March 8, 2010

UNIVERSITY OF WINNIPEG

When Richardson College is completed a year from now, it will be North America’s most energy-efficient laboratory building.

Sustainable building

University of Winnipeg aims for LEED Gold certification

PETER CAULFIELD

correspondent

The University of Winnipeg’s Science Complex and Richardson College for the Environment will ensure that the school practices what it teaches.

It is not only shooting for LEED Gold certification, but doing so within tight capital and operating budgets.

When Richardson College is completed a year from now, it will be North America’s most energy-efficient laboratory building, with classrooms, offices and labs sporting the latest in green technology, the university claims.

Richardson College is the third and last building in a construction project on Portage Avenue, just west of the downtown campus.

The lab building will be just less than 160,000 square feet in area and four stories in height.

Already completed are the 80,000 square-foot, six-storey, McFeetors Hall student residence and a 10,000-square-foot daycare centre.

Total project costs are $66.5 million for Richardson College, $18 million for the student residence and $2.5 million for the daycare centre.

The University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corporation (UWCRC) is overseeing the project.

The construction manager is Winnipeg-based Man-Shield Group of Companies and the owner’s representative in charge of LEED commissioning is Integrated Designs of Saskatoon.

Man-Shield president Bill Sharpe said Richardson College’s structural elements are all in place.

“We’ve started work on the exterior cladding – our main focus now – and we expect to be closed in by the end of June,” he said.

“In addition, we’ve poured the concrete slabs in the basement and started work on the interior infrastructure. Interior finishing on other levels will begin this summer.”

In mid-February, there were about 60 workers on site, representing 10 different sub-contractors.

Sharpe said one of the biggest challenges Man-Shield faces on the project is working within a limited budget for an extensive programmed requirement.

“It’s taken a lot of creativity to do the work that needs to be done with the limited dollars at our disposal, “he said.

Integrated Designs joined the project in mid-2008 to help direct the project’s design and construction. The company uses an Integrated Project Delivery process.

“(Integrated Project Delivery) will optimize the project, achieve LEED Gold and hit the maximum 10 LEED energy points,” said ID principal Murray Guy.

“We expect to achieve at least 65 percent less energy use for very little, if any additional, capital cost compared to a project delivered using a more traditional design-tender-bid process.”

Guy said there can be as much as 10-percent waste in traditional project delivery methods.

IPD, on the other hand, uses an integrated approach that combines the talents of a design, construction and ownership team to eliminate waste, enabling it to buy the technology required to make Richardson College what is hoped will be the most energy-efficient laboratory in North America.

“With IPD, the mechanical, electrical, controls, curtain wall and glazing sub-trades were selected and brought in to work with the project delivery team,” Guy explained.

Guy added that IPD will be submitted to the Canadian Green Building Council for Innovation in Design LEED points.

The company is using IPD, or versions of it, on four other projects.

Sharpe said this is the first project on which he’s used IPD.

“It’s a progression from traditional project management,” he said. “The advantage is that it’s more structured and involves trade contractors at early-stage. There’s more of a partner-feel.”

But there’s a downside, too.

“It requires a high degree of trust in an industry where it doesn’t always exist,” he said. “You need to work to gain trust from the others. And you need to think about the project as a whole, not just your own agenda.”

Guy said the biggest energy use in lab buildings is moving large amounts of air for air changes and for making up air exhausted through fume hoods.

To reduce the amount of air required and minimize energy use, a three-stage red-yellow-green light system was developed. The exhausts will operate at one air change per hour (ACPH) in unoccupied red-mode; four ACPH in utility yellow-mode; and eight ACPH in full-lab green-mode.

“We expect this will reduce energy use by approximately 40 percent,” Guy said.

The project will also implement a heat recovery wheel developed by Semco Inc. in the U.S. Guy said that the wheel will enable 80 percent heat recovery, including fume hood exhaust.

Two features enable the lab exhaust heat recovery by minimizing the risk of cross-contamination between supply and exhaust air streams: A purge section clears contaminated air from the heat recovery wheel passages and a three-angstrom sieve prevents chemicals from sticking to the wheel.

Standard operating procedures will include regular testing of supply air to ensure there is no measurable exhaust carry-over to supply air.

Construction of Richardson College began in mid-2009 and is scheduled to be completed by March 2011.

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