Ideation – Page 12 – H.H. Angus and Associates Ltd.

On March 1st, 2022, Infrastructure Ontario (IO) announced the selection of the Children First Consortium as the preferred proponent to design, build and finance the Grandview Children’s Centre Redevelopment in Ajax, Ontario.

The Children First Consortium team includes: Applicant Lead - Amico Design Build Inc., Sacyr Construction S.A | Design Team: Parkin Architects, H.H. Angus and Associated Limited | Construction Team: Amico Design Build Inc., Sacyr Construction S.A | Financial Advisor: Stonebridge Financial Corporation.

The project is expected to reach financial close in the coming weeks, and construction is scheduled to begin shortly thereafter.

The redevelopment of the Grandview Children’s Centre will reduce wait times, make services easier to access, and improve the range of rehabilitation services for children and youth with special needs in the Durham region and its catchment areas. It will also be an open, welcoming and inclusive community-based paediatric facility supporting an integrated mix of rehabilitation, medical and clinical services, as well as education and research activities.

Specifically, the new Grandview Kids headquarters will include:

Centre-Wide Therapy Services: occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech-language pathology, therapeutic recreation, audiology, infant hearing, blind low vision, social work;
Autism Services;
Preschool Outreach Program;
School-Based Rehabilitation Services;
SmartStart Hub services for families with a concern about their child’s development;
Developmental Paediatric Medical Services including specialized medical clinics;
Family/caregiver resources and support; and
Campbell Children's School.

Design work on the project will begin in April 2022. Children First Consortium will then mobilize on site in May 2022 and construction will begin in September 2022. Construction is expected to be complete in spring 2024.

Rendering of the Grandview Kids Hospital — Image credit Infrastructure Ontario

Marketable vs. sustainable – why not both?

The building envelope defines the building’s aesthetic while establishing the basis for the building’s overall energy and carbon performance. Despite its importance, teams often design based on what is “marketable” at the expense of thermal performance and then rely heavily on the mechanical and electrical systems to compensate for the performance gap. This practice is especially true with Multi-Unit Residential Buildings (MURBs) and some commercial building where high window-to-wall ratios are perceived as more desirable.

...it is possible to design buildings with high-performance envelopes that can be perceived as both desirable and sustainable.”

A lower performing envelope typically translates into higher MEP capital costs and increased operational costs over the life of the building (e.g., higher natural gas and electricity bills). The building envelope thermal performance is a critical consideration for reducing space heating loads, as space heating is a primary source of GHG emissions for commercial, institutional, and residential buildings . Consequently, high-performing building envelopes play an important role in reducing the carbon footprint of buildings.

With collaboration between the design team disciplines, it is possible to design buildings with high-performance envelopes that can be perceived as both desirable and sustainable. As the industry moves towards low-carbon designs, these buildings could arguably become even more “marketable” given their sustainability achievements.

“Effective” thermal performance and HVAC systems

One aspect of building envelopes that has historically been underestimated is the effect of thermal bridging on the effective thermal performance of different constructions, which directly impacts the HVAC sizing process. Overestimating the envelope thermal performance can lead to under-sizing of equipment and to uncomfortable indoor conditions. Conversely, underestimating the envelope thermal performance could result in an unnecessary capital cost increase due to oversizing of HVAC equipment.

For instance, assume a steel-framed type wall with a continuous insulation layer of R-12 on the exterior, and batt insulation between the steel studs of R-13. At first glance, this assembly would seemingly have a “nominal” R-25 performance (e.g., R13 batt + R12 c.i.).

However, when the effects of thermal bridging through the steel studs are factored in, the overall R-value is reduced to approximately R-20 (this is known as the clear field assembly). Additionally, if the thermal bridging effect due to interface details, such as window transitions, parapets, and balcony slabs, are considered, the overall effective R-value could be reduced down to R-8 , even if efficient interface details are used. Consequently, the initially “nominal” R-25 steel-framed wall should be modelled with an effective R-8 (U-0.125) to avoid undersizing of HVAC equipment, which represents a 69% reduction in effective thermal performance relative to the “nominal” insulation due to all thermal bridging effects.

