HH Angus’ Innovation Hub recently issued a challenge to staff in the form of an engineering contest: redesign our head office building in Toronto to improve energy and carbon efficiency. But there was a catch - the redesign wasn’t in Toronto!
Participants formed multi-disciplinary teams, and each team chose a different international city; they were then tasked with redesigning our HQ building within the context of that location. The challenge required the presentation of well-researched low-carbon solutions supported by business case rationales to reduce energy consumption and improve occupant comfort. Team proposals were judged on innovative building design, improved energy efficiency, elimination of GHGs, and adherence to the budget, as well as creativity and clarity.
Teams were also encouraged to incorporate smart building ideas, wellness features to improve human health and wellbeing, and to come up with innovative uses for and improvements to the building’s parking area. At stake were cash prizes and bragging rights!
And the winners are…
The Innovation Hub congratulates all the teams on their outstanding proposals, and thanks the judges for their time and expertise: Megan Angus, Sameer Dhargalkar, Nira Kugan, Phil Schuyler and Nick Stark.
1st place: Team Airborne – Caitlin Campbell, Colin Cruikshank, Kelly Henderson, Paul Vandenberk
The team chose Wellington New Zealand for their challenge location. Highlights of their proposal included energy savings and reduced GHGs through daylight harvesting, air source heat pump technology, solar panel array expansion, company-wide work-from-home Fridays for a 10% annual energy saving, refined occupancy data in the BAS system, and on-site energy generation exceeding energy consumption – enabling a return of energy to the grid.
2nd place: Team Acronym – Bradley Dean, Dania Mohammad, Ehsan Etemadi, Tim Zhu
The team chose Vancouver British Columbia as their challenge location. Proposal highlights included operable windows for natural ventilation, outdoor workspace, greening of indoor spaces with a living wall and plants, EV charging, battery energy storage, expanded solar panel array, healthier hotelling spaces with treadmills, and machine intelligence neural network supporting HVAC and on-demand lighting.
3rd place: Team Innovation – Michael Del Pilar, Scott Lengyel, Stefano Possamai, Leigh-Anne McKnight
The team chose Washington DC, USA for their challenge location. Highlights of their proposal included a green roof, rainwater collection for irrigation and grey water use, daylight and zone lighting, lighting occupancy sensors, electrical upgrades to deliver energy efficiency and GHG reductions, EV charging, air quality tracking, office community gardens, outdoor gazebos, and plants in the office.
4th place: Team 5 Best – Augusto Valdivia, Gary Chang, Melissa Parry, Tarandeep Mandhiratta, William Oestreich
The team chose Halifax Nova Scotia for their challenge location. Proposal highlights includes improved thermal performance for windows, mechanical, electrical and envelope retrofits, addition of thirty-seven wind turbines, 205 square meters of solar panel array, leveraging of AWS IoT digital twinning, EV charging, smart parking lot, car pooling, bird habitat and improved wayfinding.