Co-operators' new Guelph Headquarters building was recently honoured with a 2025 Toronto Section Award from the Illuminating Engineering Society. 

These awards recognize professionalism, ingenuity and originality in lighting design. Congratulations to our Lighting Design and Commercial teams, The Co-operators, and other members of the design team, including HOK, NEO Architecture, and Ecovert.

The lighting design was honoured for its success in enhancing the building's materials, function, and structure. An element of the client’s Net Zero strategy, it also infuses the building with natural daylight, maximizing energy use, and reinforcing the firm’s commitment to sustainability, for example by employing all-LED lighting and intelligent controls.

The all-electric project has been certified a ‘Zero Carbon Building – Design Standard’ by the CaGBC and is pursuing Net Zero Performance. It has also achieved LEED Gold and WELL Platinum certifications, and is targeting BOMA Best certification. 

HH Angus’ scope of work also included mechanical and electrical engineering, and IMIT consulting. To learn more about the project, click on the link below:
https://hhangus.com/projects/the-co-operators-headquarters-in-guelph/

To view other projects featuring the work of our Lighting Design team, click here:
https://hhangus.com/projects/?_service=lighting-design

 
 

Our Digital Services team was well represented at the recent AWS Summit Toronto 2025 event.

This year’s event focused on two groups – Day 1 was dedicated to AWS partners like HH Angus' certified specialists, and Day 2 welcomed the entire AWS community.

Augusto Valdivia, our AWS DevOps Specialist, who has also presented at previous AWS Summits, took in the full event. Augusto is an AWS SysOps Administrator Associate, AWS Certified Developer Associate, AWS Professional Solutions Architect, and AWS Big Data Specialist. He has attended numerous AWS Summits in Canada and abroad, and took a few moments to share his impressions of the Toronto event. 

Augusto:
Both days were packed with learning, inspiration, and future-looking announcements. But more than anything, they were a chance to connect — with my team, with peers, and with the wider AWS community.

Day 1 – Partner Summit Highlights

Day One was all about partners and the deep dive into AWS’s latest portfolio. Topics included:

  • The Anatomy of Speed
  • Industry Solutions & Security
  • Generative AI and Migration/Modernization
  • AWS Marketplace evolution

The biggest spotlight was on Agentic AI. AWS introduced a portfolio that connects tools like Amazon Q, AWS Transform, Amazon Connect, Nova models, and Bedrock, all tied together with new SDKs and services to build intelligent agents.

Key themes:

  • Flexibility with OSS and partner integrations
  • Customization guardrails to build responsibly
  • Vertical solutions for industries like SAP, Oracle, and mainframes
  • AWS Transform as the first agentic AI service for migration and modernization, with impressive results like faster documentation assessment and reduced licensing costs

Day 2 – Open Summit Themes

The second day zoomed out into the future of cloud. The evolution was clear:

  • From Generative AI assistantsGenerative AI agents → to Agentic AI systems
  • Less human oversight, more automation, and multi-agent systems capable of reasoning like humans

This shift toward agentic AI signals the next chapter in cloud — where workloads don’t just run in AWS, but make decisions, automate workflows, and adapt in real time.

Team Insights

What made this Summit even better was discussing takeaways with my HH Angus team:

Aaron St. Germain shared:

“The sessions on serverless development, real-time data analytics, and workload optimization gave us clear best practices for Lambdas and streaming data pipelines. We even had hands-on activities and games that made the learning fun!”

 

Paul Vandenberk highlighted:

“There’s a growing reliance on AI to handle the huge amounts of IoT data. A unified name space is critical for data purity, making sure analytics today and AI tomorrow actually deliver value.”

 

Veerpal Kaur mentioned:

“The keynote was inspiring, and the hands-on Lambda workshop gave me a deeper view of serverless. I also attended sessions on analytics and Agentic serverless chatbots — it felt like a glimpse into the future of intelligent applications.”

 

Gary Chang summarized:

“GenAI was everywhere. The key is learning how to integrate it with our existing datasets, especially in digital twin solutions for the AEC industry. We can borrow lessons from industries that are already ahead in AI maturity.”

 

Community and Connections

One of the most rewarding moments came at the end of the Summit: meeting leaders from the AWS community, reconnecting with peers from the AWS Community Builders program, and sharing a dinner where we talked about the next big thing we want to organize together.

Moments like these remind me that AWS isn’t just about technology. It’s about people, collaboration, and building a stronger community together.

The AWS Summit Toronto 2025 showed us where cloud is heading: faster, smarter, and more agentic than ever before.

I’d love to hear from others who attended: What were your top takeaways?
And if you couldn’t make it this year, follow me on LinkedIn for more AWS, DevOps, and Terraform reflections — I’ll keep sharing the lessons and the community spirit!