*Fig. 2 – Sample steel-framed wall with effective thermal performance including interface details.

For this reason, MEP engineers are encouraged to work closely with architects and building envelope consultants in the design team, to get a clear understanding of whether the R-values being communicated through documentation are considered nominal, clear field assembly, or if they include all interface details.

How to estimate the overall effective envelope thermal performance

If the values provided are “nominal”, the architect/building envelope consultant should provide a clear layer-by-layer description for all assemblies, and resources, such as ASHRAE 90.1 Appendix A, could be used to estimate the clear field assembly performance for certain types of assemblies.

Once the clear field assembly values have been estimated, or ideally provided directly by the architect/building envelope consultant, the effects of interface details should be included. If the architect/building envelope consultant does not have a defined methodology for including the effects of interface details, the methodology described in the Building Envelope Thermal Bridging Guide, developed by a 3rd party for BC Housing, BC Hydro, and other sponsors, is recommended.

The use of the Building Envelope Thermal Bridging Guide requires: the clear field assembly performance for exterior wall, exterior wall area takeoffs, length takeoffs for all linear interface details, counts for point interface details, and estimated performance for both linear and point interface details. This exercise should be led by the architect/building envelope consultant, but should also be a team effort, as multiple iterations might be needed, and the evaluation of the impact on HVAC sizing is the responsibility of the lead mechanical engineer.

Minimize HVAC capital cost while achieving comfortable indoor conditions

At HH Angus, we are experienced with this entire process, and have developed comprehensive resources for our designers and engineers to assist and guide this team effort. We work closely with architects and building envelope consultants to ensure that the appropriate envelope thermal performance levels are known and use state-of-the-art software to compute heating and cooling load calculations. This deep understanding of the process helps us to arrive at right-sized equipment selections and to mitigate potential issues with oversized and/or undersized equipment. This benefits end-user clients by avoiding unnecessary capital cost increases while achieving optimal indoor conditions.

In addition to the above recommendations, there are a number of passive strategies which owners and design teams could explore, such as the building orientation, the building massing/form, or use of external shading devices, that could help reduce capital costs for HVAC and other building systems. In a future article on early energy modeling, we will touch on the impact of passive strategies, how to evaluate them and how these could mitigate the need for more active strategies that typically rely on technology or building infrastructure.

*Fig.1 and Fig.2 credits: ASHRAE 90.1-2010 User’s Manual

Francisco Contreras, M.A.Sc, P.Eng. LEED AP BD+C, BEMP
Francisco is a manager and energy analyst in HH Angus’ Knowledge Management team. He is very experienced in high performance green building design, building simulations, and energy assessment.

Hand arranging wood block stacking as step stair on paper pink background. Business concept growth success process, copy space.

HH Angus is pleased to announce recent employee promotions and career path moves.

While the past year continued to be overshadowed by the pandemic, we’re delighted to start the new year by sharing positive news from all our locations – celebrating employees who earned career advancement through demonstrated leadership, technical skill, dedication, empathy and general enthusiasm for our industry and the clients they serve.

HH Angus’ custom Career Framework outlines a variety of career path options, including non-linear progression. The framework supports each employee’s individual career growth while, at the same time, strengthening the firm’s technical, management and project leadership by encouraging employees to fully develop their individual expertise.

We are delighted to recognize and support the growth and development of our colleagues and congratulate them on achieving these important milestones:

