Infrastructure Ontario

MECP-MLITSD Science Facility Complex

The new complex will bring together existing operations into a single, modern, science and laboratory facility that will strengthen capacity to deliver on critical mandates of protecting the environment, public health, and safety.

The new Science Facility Complex will permanently replace Ontario's Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks’ (MECP) facility at 125 Resources Road and Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development’s (MLITSD) temporary facility at 6295 Northam Drive (formerly at 81A Resources Road).

HH Angus’ Science and Technology team is providing compliance (PDC) engineering services for this Design-Build-Finance-Maintain (DBFM) infrastructure project that will protect public health and the environment through advanced monitoring of radiological materials, environmental contaminants, and live viruses. The new facility will have purpose-built, flexible design to allow for adaptable laboratories, science workshop spaces, and offices to support both current operations and future growth.

SERVICES
Mechanical Compliance Engineering | Electrical Compliance Engineering | ICAT Compliance Engineering

PROJECT FEATURES
P3-DBFM | Targeting LEED Silver certification | Flexible and adaptable laboratory and office spaces | Status: Ongoing

LOCATION
Oakville, Ontario

Michael Garron Hospital

Patient Care Centre ICAT Strategy

HH Angus was engaged as part of the Compliance team for the new eight-storey Patient Care Centre at Michael Garron Hospital (MGH), formerly Toronto East General.

The project also included a three-storey connection, as well as demolition and renovations to the existing hospital. MGH is a large community hospital serving the diverse Toronto community of East York. Many of the buildings are old, some dating from 1927.

Angus Connect assisted in developing a long term IT strategic vision for the Hospital, including directions, gap analysis, strategic recommendations and Information Technology (IT) solution options for IT to support the hospital moving forward. The Hospital aimed to achieve EMRAM level 7, the highest level in becoming a paperless and digital facility. It also looked to identify automation opportunities to become a smarter hospital. Angus Connect fulfilled the Compliance role for the Hospital, preparing the PSOS for ICAT systems and integration requirements in integration matrix and interoperability use case definition.

The new Patient Care Centre redevelopment was the first phase in the master plan for the site, addressing the highest priorities – namely, consolidated facilities for outpatient services, replacement of inpatient beds in older wings, and several related non-clinical areas. The Redevelopment adds approximately 550,000 ft2, including a new tower to house inpatient and mental health beds, ambulatory clinics and a new underground parkade. It also included approximately 100,000 ft2 of renovation within the existing facility, including a Cardiac Catheterization Suite and administrative areas. The project has been certified LEED v4 BD+C Silver.

As the Angus Connect team developed the technical output specifications, they reviewed options for phasing and system integration. Design standards and technical guidelines, incorporation of operations, life cycle and maintainability requirements are of the utmost importance for this project, as the facilities’ operation and maintenance became the responsibility of the Hospital upon completion of construction.

SERVICES
Compliance Engineer for ICAT Design

PROJECT FEATURES
8-storey patient care centre | 3-storey connection to existing hospital | Completion 2023

LOCATION
Toronto, Ontario

Image Courtesy of Michael Garron Hospital

Confidential Client

Quebec Data Centre

HH Angus provided comprehensive engineering services for the design, development, and implementation of a state-of-the-art data centre.

HH Angus was responsible for the design of the facility’s mechanical, plumbing, lighting, fire protection and building environmental control systems. This facility is split into critical and non-critical areas. The critical areas included mechanical and electrical rooms housing equipment supporting the main server spaces. The non-critical areas included administrative spaces such as meeting rooms, open offices, telecommunication service entry rooms, technical spaces housing servers supporting site operations, and a loading dock. Beyond the footprint of this building, our scope of services also extended to ancillary site structures such as the main gate guardhouse, water treatment buildings, fire pump buildings, and the deployment of private weather stations.

HH Angus implemented an evaporative cooling system to support critical IT servers. Our team designed a water treatment facility and rainwater harvesting system with a detailed metering scheme, giving the Owner visibility into water use. This made the facility water-neutral and self-sufficient year-round, eliminating reliance on municipal water for cooling.

