As a demonstration project for Canada Post, Winnipeg Mail Processing Plant was a Design-Build industrial construction project with an accelerated project schedule, closely integrating the consultant and contractor parties into one team while answering to a duplicate set of consultants on the owner’s team.
Service completion: Winter 2009-2010
Scope of services: Minimum and Optimize Energy Performance Simulation (EAp2, EAc1) for CaGBC LEED: New Construction 1.0
Size: $50,000,000 construction budget
Building systems: Curtainwall, stone and insulated metal panel envelope, hydronic heating and cooling with a VAV system in office and multiple single-zone air-handling units in plant with high filtration and tight humidity requirements, fluorescent lighting, high industrial process load.
The owner had three unique demands in designing and building this facility: 1) utilize Design-Build method, 2) make all work available and transparent to their duplicate set of consultants (their contracted project manager, architect, mech/elec engineers, LEED and energy specialists), and 3) meet their required LEED credits, timeline and other requirements or suffer a fee penalty. So, in addition to gaining experience with an industrial building, team members gained experience in critiquing the design during construction (requiring very fast turnaround of results, or concrete may be poured over the potential solution!), in justifying fine details of work to owner’s consultants while completing project within tight timeline, and in having an entire design and build team highly interested in the energy model outcome. In the end, the model was reviewed to exceed energy expectations.
Thurston Engineering Services personnel’s “professionalism and capabilities are evident, and I can speak personally to their ability to collaborate within a team and work to meet the particular needs of a project.” – Mechanical Engineer, Winnipeg Mail Processing Plant
Back To Portfolio