Features
Mistissini Wooden Bridge – Engineering a Better Canada Award & Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “This bridge won the special award given to a project that showcases how engineering enhances the social, economic or cultural quality of life of Canadians. The bridge demonstrates the strength of wood in a demanding design, supporting road traffic loads on four spans each nearly 43 metres long. It also provides a vital link in a remote community, and the local Aboriginal work force participated in its construction.”
Rio Abajo Footbridge – Outreach Award & Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “Winners of the Outreach special award, COWI engineers reviewed the design for this 81-metre footbridge, provided funding and sent a team to help with the construction. The bridge crosses a fast-moving river and gives the remote community its first year-round access to schools, clinics and markets in a nearby town.
The impact of the project is truly life changing both for the community and the engineers involved.”Varennes Net-Zero Library – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “Demonstrating “the small community that could … and did, “this municipal library is proof that net-zero buildings can be achieved at any scale while making no compromise in the design. Visits to the library have doubled since it opened, and it serves as a model and inspiration for the citizens and the engineering profession. ”
351 Water Street – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “This project showed an innovative use of seawater in a geo-exchange system. It reduced the use of energy by 35 per cent, and helped to create a sustainable and healthy work environment. The approach was also respectful of the historical surroundings.”
Westmount Recreation Centre – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “We see this building as a testimony to the value of multidisciplinary engineering.
It uses a bridge building
method with long spans in order to create a green roof above an underground arena. The steel girders are six metres above the arenas and withstand significant unequal pressures from the earth without using internal buttresses.”Robinson Place Ontario Government Building LEED Upgrades – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “At the time this was the only government building in Canada to meet a LEED-EBOM Platinum designation. It shows a high level of commitment to sustainability by Infrastructure Ontario and demonstrates that it is possible to drastically reduce water and energy consumption, while improving the comfort of workers and reaching out to the community.”
Whale Cove Arena — Ice Plant – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “Engineering elegance and simplicity! We were impressed by the originality and the environmental savings in this arena retrofit. The new systems require practically zero operating and maintenance costs, even in this challenging northern landscape.”
Union Station and Front Street Revitalization – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “At one of the busiest underground transit stations in Canada the engineers successfully designed and managed the construction of a second platform. Since it was critical to keep the subway trains running, they found ways to control the dynamic and static forces on the structure and used a complex shoring and staging process. A side benefit of the project was enhancing the public “space on Front Street.”
West Toronto Diamond Rail — Rail Grade Separation – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “This project’s team found a unique technical solution using bridge slide technology to improve the performance of a 103-year old infrastructure. By using silent piling they also minimized the impact on the surrounding residential area. The project shows a remarkable understanding of the strategic significance of rail and public transit in our communities.”
Low Level Road Project – Award of Excellence
Juror Comments: “The engineers brought harmony to a project that had multi-faceted conflicting and complex needs. It involved changes to 2.5 kilometres of roads and included the replacement of three at-grade rail crossings with new vehicle overpasses. Pedestrian and cycle trails and bridges, street lighting, and the relocation of utilities were involved.
Giant Mine Roaster Complex Decontamination – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “This was an urgent, high-risk project, and its execution protected workers, the public and the environment in an exceptional way. The engineers’ work involved assessing and remediating a large former gold mining site, where a variety of hazardous materials had to be removed, notwithstanding that some of the buildings were near collapse.”
Whitehorse Diesel to LNG Conversion – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “This is a “first of its kind” project creating a standalone generating station fuelled by liquid natural gas (LNG) to feed into a small hydro grid. The experience gained here can be leveraged for further LNG use across Northern Canada to reduce the reliance on diesel for back-up power, with its associated greenhouse gases. The project also involved the local community and First Nations in the construction.”
Boundary Dam Integrated Carbon Capture Storage – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “Another “first,” this project is a global leader — the first in the world to capture post-combustion carbon from an existing coal-fired power plant at a large commercial scale. It extends the life of the existing plant by 30 years and has the potential to keep coal as an energy option for the future. The challenges of integrating the systems into the existing plant were of a huge magnitude.”
