“Einstein once claimed that innovation is not necessarily a by-product of logical thought. The result of innovation, he said however, “is tied to logical structure.”  And the words ‘logical structure’ are music to the ears of engineers. Certainly this is true at HH Angus and Associates in Toronto, a firm whose work is tied to both Canada’s history and to its future. After almost a century of engineering expertise, HH Angus continues to command attention.”

Click here for the January 2013 issue, then click on HH Angus on the left side index to read the article.

Four HH Angus projects are among 2013’s “100 largest infrastructure projects in Canada”, as tabulated by ReNew Canada, the Infrastructure Magazine. Three HH Angus projects are among the Top 20:

#13 – The Toronto Transit Commission’s Spadina Subway Extension – Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Lighting Design & Communications Consulting Engineering

#15 – Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal Redevelopment/CHUM: Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Security

#19 – New Oakville Hospital: Mechanical Engineering and Vertical Transportation Consulting

#75 – Union Station Revitalization: Vertical Transportation Consulting

HH Angus and Associates offers our clients a wealth of experience on large-scale infrastructure projects. We have earned a reputation for delivering outstanding consulting engineering and design solutions for MEP, security, information and communications, vertical transportation and lighting design requirements.

Read the article.

The presenters discussed the challenges of the project pursuit, design and construction, due to CHUM’s complex and dense urban site in downtown Montreal. As well, they spoke to the unique opportunities for collaboration among the design team to meet these challenges.

When complete, CHUM will be one of the largest academic medical centers in North America with 2.5 million sq.ft. serving 345,000 ambulatory patients, 22,000 inpatients and 65,000 emergency patients annually.  CHUM will accommodate 770 single-patient rooms, ambulatory and diagnostic centers, surgery, intensive care, clinical laboratories and a research centre that encompasses 35 medical disciplines.

Courtesy Cannon Design

Click here to read the article.

Gold Award: Centre Hospitalier de I’Université de Montréal (CHUM), and Kelowna and Vernon Hospitals

Silver Award: Humber River Regional Hospital New Acute Care Facility and Fort St. John Hospital and Residental Care Project

See the Award winners.

The following feature story appeared in Daily Commercial News on November 28th, 2012: 

The Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships (CCPPP) has recognized outstanding Canadian public-private partnerships (P3) in the areas of project financing, service delivery, and infrastructure in its 2012 national awards. 

The slate of recipients of the awards for innovation and excellence in public-private partnerships includes two highways, five healthcare facilities and P3 champion, Monique Jérôme-Forget, a former Quebec finance minister and early proponent of P3s in the province.

In a release, the council said this year’s recipients showcase how the P3 approach and alternative financing and procurement as it is known in Ontario are having a positive impact in communities across Canada looking for renewal and investment to deliver infrastructure and services faster, more efficiently and at greater value for taxpayers.

“We are continually impressed by the stories the partners tell of true collaboration between the public and private sectors in taking the projects from concept to operation,” said Mark Romoff, the council’s president and CEO.

“With projects awarded this year in five provinces, it shows that public-private partnerships have become an important vehicle for governments to deliver much-needed infrastructure and improve the quality of life for Canadians across the country.” Gold Award winners were: — Kelowna and Vernon Hospitals Project (Service Delivery Award). This complex project includes a whole-site facility management model with multiple buildings 50 kilometres apart that fall under two regional health organizations. The private partner took over responsibility for maintaining existing facilities in 2009 as well as three new facilities. The integrated plant maintenance, consistent standards and single help desk will ensure the facilities management services are at the leading edge of efficiency.

— BC Cancer Agency Centre for the North (Infrastructure Award). The facility innovatively incorporated wood elements in many interior and exterior elements, reflecting the Aboriginal cultural context of B.C.’s North and to promote the use of wood construction. Design and construction was completed in just over 2.5 years at a total cost of $72.2 million.

— Centre hospitalier de I’Université de Montréal CHUM (Project Finance Award). The project involves the replacement of three existing hospitals into one new facility of approximately 332,655 square metres in downtown Montréal. It involves the largest P3 senior debt funding in Canada to date with a value of $1.37 billion and was the first Canadian P3 financed at a BBB‐category rating level. Silver Award winners were: — Humber River Regional Hospital New Acute Care Facility (Project Finance Award). This $1.75 billion project is the first fully digital hospital in North America. The $1 billion of private construction-phase financing is sourced from a combination of shortterm and long-term bond proceeds, which achieved an “A” rating when they were issued.

— Fort St. John Hospital and Residential Care Project (Infrastructure Award). Designed to meet LEED Gold certification, the $301.8 million facility includes a 55-bed hospital and 124-bed residential care facility for seniors. The final agreement is expected to achieve value for taxpayers’ dollars of $20.7 million.

An Award of Merit went to the Northwest Anthony Henday Drive project. This project involved the design and construction of approximately 21 kilometres of six and four-lane divided roadway. It has eight interchanges, five flyovers and two railroad crossings. The road, which opened to traffic in November 2011, has delivered both cost savings projected over the life of the 30-year agreement of $240 million and reduced average commute times north of Edmonton.