Photo of Alvin Adel — Alvin Adel – Engineer

Photo of Wafa Al Aweel — Wafa Al Aweel – Intermediate Designer

Photo of Scott Bentley — Scott Bentley – Manager, Software Development

Photo of Bryce Blomfield — Bryce Blomfield – Senior Engineering Designer

Photo of Jomar Carvajal — Jomar Carvajal – Designer

Photo of Michael Del Pilar — Michael Del Pilar – Intermediate Designer

Photo of Huseyin Demiroglu — Huseyin Demiroglu – Senior Designer

Photo of Lance Desjardins — Lance Desjardins – Intermediate Designer

Photo of Caitlin Feir — Caitlin Feir – Manager, Proposals

Photo of Adam Fournier — Adam Fournier – Engineer

Photo of Jessica Generoso — Jessica Generoso – Engineer

Photo of Travis Hoogendoorn — Travis Hoogendoorn – Senior Engineer

Photo of Giuseppe Iannantuono — Giuseppe Iannantuono – Senior Designer

Photo of Akira Jones — Akira Jones – Director, Digital Services

Photo of Hung Kieu — Hung Kieu – Engineer

Photo of Nira Kugan — Nira Kugan – Manager, Finance & Accounting

Photo of Eldon Lucas — Eldon Lucas – Design Leader

Photo of Dave MacVicar — Dave MacVicar – Senior Designer

Photo of Paul Marjin — Paul Marjin – Project Manager

Head shot of Vicky Mei — Vicky Mei - Engineer

Photo of Tula Mitsakis — Tula Mitsakis – Senior Engineering Designer

Photo of Nick Mons — Nick Mons – Manager

Photo of Todd Moore — Todd Moore – Technical Leader

Munro Robyn 5x7 — Robyn Munro – ICAT Consultant

Photo of Rupinder Nagah — Rupinder Nagah – Intermediate Designer

Photo of Ismail Omar — Ismail Omar – Engineer

Photo of Ben Schwindt — Ben Schwindt – Senior Engineer

Photo of Leon Shao — Leon Shao – Engineer

0R7A0918.CR2 0R7A0918 — Greg Snow – Senior Engineer

Photo of Jun Wang — Jun Wang – Technical Leader

Photo of Jeremy Waud — Jeremy Waud – Senior Manager

Yilmaz Steve 5x7 — Steve Yilmaz – BIM Leader

Photo of Tim Zhu — Tim Zhu – Senior Engineer

Business man, programer, software developer working on laptop computer with network connection, monochrome, internet of things IoT, 4.0 digital technology development concept

What’s Happening in Our Market?

Akira Jones, Director of Digital Services at HH Angus, was recently a featured speaker at the annual conference of the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers. His presentation (available below in both text and video) examines the drivers pushing greater adoption of new technologies and the impact of these on our clients and how we work, as well as the threats to our industry from non-engineering firms.

HH Angus has seen a lot of change in its 100+ years, from drafting on paper, the introduction of computers and CAD, the shift towards BIM, and now computational design. However, today’s rate and availability of technological change is unprecedented. HH Angus’ BIM team was born out of necessity to service a large healthcare infrastructure project. Initially, the team was created to help our designers with BIM-related activities and projects, which meant providing support using database-driven technologies associated with BIM, developing our reality capture and scan-to-BIM capabilities, and other tools around using Revit or BIM processes.

The Architecture-Engineering-Construction (AEC) industry has been slow to embrace productivity and technological advancements. Recently, the industry has been experiencing change through leveraging existing and emerging technologies in design and construction. BIM tools have become mainstream in our workflows, with increasing adoption of 3D imaging, estimating software, computational fluid dynamics analysis, computational modeling, and more.

What’s driving our industry’s embrace of technology and new processes? Escalating project costs are a major factor. This typically flows back to consulting engineering firms through pressure for lower fees – do more or the same work for less. This can be an opportunity if we use new technologies to improve efficiency, improve workflows, provide novel solutions, and improve the quality of the solutions we deliver. Projects are also increasing in complexity, with design teams being more multidisciplinary, which requires greater collaboration and more quality assurance. BIM has helped with improving efficiency and collaboration within the firm and across project teams. For existing buildings, advances in 3D scanning technology have allowed us to quickly scan spaces and convert into REVIT models, which are far more accurate than 2D drawings or dated as-builts, and can be shared with project teams in any location.

