Feature Project
Serving the Community
courtesy of Government of Canada
By Cheryl Mah
T
he major task of delivering a facility close to a million square feet in just 32 months required a small army of contractors and strong collaboration among the project team. A new 820,000 square foot headquarters for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) E Division is being built in Surrey, B.C. When completed it will be the largest RCMP complex in Canada and the Public Works and Government Services Canada’s (PWGSC) largest federal accommodation project in the Pacific Region. The need for a new facility was first identified more than 20 years ago and will consolidate 25 locations currently dispersed throughout Metro Vancouver. PWGSC acquired the 35 acre Green Timbers site in 2005 for the re-location. The purpose built and modern facility will bring together more than 2,700 personnel to ensure more efficient and effective services for the community. Currently under construction, the facility is a public-private-partnership (P3) between the Government of Canada and Green Timbers Accommodation Partners (GTAP). Construction is led by a joint venture between Bird Construction and Bouygues Building Canada. The scope of the $966 million fixed price contract includes a seven storey (700,000 square foot) operations and administration building and two support buildings (post disas-
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construction business
July/August 2012
The challenge was to put a large scale building into a natural park setting. ter and garage workshop) along with landscaping and 1,810 surface parking spaces. A future lab building is also planned for the site. The project broke ground in May 2010 and is expected to receive substantial completion this fall. At peak of construction, 700 workers were on site. According to GTAP CEO Nick Joosten, the project is in the commissioning stage and is on track to meet the target service commencement date of December 23, 2012. “It’s never easy delivering a project that has highly complex security and safety standards. We were fortunate to have good support from local trades to help deliver within the required timeframe,” he says. The office and post disaster buildings are castin-place concrete frame while the garage workshop utilized tilt up concrete construction. The project required approximately 39,000 cubic
meters of concrete. The exterior of the main building is a combination of curtainwall system and insulated metal panels. The topping off in February 2011 was a key milestone to ensure the project remained on schedule, notes Joosten. The natural forest setting has been integrated into the overall design of the facility with particular attention paid to minimizing any impact on the surrounding environment which includes mature trees and a nearby stream. “We really wanted to work with those existing trees and fit the building in from the ground up. We did a lot of exploration in terms of orientation and configuration, examining how to fit a building of that scale on that site,” explains Michael McDonald, Kasian principal and director of design. Vancouver based Kasian Architecture led the design of the facility, with AECOM and Roth Sheppard Architects as sub-consultants. The challenge was to put a large scale building into a natural park setting. The design needed to incorporate a careful balance between the natural beauty of the Green Timbers site with the goal of creating a highly functional, flexible and secure police environment. “We used existing trees as wayfinding and orientation elements to accentuate pedestrian access to the front lobby and to connect the facility to the roadway and adjacent transit stop.