale fires. How are they preventable, what does the risk response look like, and how can communities and provinces and territories be better prepared for these large-scale fires we’re seeing?” says Anderson.
Locally, Resource Innovations is doing work for local sawmills and taking on forest management planning, operational layout, or helping with the harvest transport and the regeneration of forest stands. These days, a big part of what they do is around the development of geospatial tools, which are data tools used to collect information about the geographical area being looked into. “We very much in the last 10 years transitioned to a tech-focused company, which I can’t say early on was where my vision was, but it’s just really where we position ourselves. It’s where we excel, and it’s become what our clients expect from us now, so it’s great,” says Anderson. “So, it’s identifying those kinds of opportunities and talking to different people, finding where their pain points are and seeing if we can have a positive impact on the business on the environment.”
Anderson says another gap he saw in the industry was between the recorded data and what was actually on the ground when workers set up for a project. In a way, what his business does is preventative maintenance to ensure forestry projects will go more smoothly. “Navigating through and trying to find the answers so they don’t have to take the hit is where we position ourselves, so we can protect our clients against those hits,” says Anderson. “Because once you move equipment that is a half a million to a million dollars, and then you start harvesting, or you start planting and then realize issues at that point—it’s too costly,” says Anderson. “But if we can do a desktop analysis and then have somebody run to the field and do simple checks and avoid those situations before anyone ever moves to the areas, it’s a lifesaver for those companies.”
“The climate is changing and I think it’s really in the last number of years that it’s really coming forward and getting the attention it deserves. And forests have that role to help curb some of that; it’s super important.”
Paul Salah, Atlantic Region Director for Esri Canada, a key player in the GIS technology industry, says GIS technology in Resource Innovations’ hands is far more than just a mapping capability; it’s a business driver. “It empowers executives to make evidence-based business decisions and reduces mobile workers’ burden when it comes to manual data entry,” he says. “Resource Innovations effectively uses Esri’s ArcGIS tools to create custom software solutions, migrate error-prone manual data collection processes to more efficient electronic ones, and tailor each of their clients’ operations to the local geography. By helping their clients make better business decisions using GIS technology, Resource Innovations is also advancing sustainable forestry management practices and driving better environmental outcomes.”
The forest industry is primarily thought of as a traditional sector, says Anderson, and what they do is take tools to the industry such as remote data collection. It used to be that it would take a week to put together data; now, staff in the field can sync data from their day in real time. This allows the data to be worked on at night, and then clients will show up at work making informed decisions. “That’s a lot of what we do, is leveraging different technologies. Data is huge, and there’s so much out there now and that’s part of what we do, is take that data and turn it into useful information for our clients,” says Anderson.
Resource Innovations adapts technology inside harvesting and trucking equipment so they can monitor the flow of fiber right from the stump to the mill. They’re looking at remote sensing tools they can put in the field, which will monitor soil moisture and on the software side, looking to develop tools of their own. This new software will allow owners of a business to monitor data operations right from a computer or device, making data user-friendly.
Over the years, there have been a few small lessons learned, but Anderson says his biggest defeat was when they took on a big line of inventory work outside of N.L. With a dozen people working in the office and others out in the field, Resource Innovations went all in with this type of work due to the demand at that time. However, in a very quick time frame, the government changed its focus, its program, and a lot of people involved with the inventory program went out of business. “When things change, things change quickly, so I had all these staff and I didn’t have any work for them anymore, so we had to pivot very quickly,” says Anderson. “And at the time it was eye-opening that we don’t have control of those decisions. That we needed to be diverse to protect ourselves against those issues. And that really could have put us under at the time.”
Anderson was able to hang on to most of the staff, but ended up having to lay people off, and says this was also a tough part of his journey. “I’m not in business to lay people off, I’m in business to give people careers, and that’s very important to me,” he says.
Sustainability is a big part of forestry, because if it’s not sustainable, says Anderson, then the industry will not last. It’s an important consideration, and he notices the change is happening throughout the region, provinces, and territories to be more environmentally aware when it comes to the forestry industry. “There’s a lot that goes into it; from industry, to government, to NGOs. Everybody has a part to play and it’s important we’re all working together toward that end goal,” he says.
Anderson is also co-chair of Navigate, the local entrepreneurial network in his area. He says staying involved with the network since starting his business was important to him because of the impacts the program had on him. “Sometimes I feel like stubbornness kept me going; it was a passion. I love working in the field, I love working in the forest, and I love working with good clients,” says Anderson. “We worked on a lot of hard projects over the years, but working with certain clients on good meaningful projects—that’s really what I love, and that’s where you get your chance to shine when you really enjoy something.”
