Last evening's 2025 Canadian Consulting Engineering Awards shone a spotlight on a very special volunteer project involving HH Angus and partner organizations.

We are delighted to announce that the INITIATE2 Infectious Disease Treatment Module (IDTM) was honoured with both the Award of Excellence in the Community Outreach category and the Philanthropy Award!

Our congratulations go out to all the dedicated team members, led by Meagan Webb, who contributed time, expertise, and passion to this important initiative. 

The Award of Excellence is a testament to the power of collaboration and the impact that engineering can have on communities around the world. The prestigious Philanthropy Award is presented to the “project that best demonstrates donation of a firm's time and/or services for the benefit of a community or group”. 

Developed in partnership with the World Health Organization and the World Food Programme, the IDTM is the first project in a 5-year effort to create innovative, standardized solutions that strengthen global readiness and response to health emergencies. Designed as a portable facility, the module enables rapid deployment and setup of field treatment centres when infectious outbreaks first emerge—helping save lives when it matters most.

This marks the fifth WHO project where HH Angus has proudly volunteered engineering and design services as a Téchne member under the International Federation of Healthcare Engineers. We’re deeply honoured to contribute to this meaningful work, and so proud of our team and partners for this outstanding recognition.

To read more about the IDTM project on our website, click here.

 
 

Co-operators' new Guelph Headquarters building was recently honoured with a 2025 Toronto Section Award from the Illuminating Engineering Society. 

These awards recognize professionalism, ingenuity and originality in lighting design. Congratulations to our Lighting Design and Commercial teams, The Co-operators, and other members of the design team, including HOK, NEO Architecture, and Ecovert.

The lighting design was honoured for its success in enhancing the building's materials, function, and structure. An element of the client’s Net Zero strategy, it also infuses the building with natural daylight, maximizing energy use, and reinforcing the firm’s commitment to sustainability, for example by employing all-LED lighting and intelligent controls.

The all-electric project has been certified a ‘Zero Carbon Building – Design Standard’ by the CaGBC and is pursuing Net Zero Performance. It has also achieved LEED Gold and WELL Platinum certifications, and is targeting BOMA Best certification. 

HH Angus’ scope of work also included mechanical and electrical engineering, and IMIT consulting. To learn more about the project, click on the link below:
https://hhangus.com/projects/the-co-operators-headquarters-in-guelph/

To view other projects featuring the work of our Lighting Design team, click here:
https://hhangus.com/projects/?_service=lighting-design

 
Opercule
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Congratulations to the Opercule project team on being honoured as the 2025 winner by the Association des firmes de génie-conseil du Québec!

At last evening’s gala event, AFG recognized La ferme Opercule with its celebrated 2025 Visionary Award. The award is presented annually to an engineering project that demonstrates particular value in innovation, boldness or proactivity.

“The Quebec Consulting Engineering Awards highlight the engineering expertise behind the industry's best projects. This prestigious competition aims to recognize the added value of consulting engineering in the success of projects of all kinds, in collaboration with clients. It is also an opportunity to highlight the work of multidisciplinary teams and showcase the competence, innovative capacity, and quality of Quebec consulting engineering.” (https://afg.quebec/grands-prix/)

La ferme Opercule is Canada's first urban fish farm using a recirculating aquaculture system. It was designed by HH Angus to achieve ambitious goals in terms of sustainability, innovation, local production, and compliance with environmental standards.

Located in Montreal, Opercule produces eco-friendly Arctic char in an innovative system that uses 100-200 times less water than traditional fish farming. The facility meets rigorous environmental standards while ensuring optimal conditions for fish welfare. By partnering with HH Angus, Opercule successfully implemented cutting-edge engineering solutions while addressing community needs for local and sustainable food production.

This groundbreaking project has created economic opportunities, advanced sustainable aquaculture practices, and serves as a model for environmentally conscious engineering.

Congratulations to the entire project team on this exciting recognition by the Quebec engineering community!

To learn more about the project, click here

 
 
 
Opercule
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Félicitations à l'équipe du projet Opercule pour avoir remporté le Prix Visionnaire 2025 décerné par l'Association des firmes de génie-conseil du Québec !

Lors d'un gala organisé hier soir, l'AFG a décerné à la ferme Opercule son Prix Visionnaire 2025. Ce prix est remis chaque année à un projet d'ingénierie qui se distingue par son caractère innovant, audacieux ou proactif.

« Les Grands Prix du génie-conseil québécois mettent en lumière l’expertise en ingénierie des meilleurs projets de l’industrie. Ce prestigieux concours vise à faire reconnaître la valeur ajoutée du génie-conseil dans la réussite des projets de toute nature, en collaboration avec les clients. C’est également l’occasion de souligner le travail des équipes multidisciplinaires et de faire valoir la compétence, la capacité d’innovation et la qualité du génie-conseil québécois. » (https://afg.quebec/grands-prix/)

La ferme Opercule est la première ferme piscicole urbaine au Canada à utiliser un système d'aquaculture en circuit fermé. Elle a été conçue par HH Angus afin d'atteindre des objectifs ambitieux en matière de développement durable, d'innovation, de production locale et de conformité aux normes environnementales.

