Our Associates

Bill Low, President, is a professional planner and engineer with years of experience managing publicly owned property and facilities at the federal, municipal, and school district level.  He is widely recognised by his peers as a leader in facilities management.  As the owner of Cascade, Bill puts a great deal of thought into the needs of public sector organizations with respect to their facilities.  He has also organized and delivered a number of workshops and can put together appropriate training or professional development to suit client’s needs.  Bill was the team leader for Cascade on emergency planning and exercises in Delta, Saanich, Victoria, and Sea to Sky school districts and most recently in Portrait Homes, a private company seeking assistance with emergency planning.  He was the leader of the Due Diligence Review and Feasibility Study Teams conducting independent reviews of school projects in Saanich, Victoria, Surrey, Vancouver, and Chilliwack.  He also conducted organizational reviews of facilities operations in Cowichan, Langley, Mission, and Nisga’a school districts, and reviewed and recommended changes to custodial services operations in Nanaimo – Ladysmith and Langley school districts.  Bill wrote many Project Identification Reports for capital projects, and developed long-term Facility Plans for several districts.  Bill has also provided assistance to organizations seeking to hire new Facilities directors and managers.

Tom Carras is a former custodial operations supervisor with Vancouver School District.  In 2011, he assisted Cascade with the Custodial Services review in Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District 68.  In 2013 he was part of the Cascade team assessing custodial services in Langley School District 35.  Tom brings years of practical custodial services experience both as a custodian himself originally and then as part of the management team in a school district.  He is currently providing custodial services assessment inspections to selected schools in Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District 68.  He is knowledgeable of health and safety issues, emergency preparedness, building security, and labour relations.

Michael Jackson is an accredited and experienced Project Management Professional (PMP) who has intimate knowledge of the necessary processes and procedures to successfully manage projects to completion. Michael has diverse experience in construction and tenant improvement projects providing valuable insight into Project Management processes and best practices.  He has demonstrated success in determining the client’s needs, interpretation of conceptual designs, communications with the client/user groups, establishing of budgets and schedules, the procurement and coordination of project teams, and project control from concept to successful completion and handover to the client.  In 2014, Michael was Cascade’s project manager on two BC Housing projects and managed the concept and preliminary design phase of renovations to the Kelowna Courthouse.  He is currently providing project inspection services on the construction of a new McBride Elementary School and Daycare Centre in New Westminster.

Karen Hearn is the former Executive Director of Facilities Services at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU).  With over 25 years’ experience in Facilities Management she has a breadth of knowledge including the planning, design and operation of multiple buildings and locations.  Her particular passions are in leadership and mentoring; energy conservation and strategic planning ranging from capital plans to developing strategies to reduce costs while continuing to provide quality service.  While at KPU Karen and her team led the field in energy conservation and implemented projects and strategies so that KPU consumed 40% less energy than the average post-secondary institution in North America and was recognized with BC Hydro’s highest award on six occasions.  She has overseen the funding submissions and construction of numerous LEED projects including the first two LEED Gold buildings in the City of Surrey.  Her skills include finding ways to get all stakeholders from owners, to consultants, to contractors to work together to create highly functional, attractive buildings/renovations which are affordable both initially and for the long term.  With a Masters in Leadership & Training, LEED AP and BOMI Facilities Management Administrator Karen brings creative solutions.  In 2017 -18, Karen was part of the Cascade team developing the Asset Renewal Plan for Mount Royal University in Calgary. During 2019-22, Karen has been Cascade’s project manager overseeing the construction of the new McBride Elementary School and Daycare Centre in New Westminster. In 2021 Karen conducted a service level review and functional analysis of the Facilities Services department at University of the Fraser Valley.

Diane Bunnah is a former custodial operations supervisor with Nanaimo – Ladysmith School District. Since retiring in 2020, Diane has joined Cascade to carry out Custodial Services reviews, and already has completed one such review in a BC school district. Diane brings years of practical custodial services experience as part of the management team in a school district. She is knowledgeable of health and safety issues (including pandemic cleanliness requirements), labour-management relations, emergency preparedness, and building security. Diane has an outgoing cooperative manner which yields favourable results with custodial staff..

Joel Palmer has over 20 years of experience in a variety of areas within the public and private sector, including capital planning and project management, project board support, policy and program development, financial forecasting and budgeting, stakeholder relations, government to government negotiations, educational curriculum and programming, energy industry policy, program evaluation, and Indigenous relations.
Joel has left his position as Executive Director, Capital Management Branch, Ministry of Education (2013 – 2015 and 2017 – 2020) to offer his experience as a consultant with Cascade. Joel’s past leadership position in the provincial government and long experience working with school districts and First Nations is a very good fit for the services provided by Cascade.

Other Associates join us for specific tasks as needed.  Some of them have full-time employment from other employers but take personal leave to work for Cascade on short assignments.  For this reason, they are not identified on the website but the client is made aware of the situation.  These associates include architects, planners, engineers, and technologists with specialty skills including long range facilities plans, independent reviews, project identification reports, school site acquisition charges, demographics, Information Technology (IT) department analysis and reviews, traffic studies, facility audits, project management, and health & safety.