U7 Solutions

Sometimes you need to step away from the screen and touch grass...

Or in our case, gorgeous red cedar. 🌳

Thanks so much to Laila and Joe for giving us a behind-the-scenes tour of the Ottawa location. Such a treat to see the work up close and chat about what’s next for The WoodSource!

Running a national bilingual campaign promoting two trades across three platforms is no small feat.

But that's exactly what we pulled off for this joint effort by Canadian Apprenticeship Forum (CAF), SkillPlan, and the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE).

The campaign ran November 7 to December 25 – one of the toughest windows of the year for non-retail campaigns. Ad costs spike as e-commerce brands flood platforms with holiday budgets, and getting someone to stop scrolling and sign up for a learning platform? Hard ask.

Here's what the scope actually looked like:

• Two trades. Two languages. Three platforms (Meta, Google Search, and YouTube).
• Separate campaign structures for each language on each platform
• Two custom landing pages (English and French)
• Keyword research, ad creative production, tracking, and reporting

The audience: Operating Engineer apprentices and pre-apprentices, Heavy Equipment Operators, and Crane Operators, coast to coast.

Shoutout to our partners on this one. Complex campaigns like this don't happen without strong collaboration.

For over a decade, we’ve partnered with Loch Gallery to evolve their online presence alongside their growing collection of artwork.

We designed and developed their public facing website to showcase a large catalogue of available artwork, making it easy for collectors to explore and inquire. As their needs expanded, we built a custom member portal, My Loch Gallery, where collectors can create a profile, save favourite works, and receive notifications when new pieces by preferred artists become available.

We continue to refine the platform and develop custom features to support their internal workflows as needed, ensuring their website works efficiently behind the scenes.

Here’s to Eric and two years of making U7 better from the inside out.

Eric has become a key part of how U7 operates, improves, and grows. As Head of Digital Operations, he brings a rare mix of technical depth, calm leadership, and practical problem-solving to the team.

Eric is the kind of person who can move comfortably between strategy, systems, process, and complex technical challenges, keeping things clear even when the work gets complicated. He’s always looking for better ways to organize, improve, and scale how we deliver, while staying steady, thoughtful, and solution-focused along the way.

His workday essentials say a lot about him: a lunchtime run when possible, an afternoon smoothie, a strong appreciation for the Terminal/CLI, and one very practical rule worth respecting: don’t push to prod on Fridays. Add in a talent for turning leftovers into completely different second meals, a love of history books, and a past life as the drummer in an 8-piece ska band, and you get a pretty good picture of Eric.

“Eric is loyal, dependable, responsible, and always looking to learn, grow, and improve. He’s made U7 his home and has our success connected to his own.” – Jayson

“One of the things I value most about working with Eric is his ability to stay calm, focused, and solution oriented no matter the challenge. He leads with both efficiency and empathy, which makes a real impact across the team.” – Chirag

“Eric is the kind of person who can walk into a complex operational issue, bring the right people together, keep communication clear and calm, and somehow still sneak in a perfectly timed engineering joke while solving the problem.” – John

Thanks for everything you’ve brought to U7 these past two years, Eric. We’re lucky to have you on the team and excited for what’s ahead.