Située à Montréal, Opercule produit de l'omble chevalier écologique grâce à un système innovant qui utilise de 100 à 200 fois moins d'eau que l'aquaculture traditionnelle. L'installation répond à des normes environnementales rigoureuses tout en garantissant des conditions optimales pour le bien-être des poissons. En s'associant à HH Angus, Opercule a mis en œuvre avec succès des solutions d'ingénierie de pointe tout en répondant aux besoins de la communauté en matière de production alimentaire locale et durable.

Ce projet novateur a créé des opportunités économiques, fait progresser les pratiques aquacoles durables et sert de modèle pour l'ingénierie respectueuse de l'environnement.

Félicitations à toute l'équipe du projet pour cette reconnaissance prestigieuse accordée par la communauté du génie québécois!

Pour en savoir plus sur le projet, cliquez ici.  

 
 
 
 

Our Digital Services team was well represented at the recent AWS Summit Toronto 2025 event.

This year’s event focused on two groups – Day 1 was dedicated to AWS partners like HH Angus' certified specialists, and Day 2 welcomed the entire AWS community.

Augusto Valdivia, our AWS DevOps Specialist, who has also presented at previous AWS Summits, took in the full event. Augusto is an AWS SysOps Administrator Associate, AWS Certified Developer Associate, AWS Professional Solutions Architect, and AWS Big Data Specialist. He has attended numerous AWS Summits in Canada and abroad, and took a few moments to share his impressions of the Toronto event. 

Augusto:
Both days were packed with learning, inspiration, and future-looking announcements. But more than anything, they were a chance to connect — with my team, with peers, and with the wider AWS community.

Day 1 – Partner Summit Highlights

Day One was all about partners and the deep dive into AWS’s latest portfolio. Topics included:

  • The Anatomy of Speed
  • Industry Solutions & Security
  • Generative AI and Migration/Modernization
  • AWS Marketplace evolution

The biggest spotlight was on Agentic AI. AWS introduced a portfolio that connects tools like Amazon Q, AWS Transform, Amazon Connect, Nova models, and Bedrock, all tied together with new SDKs and services to build intelligent agents.

Key themes:

  • Flexibility with OSS and partner integrations
  • Customization guardrails to build responsibly
  • Vertical solutions for industries like SAP, Oracle, and mainframes
  • AWS Transform as the first agentic AI service for migration and modernization, with impressive results like faster documentation assessment and reduced licensing costs

Day 2 – Open Summit Themes

The second day zoomed out into the future of cloud. The evolution was clear:

  • From Generative AI assistantsGenerative AI agents → to Agentic AI systems
  • Less human oversight, more automation, and multi-agent systems capable of reasoning like humans

This shift toward agentic AI signals the next chapter in cloud — where workloads don’t just run in AWS, but make decisions, automate workflows, and adapt in real time.

Team Insights

What made this Summit even better was discussing takeaways with my HH Angus team:

Aaron St. Germain shared:

“The sessions on serverless development, real-time data analytics, and workload optimization gave us clear best practices for Lambdas and streaming data pipelines. We even had hands-on activities and games that made the learning fun!”

 

Paul Vandenberk highlighted:

“There’s a growing reliance on AI to handle the huge amounts of IoT data. A unified name space is critical for data purity, making sure analytics today and AI tomorrow actually deliver value.”

 

Veerpal Kaur mentioned:

“The keynote was inspiring, and the hands-on Lambda workshop gave me a deeper view of serverless. I also attended sessions on analytics and Agentic serverless chatbots — it felt like a glimpse into the future of intelligent applications.”

 

Gary Chang summarized:

“GenAI was everywhere. The key is learning how to integrate it with our existing datasets, especially in digital twin solutions for the AEC industry. We can borrow lessons from industries that are already ahead in AI maturity.”

 

Community and Connections

One of the most rewarding moments came at the end of the Summit: meeting leaders from the AWS community, reconnecting with peers from the AWS Community Builders program, and sharing a dinner where we talked about the next big thing we want to organize together.

Moments like these remind me that AWS isn’t just about technology. It’s about people, collaboration, and building a stronger community together.

The AWS Summit Toronto 2025 showed us where cloud is heading: faster, smarter, and more agentic than ever before.

I’d love to hear from others who attended: What were your top takeaways?
And if you couldn’t make it this year, follow me on LinkedIn for more AWS, DevOps, and Terraform reflections — I’ll keep sharing the lessons and the community spirit!

 
 
 
Augusto Valdivia

AWS DevOps Specialist
Digital Services