Service: Electrical Engineering
Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre
The Hospital’s architectural design presented challenges that required innovative engineering to visually integrate lighting, heating, cooling, power and ventilation services throughout the building, while meeting the life safety requirement and respecting the architectural integrity of the design.
HH Angus was retained to provide the mechanical, electrical and vertical transportation consulting engineering for this 683,000 ft2 375-bed acute care facility on a greenfield site. The facility included the full range of departments found in an acute care hospital, as well as the regional cancer centre, ambulatory care, forensic mental health, and full kitchen and laundry facilities. Subsequent projects delivered a cogeneration facility and the Northwestern Ontario Regional Cancer Centre at the Thunder Bay Hospital site.
For the main hospital, energy efficiency elements were a key component of the design. HH Angus worked extensively with the architects to calculate the optimum building orientation and amount of sun shading devices, and determined the optimal glazing and curtain wall specifications required to realize passive solar energy gains and reduce the hospital’s long-term overall operating costs.
The heating plant for the hospital consists of 4 X 350 BHP hot water boilers and 2 X 250BHP low water content steam boilers. The hot water distribution is handled through primary and secondary pumping with variable frequency drives on the pump motors.
Enhanced fire alarm and security systems were implemented to address a design challenges posed by the forensic psychiatric unit.
The project used a construction management procurement approach, with sequential tendering geared to achieve fast track completion. The methodology involved significant coordination and interaction between the consulting and construction teams.
SERVICES
Mechanical Engineering | Electrical Engineering | Vertical Transportation Design
PROJECT FEATURES
Size: 683,000 ft2 | Status: Completed 2004
LOCATION
Thunder Bay, Ontario
KEY SCOPE ELEMENTS
Greenfield hospital | Fast track completion | Full acute care departments, plus cancer centre, ambulatory care, and forensic mental health | Energy efficient design to reduce overall operations cost | Enhanced fire alarm & security systems
User-friendly spaces
The hospital has a 460 ft. long, 25 ft. wide “main street” that forms the backbone of the building. It is constructed with wooden columns and beams, opening the space to the outdoors with 35’ curtain wall.
Working with a tight schedule
Under a fast track completion, this fully functional state-of-the-art hospital was designed and constructed within a short five-year timeframe.
A 360˚ service provider
HH Angus delivered design engineering for Thunder Bay Regional Hospital’s main acute care building, its mental health centre, its cogeneration plant, and the Northwestern Ontario cancer centre on the same site.
Town of Aurora
Landfill Gas System
Landfills produce biogas, a combination of methane, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, typically with an energy content of approximately 500 BTU/ft3. Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment mandated that landfills of a certain size are required to collect and combust the biogas they produce.
It is an obvious benefit to be able to capture the renewable energy being collected from these landfills. HH Angus was retained to provide technical expertise in the development of a 1MW electricity-generating project at the closed Waste Management landfill site in Aurora.
As design engineer, HH Angus produced detailed mechanical and electrical plans for the installation. Additional responsibilities included: obtaining a parallel generation agreement with Aurora Hydro Connections Ltd. in order to feed electricity onto the grid; amending the site’s existing MOE Certificate of Approval; and working with the Town of Aurora for planning approval.
The power generation set was installed in July 2005 and was operating on landfill gas by late September, with final approval from Aurora Hydro to inject “green” power into the grid.
SERVICES
Mechanical Engineering | Electrical Engineering
PROJECT FEATURES
Status: Completed 2005
LOCATION
Aurora, Ontario
KEY SCOPE ELEMENTS
Produced detailed mechanical and electrical plans for installation | Procured parallel generation agreement with Aurora Hydro | MOE Certificate of Approval amended for the site | Worked with Town of Aurora to obtain planning approval
A decade of ‘green’ power
Based on age and size, the Aurora landfill had enough fuel to operate a 1MW generator for at least ten years.
Canary Wharf Contractors Ltd.
Barclays Bank Headquarters & Computer Centre
Barclays Bank was named as one of “the 30 most significant buildings constructed in the past 30 years” in 2008 by the respected ‘Building Services Journal’.
The Barclays Bank building was singled out for its robust design, which featured a high standard of sustainability and energy efficiency, rare attributes for a high technology building. It also earned the UK's "Breeam Excellent" rating, comparable to LEED® Gold.
The tower consists of a main operations facility, data centre and trading floor with 32 floors above grade, 1,000,000+ ft2 of computer centre, trading floor and high technology office space. HH Angus provided an overall electrical and mechanical design that ensures there are no single points of failure.
