That experience made their team experts in doing work while hanging off the side of a structure, and that expertise led them to doing work on aerial ropes courses and wild play parks. The City of Richmond conducted a team-building exercise at one of those parks, and their positive experience made an impression. “They reached out to the company that we bought and said ‘Hey, we want to make an adventure playground, but down on the ground for kids,’” Mike recalls. The team at the City of Richmond wished to explore the “complimentary themes” of nature-based play and riskyplay; two rapidly emerging trends in Canadian playground design. The challenge they presented, Mike explains, “was to create fully-compliant, safe spaces for children to play, where they could be the authors of their own self-directed adventures.” Additionally, the Richmond team had “a strong desire to use local, sustainable materials as opposed to imported wood species.” The resulting creation was the multi-award-winning ‘Terra Nova Play Environment,’ which has since attracted international attention and honours. That project also attracted a lot of interest from other clients, who wanted similar play environments in their parks and school grounds. Mike and Steve created KinsolPlay to respond to that interest. They now have a dedicated team of designers and craftspeople working on play equipment year-round, and Mike estimates play areas now comprise about 15 per cent of Kinsol’s annual revenue. Mike partly credits Kinsol’s success in the playground arena to the growing popularity THE CONSTRUCTION SOURCE CANADA
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTYzNTg=