Image of HHA team accepting award on stage

The Association of Consulting Engineering Companies recently honoured the Pearl Street Energy Centre project with an Ontario Engineering Project Award.

We are delighted that the Enwave’s Pearl Street Energy Centre (PSEC) project has been recognized for its technical innovation and positive contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the City of Toronto.

The objective of the PSEC project is to expand Toronto’s district heating and cooling distribution and capacity using low carbon technologies by installing 3600 tons of cooling and 62,000 Mbh (thousand BTU’s per hour) of heating, using water source heat pumps (heat reclaim chillers). Enwave’s ‘Green Heat’ offering will be made possible by the installation of new assets that make use of waste heat while producing cooling and hot water. HH Angus is serving as Prime Consultant and Mechanical and Electrical Design Engineers for the project.

Toronto’s buildings generate more than half the city's greenhouse gas emissions. New technologies, such as Enwave's expanded heat delivery system, will play a critical role in reducing the city’s cumulative carbon footprint. When fully utilized, Enwave’s low carbon heating facility will provide enough low-carbon heating to reduce emissions in Toronto by approximately 11,600 tCO2e, the equivalent of converting over 10 million square feet of office space to net zero. Providing Enwave clients with low to zero carbon heating and cooling solutions for their buildings will contribute to making them environmentally and socially responsible in Canada’s goal to reduce and potentially eliminate greenhouse gases.

To read more about this project, click here. https://hhangus.com/projects/enwave-energy-corporation/

The building code now mandates that any interconnections or data transfers between two or more building systems with life safety or fire protection functions must be tested in compliance with CAN/ULC-S1001 standards.

What is CAN/ULC-S1001

CAN/ULC-S1001 is a document that provides a methodology for conducting a documented testing program of interconnections between two or more fire protection and life safety systems. For clarity, this standard does not include testing of those individual systems themselves.

This ULC standard defines, among other things:

• the documentation of the test methodology (the test plan) and the results of the implementation of the test plan (the test record)
• the qualifications of the individual/company conducting the testing of these
• interconnections (the integrated testing coordinator or “ITC”)
• the responsibilities of the contractor, installation contractor and design professionals in this testing process

Who is the ITC

One thing the standard does not state is ‘who hires the ITC?’ Under this
standard, nearly anyone can be the ITC, including the owner, provided
they meet the requirements for specialized knowledge and experience.
Although not yet required by the various provincial building codes[1],
ULC offers a voluntary certification program for individuals and companies
for provision of ITC services which conform to the requirements of
CAN/ULC-S1001, an option that might be considered for any project.

Going Forward

On your next project, whether it is a new building, or modifications to an
existing building, the following two questions must be asked:

1. Are there new or modified interconnections between two or more fire protection and/or life safety systems? If yes (even if there is
only one interconnection), then integrated testing in accordance
with CAN/ULC-S1001 is required.

2. Who will retain the ITC? The ITC could be the Owner’s staff, or a
3rd party testing agency hired by the owner or by the general contractor/construction manager

3. Multi-Party Process - Under the standard, there are multiple parties involved in this testing process, including the “integrated testing coordinator”, designers (engineers and architects), the installation contractors, general contractors/construction managers, and owners - each with designated responsibilities for compliance with this standard. While this testing involves a number of mechanical and electrical systems, it also affects vertical transportation, security doors, automatic fire shutters, fire door release devices, construction safety, and methods of contracting, etc. The Ontario Association of Architects, OAA News 2023/Jan/23 recognizes this is a multi-disciplinary effort to achieve the goals of this test standard.

Do not delay getting the ITC onto your project – completion of the
integrated testing will be a pre-condition for obtaining occupancy of the
building, and will be required by the design professionals and building
departments.

Examples of interconnections between various building systems

Image of Bayers Lake outpatient building exterior

The Bayers Lake Community Outpatient Centre was recently honoured as a Gold Winner by the 2024 Urban Design & Architecture Design Awards.

The project was recognized for innovation and design excellence. The Outpatient Centre is part of a $2-billion P3 redevelopment of the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. HH Angus, in affiliation with Dillon Consulting, provided mechanical engineering, fire protection and plumbing design to the 134,000 ft2 project, which was led by the EllisDon Infrastructure Healthcare Consortium. The design team was led by Parkin Architects and FBM Architects.

A vital community resource, the Outpatient Centre provides essential ambulatory care closer to patients residing outside the Greater Halifax Region. Anticipating 28,000 clinic visits and 30,000 x-ray and blood collection visits per year, the Centre provides a range of patient services that do not require a hospital setting. These include initial visits with specialists, post-surgery and post-treatment follow-up, blood collection, eye care clinic, physio and occupational therapy, diabetes and orthopedic assessments, rehabilitation services, 17 examination rooms, 24 dialysis stations, and diagnostic imaging (x-rays and ultrasounds).

To read more about the project, click the link: Bayers Lake Community Outpatient Centre

We’re pleased to welcome Michael Murphy as Account Executive for HH Angus’ new service offering, ARMS – Angus Remote Management System.

Mike brings a wealth of experience and a proven track record of driving revenue growth and implementing tailored ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) solutions. He also has a strong understanding of commercial and institutional real estate through a decade of industry experience and a seven-year tenure at Introba where he served as an Associate and Director of Client Experience.

ARMS is a bespoke SaaS-based technology solution that provides intelligent, simplified, digital solutions for optimizing the performance of real estate assets and improving ROI from building portfolios. A cloud-based platform, ARMS streamlines many of the processes around building performance, metrics, proptech data, building access, HVAC inventory management and asset management. Customizing IoT solutions for facility operations, ARMS provides single pane of glass access to data sets such as room occupancy, space utilization, BAS data, security, health of spaces for occupant comfort - temperature, humidity, indoor air quality, and more.

"I am thrilled to join the HH Angus team and to lead the charge in driving sales and growth for the ARMS software. I’m passionate about delivering unparalleled value to clients through innovative SaaS offerings and look forward to collaborating with our talented Digital Services team to elevate ARMS into a unique service offering in the market."

HH Angus’ Digital Services team is vendor-agnostic and works with any data from any source through a consolidated database to provide meaningful, real-time insights to facilities and property management teams.

To learn more about how ARMS software solutions can help optimize your real estate portfolio, click here or contact arms@hhangus.com.

We’re pleased to announce that Kelly Henderson has been promoted to the role of Associate Director of the Angus Connect Division. In this expanded role, she will focus on the strategy and execution of consulting engagements within the Connect Division.

Kelly brings to the role deep experience in client management, software, operational readiness and consulting. Those attributes are supported by a unique toolkit of skills that are essential to driving a constantly changing and dynamic service offering in the world of emerging technologies.

Megan Angus, VP Strategy and Digital Services | Division Director of Angus Connect, has worked closely with Kelly since she joined HH Angus: “Kelly is a natural facilitator and a strong communicator. These are critical skills in her new role. She has a deserved reputation in the industry as a leader and a problem solver, someone who delivers excellence, fosters an engaging and interesting work environment, and promotes teamwork to deliver top results. I’m excited to see where her new responsibilities will lead and how she will help us grow.”

Kelly has also demonstrated a high degree of dedication to the firm’s success, through identifying partnership opportunities, creating and maintaining strong client relationships, and collaborating with and mentoring team members, as well as more broadly across the firm. She has also been instrumental in working with the firm’s other divisions on opportunities for a broader service offering to better support our clients’ project needs and strategic vision.

Highlights of Kelly’s portfolio include managing some of the Angus Connect division’s largest projects, such as the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, The Ottawa Hospital and Niagara Health.