The C.W. Chuck Wills Award went to the Disraeli Bridges & Freeway Project. This City of Winnipeg project included the replacement of the two-kilometre stretch of the Disraeli Freeway, with a new road and two bridge structures over the Red River and railway. The private partner was challenged with environmental contamination and keeping lanes open during construction. The result is 17 per cent in cost savings compared to the traditional approach and a much-improved artery into Winnipeg’s downtown. The award is presented to outstanding municipal P3 projects.

The awards were presented during the council’s 20th annual conference in Toronto.

The featured speaker for the inaugural event was Justin Hall-Tipping, CEO of NanoHoldings LLC, and ‘energy evangelist’. He describes his vision for the future of energy: “The future of the power grid is no grid. The future of the power plant is no power plant”, and “Nanotechnology – playing with the building blocks of the universe, building technologies from the bottom up – will probably save our world”. 

These provocative ideas form the basis of a fascinating presentation. Hall-Tipping envisions a future where clean and sustainable energy is generated locally – on site, on demand and at low cost. A former venture capitalist, he makes an eloquent case for the business imperative of finding new sources of energy before we consume our planet to power our culture.

Canadian Consulting Engineering Magazine has published a feature article about HH Angus’ IDEATION event.  

Click here to read the full article. 

Following is an article by Paul Brent.  It appeared in Property Biz Canada on October 2nd, 2012.

Cadillac’s green focus pays off with Platinum Tower

While the glitter of platinum will likely catch the eye of property owners and managers across the country, it was a long-running and comprehensive approach to environmental sustainability that resulted in Cadillac Fairview securing LEED Platinum certification for its 100 Wellington St. West building in Toronto.

While Cadillac is accepting kudos and attention for landing the first platinum certification in the city for an office tower, the win is part of a lengthy program for the six-tower, 4.3-million square-foot Toronto-Dominion Centre complex.

“We do have a big plan here at the TD Centre, the 100 Wellington St. West tower is the third tower out of six to be certified,” said David Hoffman, general manager of the TD Centre.  The first two towers (77 King St. West and 79 Wellington West) were both certified LEED Gold and Hoffman expects the final three buildings to be certified by the end of 2013 with either a gold or platinum certification.

The success of 100 Wellington West is even more impressive when one considers the 33-storey tower is nearly four decades old (the handsome, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe-designed black building was completed in 1974).  “This is a great example even in an older complex that you can achieve it with hard work and dedication,” said Hoffman. “The reality is there are no easy answers, just hard decisions.”

Comprehensive approach works for Cadillac

So just how was Cadillac able to secure the city’s first LEED Platinum certification?

“I have been asked that question a couple of times and it wasn’t so much what we did differently but what we already were doing and how we used LEED,” said Hoffman. “Unlike other properties or other towers that go after LEED certification, we didn’t use LEED as a scorecard to simply begin the implementation of a program or initiative.” Instead, LEED was used to validate existing programs that are already used in 100 Wellington West and other buildings in the complex.

The centre’s GM rhymed off examples: the TD complex was among the first to hook into the Enwave deepwater cooling system (in 2004), which serves the financial district, and can be considered the start of the series of green measures; it was one of the first property owners to install tenant sub-metering systems on every floor, “which allows tenants to view and manage their specific use of energy in real time;” and the implementation of a washroom fixture upgrade program (faucets, toilets and urinals) and an overall smart-water system.

Tenants getting green too

The TD Centre also got tenants involved beyond installation of their energy meters. It created the Tenant Green Council Occupant Engagement Program (which just won the Pinnacle award at BOMA National, Hoffman said).

The eight-tenant council, representing some of the TD Centre’s largest tenants, has been involved in a series of initiatives that include “green behaviours, practices, consciousness that in turn, drive conservation,” explained Hoffman.

The council is set up to run cross-complex campaigns. Last year, it ran an energy-saving campaign that resulted in the reduction of 2.4-million kilowatt hours. It is currently in the middle of a waste campaign and organizers hope to improve the TD Centre’s already impressive diversion rate of 80 per cent.

Next up is an air campaign attempting to improve both interior and exterior air quality. Success will be hard to measure, the general manager admits, but the TD Centre does have one advantage out of the blocks: it already conducts annual indoor-air-quality testing and publishes those results publicly, “good or bad.”

Competitors taking notes

The TD Centre’s platinum and gold sheen has not gone unnoticed in the commercial space, said Hoffman, whose centre was cited last week as one of “Ten reasons to be optimistic about Toronto” in a Toronto Star article by architecture writer Christopher Hume.  (click link to read – http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/1261113–hume-ten-reasons-to-be-optimistic-about-toronto )

“I was in a meeting with Oxford and they remarked and congratulated (me) on this. I also had Menkes, the general manager of the Telus tower, call me and congratulate me,” said Hoffman. “He wants to take his operations team through a tour of the TD Centre and specifically that tower.”

Not as pricey as you may think

How many millions did 100 Wellington’s platinum certification cost, you may ask?