SERVICES
Mechanical Engineering | Lighting Design | Fire Protection | Building & Environmental Systems

PROJECT FEATURES
N+1 redundant mechanical systems
to ensure continuous uptime | Completed March 2026

LOCATION
Confidential, Quebec

KEY SCOPE ELEMENTS
Feasibility study | Energy modeling | Facility design to eliminate reliance on municipal water for cooling

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Space Optimization Study Using AWS QuickSight

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, a leading healthcare provider in Toronto, was seeking to address challenges in medical space utilization. With a diverse array of clinical services and bookable exam rooms, Sunnybrook faced challenges understanding a perceived shortage of space. Yet, intermittent observations suggested that many exam rooms were frequently empty.

M6 – Multipurpose Clinical Space | Yuval & Lori Barzakay Brain Health Clinic Study

To gain a clearer understanding of space utilization and identify potential inefficiencies, Sunnybrook partnered with HH Angus, leveraging our expertise in digital solutions and innovative engineering. The goal was to implement a robust monitoring system to capture accurate data on room usage, enabling informed decisions on resource allocation.

This project reflects Sunnybrook’s commitment to operational efficiency, ensuring that resources are optimally allocated to improve patient care and support staff needs.

SERVICES
Prime Consultant

PROJECT FEATURES
Digital monitoring system to inform clinical resource allocation | Enhanced operational efficiency | Patient privacy | Scalable design | Predictive analytics

LOCATION
Toronto, Ontario

KEY SCOPE ELEMENTS
Space utilization measurement and analysis | Data acquisition through sensor deployment | Security and connectivity | Data aggregation and storage | Visualization and insights

Solving Space Utilization Challenges

Sunnybrook’s medical staff expressed concerns about limited space availability, particularly for bookable exam rooms. However, casual observations indicated that some rooms appeared to remain empty. Sunnybrook needed a reliable solution to measure actual room usage accurately while addressing two significant concerns:

Privacy: Ensuring patient privacy was paramount, particularly in sensitive clinical settings.

Accurate Detection: Existing solutions struggled to detect minimal motion, such as during procedures like blood transfusions, where patients may remain largely still.

HH Angus was engaged to design and implement a solution capable of addressing these challenges while delivering actionable insights.

Solution | Smart Sensors and AWS Integration

Our Digital Services team developed an innovative solution leveraging cutting-edge sensors and AWS services:

Sensor Deployment:

- mmWave Sensors: Initial deployment involved mmWave sensors capable of detecting micro-motions, such as breathing, to confirm room occupancy. These sensors were equipped with cellular SIM cards to operate independently of Sunnybrook’s network.
- 3D Stereoptic Sensors: To further expand the data gathered from the various clinics, the move to 3D-stereoptic sensors was used to provide not just occupancy status of exam rooms, but also the near real-time occupancy count data. Enhancing scalability, these sensors could monitor multiple rooms simultaneously, offering greater hardware efficiency.

Security and Connectivity:

- mmWave sensors utilized mTLS (mutual Transport Layer Security) for secure data transmission.
- Custom authorization for 3D-stereoptic sensors was implemented using AWS Lambda.

Data Aggregation and Storage:

- Data was streamed via Amazon Data Firehose and AWS IoT Core, stored in AWS S3, and processed through AWS Lambda.
- A centralized S3 data lake provided a secure, scalable repository for all processed data.

Visualization and Insights:

- Data queries were conducted using AWS Athena, while AWS QuickSight offered intuitive 2D dashboards for near-real-time analysis with minimal latency.

This comprehensive approach ensured seamless integration, robust data security, and actionable insights for Sunnybrook.

Outcome | Actionable Insights and Future Expansion

The solution provided Sunnybrook with detailed, data-driven insights into space utilization:

Initial Findings: The installation was completed in December 2024, and data collection began in January 2025. Analysis of the 11 monitored exam rooms in Sunnybrook’s M-Wing, conducted from January to March 2025, revealed a surprising utilization rate of only 33%. This insight challenged initial staff assumptions and highlighted opportunities for more efficient space planning.

Future Outlook: New medical clinics, which opened in January 2025, will contribute additional data to further refine Sunnybrook’s understanding of space usage and inform future expansion strategies.

Through this project, Sunnybrook is well-positioned to optimize its clinical spaces, ensuring that resources are allocated effectively to enhance both staff workflows and patient care delivery.

Key Outcomes Summary

Accurate Space Utilization Data: Revealed underutilization of monitored exam rooms, providing actionable insights.

Efficient Resource Allocation: Enabled informed decisions about space planning and allocation.

Scalability: Designed for expansion, with sensors deployed to additional clinics.

Improved Patient Care: Enhanced operational efficiency supports better patient care delivery.