Capilano Break Head Tank and Energy Recovery Facility – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “In this innovative project, the engineers met the challenge of using energy recovery while reducing the downstream water pressure in a potable water supply system. It uses a large energy recovery turbine at the terminus of a 7-km tunnel that carries treated potable water at high pressures. The energy that would otherwise be lost is expected to save Metro Vancouver 9,600 MWh a year.”
Goldcorp Eleonore Mine – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “This major mining infrastructure project in the remote James Bay region of Northern Quebec required
well executed up-front planning and had a very good risk management process. The project involved building the above ground facilities for a gold mine, including the ore processing plant, a work camp for 400, administrative buildings, wastewater treatment plant, and tailings management facilities. There was also good involvement with First Nations.”Lower Mattagami River Project – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “This was a very large hydroelectricity generating project that added 500 MW to Ontario’s grid and was successfully completed on budget and ahead of schedule. It involved completely replacing the 1931 Smoky Falls generating station and increasing the capacity of four other linked stations downstream. There was an exceptionally strong involvement of local communities and First Nations.
Coastal Protection, Cotonou, Benin – Award of Excellence
Jury Comments: “This six-year program was to stop erosion of 13 kilometres of shoreline that was causing serious problems folocal residents. The construction of new breakwaters was done with environmental sensitivity and we especially liked how the engineers involved local engineers from the beginning.”
Webinars
On-line presentations can be a good tool for engaging and recruiting clients, and also for internal training. Here’s
some advice on what works and what doesn’t.New Products
ELECTRICAL Rittal Systems has added the LED System Light, the first lighting system designed specifically for industrial enclosures. It shines into every corner with a brilliant 900 to 1200 lumens. The units can be installed into a TS 8 enclosure.…
Phil Sullivan and poor math scores
Engineering rests on mathematics, but things aren’t looking good for future generations because children are not being taught the basic skills.
Security at Casinos and Hotels
From the August-September 2016 print issue, p. 32 Mike Prsa, P.Eng., vice president at Mulvey & Banani International in Toronto, has seen a great advance take place in security systems in the last decade. “No longer are security systems simply…
Situation at the OIQ: Interview with the president
From the August-September 2016 print issue, p. 42 On July 6 the Office des professions du Québec, an arm of the provincial government that oversees professional bodies, placed the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec (OIQ) under its administration. The order…
Tax and business implications of opening a branch office
When a firm decides it’s time to expand into a new province or even into the U.S. or overseas, what are the must-know tax risks and implications?
CCDC issues new documents
The Canadian Construction Documents Committee recently issued two new documents that relate to procurement practices in the industry.
Critical Protection: Fire Safety and Casinos
In designing upgrades to the fire protection systems for a casino surveillance operations room, WSP evaluated various advanced systems for suppression and detection.
Next Generation Buildings: Power Over Ethernet
In the emerging era of the Internet-of-Things and IP networks, the use of Power-over-Ethernet is a technology that can simplify a building’s electrical and communications infrastructure.
School Project: Calgary Board of Education building automation systems retrofit
Over 100 schools in the Calgary Board of Education are having their building automation systems revamped and put under central control, but the buildings are diverse and each requires its own BAS logic.
STGM Head Office
An architect’s head office in Quebec City is the first commercial building in Quebec to earn LEED Platinum certification. Its sophisticated, minimal style is complemented by its innovative and highly efficient energy systems.
Centre Vidéotron
Quebec City’s new hockey arena and entertainment venue welcomes visitors into a grand soaring hall banked with immersive technologies. But behind the scenes, the engineering of the building structure and mechanical systems are just as extraordinary.
Radical problems call for radical change
From the August-September print edition, page 4 They say everyone is either an optimist or a pessimist, and I generally count myself in the latter camp. So when I arrived in the U.K. in June just after the Brexit vote,…