“I would have asked that for 77 King St., which was the first commercial office tower to achieve LEED certification by Canadian standards,” explained Hoffman. At that TD Centre building big bucks were devoted to replacing the windows to achieve LEED status. “[77 King St.] would have been in the millions of dollars, this is not in the millions of dollars here (at Wellington West).” The Enwave installation was amortized over many years and the other upgrades to the tower have been carried out gradually.

“It is not in the millions of dollars, I am not trying to be elusive here. I simply don’t know how much this would have cost us.”

The successful certification of 77 King St. West was followed last year by 79 Wellington West (better known as the TD Waterhouse Tower). Both achieved gold status. The final three are the main TD Bank Tower (next in line for certification), followed by the Ernst & Young Tower (222 Bay St.) and finally 95 Wellington.

“We are targeting one more to be platinum,” said the TD Centre, who declined to single out the tower he believes can achieve top LEED status.
Cadillac has already submitted for the TD Bank tower and is now going through the LEED program’s one-year performance period.

Lambert’s folly a triumph

The TD Centre was an enormous gamble for TD Bank to make in the 1960s when Toronto was a second-tier financial capital. The bank’s Chairman, Allen Lambert, pushed for a modern tower with development partner Fairview Corp. After hiring architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, his initial design called for “a bold, two-tower design plus Banking Pavilion,” according to the TD Centre website. That grew to encompass an underground retail mall and the original black tower grew to five buildings. The addition of 95 Wellington St. in 1995 brought the complex to a total of six towers.

TD Bank took up only seven floors of the first tower, which meant over one million square feet of space would need to be leased to other tenants in the initial phase, leading other business leaders to jokingly refer to it as “Lambert’s Folly.” It’s been looking like a pretty smart decision for decades now.

HH Angus congratulates our clients on the opening of the new Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum Nano Centre at the University of Waterloo. Our work on the new building includes mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, security and communications design and vertical transporation consulting.  The following article appeared in the Daily Commercial News on October 15, 2012. 

Scroll down to see guest of honour Stephen Hawking being welcomed by a barrage of smartphone photographers. (Photo courtesy University of Waterloo).

Daily Commercial News: A facility designed as a showcase for Canadian innovation and industry in the fields of quantum computing and nanotechnology has officially opened in Waterloo, Ont. Designed by Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg (KPMB) and constructed by Aecon Buildings [with mechanical and electrical consulting engineering by HH Angus and Associates], the massive 26,010-square-metre Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum Nano Centre at the University of Waterloo is the first of its kind in the world to unite the two disciplines under one roof. 

“Breakthrough science is advancing at dizzying speed today, with quantum physics at atomic and sub-atomic scale,” said Mike Lazaridis, the centre’s founder.  “Simultaneously, rapid movement is happening in nanotechnology, where fabrication of materials, devices and systems 100 nanometres or smaller is being explored.  This critical nexus of quantum computing and nanotechnology brings the world closer to the cusp of previously unimagined solutions and insights.”

Constructed at a cost of $130 million, the new five storey building houses the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology and the university’s undergraduate program in nanotechnology engineering. A total of 400 academics are accommodated.

The centre was conceptually inspired by the Newton Institute in Cambridge.

In Waterloo, IQC and the Nanotechnology Institute each occupy their own building and are joined by a six-storey central atrium which acts as an indoor pedestrian route and an informal gathering space.  KPMB said the design organizes “mind spaces” — lounges, offices and meeting rooms — around the edge of the atrium where interdisciplinary interaction can flourish.

An integrated design team approach was taken to the project. “We first engaged researchers, both theorists and experimentalists, in deep discussions to understand the ways and patterns of their work,” said Mitchell Hall, KPMB design architect and principal-in-charge of the project.  This advance research later provided the groundwork for the development of the interior and exterior of the complex.”

The facility was designed to meet stringent scientific standards, with controls for vibration, temperature fluctuation and electromagnetic radiation. One of the signature features is a 929-square-metre clean room with fabrication facilities for quantum and nanodevices, as well as an advanced metrology suite, extensive teaching and research laboratories.

The exterior is distinguished by a hexagonal honeycomb lattice of structural steel, a pattern inspired by the stable hexagonal carbon structure of the nanotube. The podium of the building is clad with burnished concrete block to relate to the primarily masonry fabric of the University of Waterloo. The facility is considered the most complex scientific building ever constructed by the university.

“This is a one-of-a kind building,” said Aecon’s senior project director Wayne Green, noting that integration of the new technologies into one building required fitting stringent scientific requirements and systems “within a highly detailed architectural finish.” Green said methodologies to construct almost every aspect of this facility were a challenge “and far from the construction norm.”

In addition to substantial dewatering, the project required incorporation of waffle slabs, structural steel support on the outside of the building skeleton, a highly complex mechanical, electrical and control system and strict vibration, humidity and dust control measures.

Click here to read the article.

Another HH Angus project is also featured in this issue:  the recently completed Fort St. John hospital project.  HH Angus provided consulting engineering for the mechanical, electrical, communications and security requirements of the Hospital, as well as lighting and vertical transportation design.  The story begins on Pg. 116.

Click here to link to the full e-zine.