Shelley Penner is a Registered Member of the Interior Designers Institute of British Columbia (IDIBC), joined the Board of Directors in 2020, and was elected President in June 2022.
Seeking a new challenge to connect her work to a greater purpose, Shelley joined Workplace Planning & Solutions (WPS) at WorkSafeBC in June 2022. WPS is integral to the Real Property and Workplaces Services (RPWS) department at WorkSafeBC. RPWS is a department, with a team of more than 50 people, in the Innovation and Technology (I&T) division.
As a Manager at WPS, Shelley applies her diverse skill set to space planning and design for hybrid work; holistic project delivery; asset management and tracking; furniture and D&C waste reduction and diversion; contract development and management; research, analysis, and surveys; change management and workplace strategy; corporate real estate; recruitment and retention; and quality control for healthy, safe, secure, and sustainable work environments.
Before pivoting to the client realm of corporate real estate, Shelley spent more than two decades as Principal and Senior Designer at P+A INTERIORS, a Vancouver-based sustainable interior design studio.
Shelley is a graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Interior Design from the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba. Her experience as a Senior Designer encompasses programming; workplace surveys; schematic design and test-fits; feasibility studies; space and occupancy planning; design development; lighting design; contract documents; tendering, bidding and negotiation; furniture systems; move management; signage, graphics and wayfinding; contract administration; and, project management.
Throughout Shelley’s career, key drivers have been to stay curious, be authentic, and do impactful work to better humanity and the natural world.
During the first decade of its existence, Shelley was joined at P+A INTERIORS by Robin McIntosh, also a graduate in Interior Design from the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba. Robin was a creative force, contributing concept development, beautiful hand renderings, an attention to detail, and so much more. Their collaboration resulted in many award-winning projects.
From 2000 to 2005, Shelley and her team resided at Busby + Associates Architects (now Perkins+Will), largely due to a shared commitment to sustainable design. The period also imbued the studio's modernist aesthetic and led to collaborations on several projects while providing big firm experience.
In the late-1990s, Shelley apprenticed with Susan Morris of Morris Specifications Inc. The experience gained there has informed Shelley's thoroughness in research, contract documents, and contract administration.
Research is at the core of advancing sustainable design and responding to the climate crisis in a meaningful way. Shelley has researched, authored and co-authored numerous guides and articles on the subject. An excellent communicator and speaker, Shelley has developed and delivered many presentations and led workshops on sustainable design.
From 2006-07, Shelley was a member of the LEED Canada for Commercial Interiors Core Committee contributing to the adaptation of the USGBC version and implementation for the Canada Green Building Council. She has substantial experience in the implementation of LEED rating systems. She has served as project administrator for four LEED Gold projects and as a team member on two other projects that achieved Gold and Platinum.
An environmentalist since the early 1990s, Shelley was the driving force in the creation of the EcoDesign Resource Society, one of Canada's earliest green building organizations. EcoDesign was an independent and multidisciplinary organization founded in 1992 to encourage sustainability in the building industry. From 1992-97, Shelley helped define and forward a vision for EcoDesign as a founding member, president and a director. Her leadership and fundraising efforts were instrumental in developing a library, website and journal as resources for the building industry and the general public.
Since 2014, Shelley has been a guest reviewer for 4th-year Senior Studio capstone projects in the Interior Design Department at The Wilson School of Design, Kwantlen Polytechnic University. In 2018 and 2019, Shelley served as chair of the IDIBC Building Code Committee, a working group of the former Regulatory Process Committee pursuing regulation under the OSPG Professional Governance Act.
Shelley Penner is an astute thinker and consistently brilliant designer, always taking into account the big picture.
In 2007, Shelley and her team embarked upon developing p+a furniture, a sister company to P+A INTERIORS. p+a furniture exemplified a simple modern aesthetic, with a profound emphasis on health and sustainability. In addition to p+a-designed residential and contract furniture lines, the company carefully selected other makers and manufacturers of goods to complement the p+a aesthetic, and shared values of sustainability and social equity. p+a furniture opened a shop with P+A INTERIORS' design studio in the downtown eastside of Vancouver in June 2009, with the launch of an online store in August 2009. The location and launching at the height of the global recession were challenges that proved difficult to overcome. In 2014, the two companies moved to East Vancouver creating a maker space for design and fabrication. p+a furniture amalgamated into P+A INTERIORS in 2015 with the company re-focusing on interior design. p+a furniture may have been an idea ahead of its time, but it offered Shelley the opportunity to expand her extensive skill set and build resilience.
photography by Arnaldo Rodriguez, Martin Tessler and Bryan Harrison