Sustainability and resiliency are also driving adoption of new technologies. With buildings contributing nearly 40% of greenhouse gases, the AEC sector can make a positive impact by designing and constructing buildings more sustainably. Reducing use of materials with high embodied carbon, decarbonizing heating and cooling systems, and leveraging smart buildings technologies to realize more energy efficiency are some of the emerging technologies we can employ.

Over the last decade, our team has explored digital twinning, smart buildings/IoT and cloud technologies. Through pilot and research projects, I've had the opportunity to work with folks with new skillsets that will be valuable for future consulting engineers. There is vast potential to leverage, to really supercharge our ability to solve problems for our clients.

Our industry is changing rapidly in other ways, not just in technology adoption. Disruptive technologies are attracting non-engineering businesses into the AEC market. Both Google, with their Sidewalk Labs division, and Microsoft have made significant investments in developing services and products focused on the built environment. Tech start-ups focused on real estate technology seem to be emerging almost daily. And large, established consulting firms like Deloitte, KPMG, and Accenture have created practices and market offerings around smart buildings. We are in the era of smart buildings, IoT, big data and cloud computing, which are the ‘bread and butter’ for these technology and large professional service firms. A tremendous amount of technology and data collection will be critical for smart cities – representing opportunities for optimizing building operations as well as new revenue streams. These firms are very interested in providing their solutions to our clients.

Architect presenting project to a group of managers

What is the impact to consulting engineering?

How will these changes impact consulting engineering?

The way we do our work
The solutions we offer to our clients
New and enhanced services we provide to the market

Consulting engineering is in the process of reorganizing itself, not just because of technological advancements, but also market pressures, evolving client expectations and generational change.

Firms that embrace technology to improve operations are better able to scale, manage and attract talent, and improve productivity and profitability. We generate a wealth of data for projects – from design specifications, standards, products, materials, schedule, budget, facilities operations and more. Cloud computing, IoT, digital twins and machine learning are some of the technologies capable of automating routine tasks, quickly iterating design options and generally streamlining workflows.

The growing role of technology has blurred the lines between traditional consulting engineering and technology work (i.e. software and application development). With digital and other technologies at the heart of much innovation and how projects are designed and delivered, engineering firms are doing much more technology work – developing custom scripts for computational design, creating digital twins, developing a single plane of glass (dashboard) for BAS and smart buildings solutions. We’re often as likely to be designing and developing apps, prototypes, databases, cloud platforms as we are doing project management, construction admin, load calculations or other ‘traditional engineering’ tasks. The distinction between an engineer and a software solution provider or cloud expert are converging, because the future requires understanding of all these.

Clients’ expectations of engineering consultants are also changing, regarding how we solve their problems, and the types of consultants involved in design and construction. It may mean that non-traditional design consultants become involved – such as management consultants, tech start-ups or cloud computing consultants. Clients are more knowledgeable about artificial intelligence, robotics, automation and the Internet of Things (IoT), and are apt to hire engineering firms using these technologies to deliver better outcomes.

Two people working on virtual 3d building by using AR glasses.

The Consulting Engineer of the Future

As in many other industries, the perspective on how we work has shifted between older generations and the more digitally savvy next generation. So, what kind of skills will this consulting engineer of the future need? Certainly, a critical skill set will revolve around software development. Programming and software development are skills that have become required in many industries; however, it’s relatively new within the AEC industry. It is not just the knowledge of how to program software, it is understanding what software is capable of, from both specific applications to enterprise scale. Engineers don’t necessarily need to know how to code or write software, but they will need to understand how software can be applied to solve problems.

Understanding how software can improve processes will be an increasingly important key skill for consulting engineers. It is a unique skill in and of itself. It’s extremely important to understand how to use software to automate processes, or iterate in ways that would typically take a human significantly more time in a standard or traditional approach.

The application programming interfaces (APIs) for design software such as REVIT or Rhino affords the opportunity to easily automate routine tasks, which is made even easier with visual programming languages such as Dynamo or Grasshopper. Not only can we use these APIs for simple automation, but also for more sophisticated processes, such as running parametric simulation for spaces loads, or extracting data from our models to validate design assumptions and inform future designs.