Predictive Analytics: Tool for staff to forecast resourcing needs based on the day of the week using historical trends

Privacy Assurance: Leveraged secure sensor technologies to maintain patient confidentiality.

AWS Services Used

AWS S3 (Simple Storage Service): Acted as the central repository for storing and
retrieving large datasets, facilitating data analysis and accessibility.

AWS IoT Core: Enabled secure, scalable connectivity for IoT devices, allowing for efficient data collection and integration into the cloud.

AWS Athena: Offered an interactive query service to analyze data in Amazon S3 using SQL, simplifying the extraction of actionable insights from complex datasets.

AWS QuickSight: Provided visualization tools and dashboards for business intelligence, enabling Manulife to derive and act upon insights from their data effectively.AWS Lambda: Supported serverless computing, automating data processing and transformation tasks without the need for server management.

Amazon Data Firehose: Streamlined the capture, transformation, and loading of streaming data, ensuring efficient data flow from IoT devices to storage and analysis tools.

AWS IoT Events: Monitored sensor data for specific conditions, facilitating real-time alerting and response mechanisms to optimize building operations.

AWS Step Functions: Orchestrated complex data processing workflows, coordinating the various components of the ETL pipeline for streamlined operation and maintenance.

Confidential Client

Space Utilization Dashboards

This dashboard solution transformed challenging conversations around space allocation into more informed decisions, enhancing efficiency and maximizing resource utilization for the organization.

This Canadian healthcare campus is comprised of three acute care hospitals, a rehabilitation facility, and various specialized and support facilities, making it one of the busiest hospital networks in the country.

In an environment where clinical space is constantly in high demand and various departments are always seeking additional space allocations, the campus network faced the challenge of balancing the ongoing demands for more space against the available assets. The need to gain insights into how these spaces were utilized and by whom was paramount in effectively optimizing space allocation.

To address this challenge, the client enlisted the expertise of HH Angus, a long-standing partner, to implement an occupancy monitoring solution. The project goal was to assess the utilization of clinical spaces and identify opportunities for improvement. A longer-term goal was to gather real-world data to inform the design of new spaces, ensuring they met needs identified through the measurement and analysis of current use data.

As part of the collaboration, numerous IoT devices were deployed across two rapid assessment centres, utilizing a variety of technologies to capture occupancy data. This near real-time data was then seamlessly integrated into a unified platform hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

HH Angus designed and implemented a strategic approach to efficiently manage administrative department requests for additional space. Specialized occupancy sensors were tailored to meet the client’s requirements for accuracy and data granularity. Collaborating closely with the hardware vendor, HH Angus managed the entire installation and commissioning process. The result was a sophisticated cloud-based database and dashboard that empowers campus staff with comprehensive insights into space usage.

Road mapping and prioritizing sites were essential for large-scale implementation, and ongoing collaboration with the client ensures alignment with their long-term goals. The solution has already facilitated a departmental reallocation, demonstrating the practical benefits of the implemented system. Another benefit of the occupancy data collection is the ability to reallocate space to other departments as work-from-home initiatives create a more flexible work environment.

The sustainability features of this project are evident through its efficient use of office space, enabled by data driven insights. By implementing a tailored occupancy sensor solution, the project minimizes wasted space and energy resources, aligning with sustainable practices.

Medical privacy considerations, such as avoiding image processing, ensure that ethical guidelines are reflected in the technology deployed. Additionally, a continuous focus on accuracy maintenance enhances the longevity and effectiveness of the solution, reducing the need for frequent hardware replacements and minimizing associated environmental impact.

By leveraging AWS Quicksight, the collected data was transformed into actionable insights. Some of the notable benefits include acquiring reliable and actionable data, receiving an easy-to-understand insights dashboard, and utilizing this data and visualization tool to gauge the effectiveness of the client’s new Rapid Assessment Centre layout to inform future space layout decisions. This initiative reflects the client’s commitment to enhancing operational efficiency and improving patient care through innovative solutions.

SERVICES
Smart Building Consultants

PROJECT FEATURES
Tailored space optimization | Reliable accuracy | Privacy-compliant technology | Accessible data insights | Status: Completed 2023 plus continuing contract

LOCATION
Toronto, Ontario

KEY SCOPE ELEMENTS
Designed and implemented strategic approach to efficiently manage administrative department requests for additional space | Road mapping and prioritization of sites for large-scale implementation | Manage installation and commissioning process.