From the Ground Up: A Fundamental Commitment to Sustainability

Victoria’s Falcon Heights Contracting leads in ecological preservation

There is a particular kind of forest on the southern tip of Vancouver Island: coastal and temperate, where moss drapes over rocky outcroppings, and creeks run close to the surface. It is beautiful land, and it is fragile land. Build on it carelessly, and you don't just disturb a site; you unravel something that took centuries to assemble.

Dave MacKenzie has spent more than 30 years thinking about that distinction. His career in green building began with an apprenticeship in Whistler, took him to orphanages in Guatemala, lakesides in Central America and ecologically sensitive sites across Australia and South Africa. By the time he founded Falcon Heights Contracting in Victoria, he had seen what happens when builders treat the natural world as an obstacle to work around.

Today, Falcon Heights is one of Victoria's most awarded luxury custom home builders, certifying homes at BUILT GREEN® Platinum level for nearly 15 years and pushing steadily toward Net Zero construction. But the company's most significant evolution has been philosophical: a growing conviction that building responsibly requires giving something back to the land, not just taking less from it.

That belief found its fullest expression yet in The Perch.

The Perch is a custom Platinum-certified home that put Dave’s conviction to the test. Set within an ecologically sensitive coastal forest, the project presented challenges defined entirely by the living systems around it. Before a single nail was driven, a team of biologists conducted a full biological assessment of the site, mapping sensitive wetlands, native moss substrates and species habitats that would need to be preserved. That assessment didn’t happen once and get filed away. It shaped every decision that followed, with a biologist returning monthly throughout construction to protect vulnerable nesting birds and ensure the integrity of the watershed.

What Falcon Heights did next went further still. An old logging road on the property had damaged a natural streambed, and rather than simply working around it, the team restored it, converting the stream back to its original watercourse and rehabilitating the watershed. Excavated bedrock was reused for hardscape and landscape elements. Every plant choice was drawn from native species, reducing irrigation demand, while reinforcing local biodiversity. Preservation, in this case, wasn’t enough. The goal was regeneration.

The industry took notice. The Perch earned recognition as a Maverick Awards’ finalist for both the Innovation and Transformational Maverick Awards, won Best Environmental Initiative at the Canadian Home Builders’ Association of British Columbia’s Georgie Awards, and claimed 6 Silver and 3 Gold wins at the Victoria Residential Builders Association's CARE Awards, including Environmental Achievement. Those results helped Falcon Heights earn VRBA’s Green Builder of the Year for Small Volume. Taken together, they represent more than accolades: this is a recognition of a different way of building—one where ecological responsibility is treated as a design principle.

For Falcon Heights, the lessons of The Perch aren’t filed away. Each project carries forward what the last one taught, deepening the team's understanding of how construction and ecology can work together, rather than against each other. That ongoing evolution, from high-performance green building to a regenerative approach, is what distinguishes Falcon Heights in a crowded field. The certifications and the awards confirm it, though the most meaningful evidence is harder to quantify.

When clients stand in a finished Falcon Heights home and learn what went into protecting the land it stands on, something shifts. They feel genuinely connected to the place, and to the values behind it. Dave’s team has found that the emotional response is the most honest measure of what responsible building can achieve. The Falcon Heights’ team thrives on exactly this kind of work: complex, consequential and alive with possibility. And it's why, more than 30 years in, they're still focused on learning and improving their approach to building green.