There are tools available that improve how we conduct our work, validate our assumptions and use data to inform our future designs. Beyond that, there is a major opportunity for consulting engineers to provide unique solutions to clients. It might seem a stretch to say every engineering consultant is going to become a software developer/provider; however, by going beyond simple automations and engaging in research partnerships and pilot projects, we can provide valuable insights, and have the potential for creating something novel and valuable to the client. For example, today one can use predictive analytics on a data set to get a high-level picture of future patterns. But employing true machine learning could take that same data set to generate a system model that learns as new data points are created and potentially predicts future outcomes. How would this work with the built environment? In a current pilot project, we are collaborating with a commercial client and a large university to generate a purpose-built digital twin using existing BAS and IoT data sources to model how building systems behave in real life. The building owner’s facilities team can then predict how changes to the physical environment or building systems would impact operations or occupant comfort.

The application of machine learning to our workflows is not in the distant future - it can be applied effectively today in appropriate use cases.

IoT is a technology that allows us to gather data about how buildings, equipment and people behave, and it’s one that consulting engineers should become more familiar with. It has quickly become a mature technology in some sectors, like mining and manufacturing, with rapid uptake in other sectors like healthcare and commercial. As we design buildings, we need to understand how to leverage IoT devices and properly implement them. And it does not stop at understanding IoT devices; we must also understand how data is gathered, architected, stored, analyzed and presented so that we can derive actionable insights. So, cloud computing comes into play, and building skills in technologies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud and others will be important.

At HH Angus, we have found that engaging in pilot projects with clients is an effective way for us to understand the impact of these technologies to deliver better project and business outcomes for our clients, while also building our own competencies in these emerging technologies. We embarked on an internal pilot project to implement IoT sensors in our own office to gather environmental and space occupancy data, and then developed our own app and dashboard to view insights. In another pilot project, we partnered with a healthcare client on the implementation of 5G and IoT sensors in an ER setting. On other recent pursuits, we have developed strong expertise in designing Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) systems. The common theme is that we are employing and developing skills that are atypical of traditional engineering and with greater emphasis on new technology hardware and programming.

Summary

The world is constantly evolving and sometimes change can be faster that we expect or want. Clients are adapting and they prefer consultants who are also adapting and able to deliver better value. To be relevant, consulting engineers need to expand beyond traditional roles and expectations. Fault lines are already emerging that will separate those who embrace technology and change, and those who cannot.

It's important for consulting engineers to invest in developing a range of skills. While it can be daunting to explore new areas, the reward is worth it. Through HH Angus’ research initiatives and pilot projects mentioned previously, we have enjoyed success and learned some key lessons:

Gain a better understanding these emerging technologies and when and where they can be most effectively employed
Create a work environment in which we can work more efficiently
Enable a culture where entrepreneurship and ideas are valued and new services can emerge
Better engage staff and attract new talent

Ultimately, we're in the business of solving more than just our clients’ infrastructure challenges – we also should be helping them discover opportunities to do more with their real estate assets and supporting their business goals. By expanding our skills so that we can understand and leverage emerging technologies, deliver novel solutions, become more efficient in our own processes, and better leverage their building assets, consulting engineers can continue to be trusted advisors to our clients.

Akira Jones, B.Sc., P.Eng., LEED AP
Director, Digital Services

HH Angus employee Jomar using the Matterport scanner at a site

Matterport Inc. recently announced a new add-on service that decreases time and cost for users of its Building Information Modeling software: Matterport BIM file. The new software from the spatial data company expedites the transformation of a Matterport digital twin into a ready-to-use BIM file at the click of a button.

HH Angus was an early adopter of Matterport software, and has been working with the developers since early days to refine its programs to better serve the consulting engineering industry. Our Digital Services team recently spoke to Matterport about our experience with their new service, and how it can cut costs and improve efficiency.

Creating Better Outcomes Through Smarter Engineering

Click here to read the full conversation on how we’re helping clients save time and money while improving our processes with Matterport’s BIM files service.