BNN Bloomberg Sep 18, 2026
With Trevor Haynes, Chairman and CEO of Black Diamond Group
Black Diamond Group has more than $2 billion of firm, formal bids outstanding in its workforce housing business, and about 5,000 of its 13,000 relocatable beds are sitting empty.
The usual way to play a national building program is to own the builders. Trevor Haynes runs the company that houses their crews, rents them the site offices and now sells them the software to move people in and out, and he says all three sit in front of the same demand.
"Well, we're sort of in the crosshairs of everything that's going on right now."
Black Diamond has been a Canadian public company for 20 years, operates in Canada, the United States and Australia, and holds 45 indigenous partnerships in Canada. Trevor Haynes, Chairman and CEO of Black Diamond Group, on BNN Bloomberg.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 7 numbers that matter.
Key Takeaways
More than $2B of firm, formal bids are outstanding in the workforce housing business, disclosed with the second-quarter results
About 5,000 of 13,000 relocatable beds are spare capacity, which is demand he can serve without building anything new
Lodge Link grew trade value 69% year over year in the second quarter, into what he calls a market worth tens of billions
The bids are not only the headline nation-building projects — military, mining, and oil and gas work he calls smaller and less visible are in the same pipeline
US and Australian camp demand is coming from data centers, and from minerals in Australia
45 indigenous partnerships underpin the Canadian remote business, where he says the company is among the larger direct and indirect employers from those communities
1. Three Businesses
Asked to describe the company, Haynes split it into three parts. The first is modular space.
What the space rental business covers
One provides modular space of various types for everything from portable classrooms through to project offices, etc, around construction sites.
Trevor Haynes
The second is remote accommodation, which is the part he says is drawing attention now.
What the camps are for
this is where we provide the infrastructure that's missing in remote areas to house workforce for building anything from oil and gas projects, mining, certainly supporting military, any type of infrastructure construction
Trevor Haynes
The third is Lodge Link, five or six years old, a software business for moving large groups of workers.
2. In the Crosshairs
Asked where the opportunity sits as Canada prioritizes nation-building projects, Haynes said the company is exposed to effectively all of it.
His answer on positioning
Well, we're sort of in the crosshairs of everything that's going on right now.
Trevor Haynes
The list he gave runs from West Coast liquefied natural gas projects to higher oil sands production, critical minerals, gold mining, and better infrastructure and mobility for the Canadian military. All of it, he said, lands in the company's area of expertise.
3. $2B of Firm Bids
The demand shows up as a bid pipeline the company quantified with its second-quarter results.
The figure he disclosed
we announced with our Q2 that we have over two billion of firm, formal bids outstanding
Trevor Haynes
And the capacity waiting for it
We've got about 5,000 rooms of spare capacity out of our 13,000 beds of relocatable accommodation.
Trevor Haynes
That is the magnitude of what the company is seeing, he said, and also a signal of where the pressure points in the country are.
Asked what is driving the bids, Haynes was careful to say it is not only the headline work. The pipeline mixes nation-building projects with smaller ones spread across the country, in military, mining, and oil and gas. On the large end he named Western LNG, with the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline and the Cedar LNG export terminal, and said the recently announced expansion of the southern pipeline, TMX, is not yet in the number. The Pathways carbon sequestration project will need camps and services too.
His summary of the pipeline
So there's just a lot going on.
Trevor Haynes
4. US and Australian Demand
The host noted the projects discussed so far are Canadian, and that the company operates at scale in the United States and Australia.
On the other two markets
Australia's very robust as well.
Trevor Haynes
The US contribution is the modular business, he said, and on the camp side it is mostly data center construction. Australia is active in minerals and in data centers as well.
Where the largest opportunity is
So what we're seeing thematically is a huge opportunity set in Canada, based on what we're looking at in terms of nation-building, etc.
Trevor Haynes
The other two countries are strong markets right now, he added.
5. Box Modular's Demand
Asked whether Canadian demand for modular space is growing as well, Haynes said the two businesses pull together: a project that needs remote accommodation also needs temporary workspace, from engineering project offices to lunchrooms and break rooms for trades to laboratories.
He named two data centers as examples of sites needing that kind of space — Meta's north of Edmonton and Bell's south of Regina.
On the Canadian space rental business
we're seeing significant demand here as well
Trevor Haynes
The company operates that business in Canada under the Box Modular brand.
6. Lodge Link's 69% Growth
Asked what Lodge Link is, Haynes described the logistics problem it addresses: moving large groups of workers on complicated itineraries involving aircraft, charter flights and hotels, for projects that run continuously while individual workers rotate on and off.
Why the problem was worth software
It's a huge problem that's existed for a long period of time for these type of companies.
Trevor Haynes
The answer, he said, was to take the inefficiency out with software plus a two-sided marketplace.
The growth rate he gave
And Lodge Link is growing like crazy right now — we were 69% total trade value volume growth Q2 to Q2 prior year
Trevor Haynes
And the size of the market he is aiming at
It's in the tens of billions of dollars.
Trevor Haynes
7. Turnkey and 45 Partners
The host suggested Lodge Link looks like an important part of the portfolio going forward. Haynes agreed on value but framed it as an extension of the core rather than a separate bet.
How he rates it
We think, from a value creation standpoint, it's very significant
Trevor Haynes
The combination is what he is selling: the buildings and facilities, the hospitality services run under the Royal and Summit brands, and now the travel booking on top, which gives the customer one supplier for the whole cycle.
The other part of the Canadian position
we have 45 indigenous partnerships in Canada, and we're one of the larger employers, direct and indirect, of people from indigenous communities working within our remote facilities
Trevor Haynes
Put together with the national picture, he said, the company is pleased with where it sits.
Bonus Insights
The show framed the segment as a supplier trade. Its lead-in was that as Canada increases spending on major infrastructure, the companies supporting those developments could see demand rise — which is the thesis Haynes was there to confirm.
The company is 20 years public. Haynes opened with that, before describing any of the three businesses.
The host asked him back. She closed by saying they would need him back over the next couple of months to discuss developments.
Haynes's bottom line is that Black Diamond is positioned in front of the same pipeline whichever project goes ahead: $2 billion of bids against 5,000 empty beds, a modular space business selling into the same sites, and a software platform growing 69% a year on the travel that all of it generates.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Black Diamond Group (Alberta-based specialty rental and industrial services company, 20 years public, with more than $2B of firm bids outstanding and 13,000 relocatable beds)
Lodge Link (Its software platform and two-sided marketplace for moving workforces, up 69% in trade value year over year, into a market he puts in the tens of billions)
Box Modular (The brand its Canadian space rentals business operates under, selling project offices, lunchrooms and laboratories into the same sites as the camps)
Cedar LNG (Named with Western LNG and the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline as the large projects inside the bid pipeline)
Pathways (The carbon sequestration project he says will require camps and services as well)
Meta and Bell (Their data centers, north of Edmonton and south of Regina, as examples of sites needing temporary workspace)
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