Mechanical services were designed to achieve high quality practical solutions for the high cooling loads, while ensuring flexibility for subtenants and office churn. The systems boast dual risers and split plant for the majority of services in order to provide continuity of service for maintenance or in the event of failure.
Electrically, the building has an extremely resilient service provision with dual incoming electrical supplies, 8 MVA of UPS power and 12 MVA of generator power available. The design included dual 11 kV service entrance, a dual 11kV APS systems (12MW), a 2(N+1) UPS topology (8x800kW). All electrical services were provided in a dual riser and split plant format, providing continuation of service under failure or maintenance.
SERVICES
Mechanical Engineering | Electrical Engineering | Communication Design | Vertical Transportation Consulting
PROJECT FEATURES
Size: 1,000,000 ft2 | Status: Completed 2004
LOCATION
London, England
KEY SCOPE ELEMENTS
32-storey tower | Mechanical services tailored for high cooling loads | Provided dual riser and split platforms for all electrical services | Breem Excellent / LEED® Gold
Energy conservation
The mechanical services embrace practical energy conservation measures, such as pre-heating fresh air intakes using condenser water heat rejection.
Toronto Transit Commission
Bayview Station – Sheppard Line
The Sheppard line is the TTC’s shortest subway line and opened in 2002. It is entirely underground, and has five stations on 5.5 km’s of track. The Bayview Station was designed for a 5-car train with a future platform roughed in for a 6-car train.
The above-grade buildings included the main entrance building, which incorporates an electrical substation, automatic entrance and secondary entrance with an under-street tunnel to the main concourse. The station was built as a cut and cover construction project.
The mechanical engineering design included tunnel ventilation, smoke venting fans, ventilation and air conditioning of service spaces, sanitary and storm drainage for washrooms and service areas, track drainage and fire protection systems.
The electrical scope included power distribution, lighting and communications systems. Design layouts were provided for power distribution of the subway station, as well as traction power for the trains. Lighting designs were provided for exterior public areas.
The communications systems included fire alarm protection, public address speakers, passenger intercom, TTC pax telephones, public telephones and security systems including closed circuit television.
SERVICES
Mechanical Engineering | Electrical Engineering | Communications | Security Design
PROJECT FEATURES
Status: Completed 2000
LOCATION
Toronto, Ontario
KEY SCOPE ELEMENTS
Tunnel and smoke ventilation | Air conditioning | Sanitary and storm drainage, track drainage and fire protection system | Communication system design included TTC pax telephones, public telephones and security systems, including closed-circuit television
Ensuring team coordination
Close coordination with the architectural, structural and other consultants was needed, in order to integrate the various mechanical and electrical systems into the station structure. Services were extensively embedded.
Collaborating for successful delivery
Engaging the key stakeholders from the client’s design and operations teams, the design team and project management team was instrumental to successful design implementation. Our design was highly detailed, to ensure the installation contractors could both bid the project with confidence and construct it successfully.
Hydro One
Grid Control Centre
Hydro One’s world-leading Grid Operations Centre involved construction of a greenfield building housing an Integrated Transmission Operations Centre as part of the distribution network.
The highly secure critical facility required special design features to enable it to be fully functional under any circumstances, including a post-disaster situation, and incorporated highly reliable and maintainable electrical and mechanical systems.
The main control room was fully hardened against both natural and man-made disasters, and capable of long term independent 7/24 operation . It was constructed to have a high quality environment with “very quiet” dual redundant air conditioning systems with static electricity and humidity control, dual UPS power supplies to each control desk and projection screen, and high quality glare-free controllable lighting sources, with all systems capable of long term independent post-disaster operation.
Other aspects of the project included:
- High quality security, CCTV, and access control
- Dual redundant UPS system with hot transfer capability and maintenance bypass features
- Redundant diesel generators including dedicated fuel storage and pumping system, with the capability of connecting an additional portable unit
- Redundant 44 kV utility supplies originating from transformer stations with automatic change over and dual step down transformers and secondary 600V Switchboards
- Redundant mechanical support systems, with mechanical systems fully enclosed by the building structure
SERVICES
Prime Consultant | Mechanical Engineering | Electrical Engineering
PROJECT FEATURES
Status: Completed 2003
KEY SCOPE ELEMENTS
Special design features incorporated into highly secure facility in order to be fully functional in any situation | Main control room fully hardened against both natural and man-made disasters | Dual redundant mechanical and electrical systems
— Images courtesy of Hydro One