 
 
 
Augusto Valdivia

AWS DevOps Specialist
Digital Services

 
 
 
Genevieve Rochette
 

We’re delighted to announce that Geneviève Rochette has joined HH Angus as Regional Leader of our Montreal office. 


The addition of Geneviève to our national leadership team further strengthens our operational management, as well as our commitment to grow in Quebec.

“We’re excited to welcome Geneviève to HH Angus. Her leadership skills, solid engineering experience, and long-standing industry relationships will be critical to growing our presence in Quebec, and her specialized expertise in the built environment will be of great benefit to our clients in achieving their goals.”
                                                                                                                Paul Keenan, President

In this new role, Geneviève will be drawing on 25 years of experience in the consulting engineering industry across a range of sectors. Prior to joining our team, she built her entire career at Stantec, starting as a co-op student and steadily advancing through senior roles, culminating in her most recent position as Principal – Buildings.

Geneviève’s portfolio includes commercial buildings, financial institutions, major retail outlets, pharmaceutical manufacturing, automated warehousing, and light industrial facilities, as well as many projects in long term care (LTC) and seniors housing, a rapidly expanding sector across the country.

As Regional Leader, Geneviève oversees a team of 25 professionals in our Montreal office servicing multiple industry sectors in Quebec and across the country, including healthcare, commercial office and tenant fitouts, mission critical facilities, aviation, education, and more. HH Angus’ Montreal office was formally established in 2011 with the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) as our primary project for which we were awarded the Schreyer Award – Canada’s highest engineering award – for our innovative engineering solutions.  Current and recent work include the new net zero Montreal Saint-Hubert airport terminal, Novartis Canada’s head office fitout, a state-of-the-art data centre for a confidential client, and ongoing upgrades at the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM).

Congratulations Geneviève and welcome to our team!

Connect with Geneviève to discuss your next project:
genevieve.rochette@hhangus.com
T: 514.600.1360 | 877.549.7521 (toll-free)

 
Anthony HO
 

Anthony Ho has been chosen by Canadian Consulting Engineer as one of 2025’s ‘Top 10 Under 40’, as CCE celebrates Canada’s next generation of consulting engineering leaders!

As an Associate Director, Principal and Mechanical Engineer, Anthony has long been recognized at HH Angus for his engineering skill, leadership, commitment to mentoring, and dedication to growing our commissioning team and scope of work. We are delighted that he is now being honoured in the industry as well.

Laying the groundwork

Anthony and his family came to Canada from Hong Kong in 1994. He learned the value of hard work from his parents; it was their example that led Anthony to pursue engineering and shaped his worldview that opportunity is a privilege not available to all, no matter how deserving.

Those lessons remain top of mind as Anthony takes on the opportunities ahead, sharing strategies for growth with those around him and coaching them to succeed. This approach is part of what makes Anthony an effective team leader - not only is he a technical expert in his field, but his management and support in the growth of an entire team of junior engineers has been exceptional. 

Anthony joined HH Angus after graduating with Honours at the top of his class in mechanical engineering at the University of Waterloo, and has impressed at every stage of his career.

Commissioning specialization

Early in his career development, Anthony expressed an interest in learning how to commission buildings - a complicated, multi-step process of detailed inspection that ensures all building systems and equipment are functioning properly before the final handover of a facility to its occupants. Commissioning is a unique specialty service that requires both deep technical knowledge and a nuanced approach. Not only does it involve the development of highly sophisticated test scripts, but also managing the sometimes challenging relationships between stakeholders, including owners, contractors and consultants.

Anthony embraced the opportunity to master the new specialization and eventually became a Certified Commissioning Professional (CPP). He worked closely with his manager to grow our commissioning services by expanding the functionality of in-house tools and consistently bringing in projects under budget while maintaining a high quality of work. These successful results were recognized by a growing roster of repeat clients, and helped the division to build the business case for increased hiring to support the pursuit of larger and more complex commissioning projects. Anthony is now responsible for the firm’s Commissioning business development, training and leadership

The importance of mentorship

Over the course of his 13+ years at HH Angus, Anthony has seen his focus on solving engineering problems expand to include mentoring staff and taking an active role in their career planning.

He transitioned seamlessly into the role of Manager, heading a team with multiple mechanical engineering leads, mentoring junior/intermediate employees, directing engineering design and commissioning assignments for key mission critical clients, managing employee performance, and maintaining excellent client relationships. Anthony currently oversees a large team in alignment with his transition into the Associate Director role. His instinct to lift up those around him has contributed to the career growth of many young engineers at the firm

Some of Anthony’s significant contributions at HH Angus include:

  • Solving engineering challenges on greenfield and retrofit projects for high resiliency data centres
  • Development of process flows for inhouse BIM design
  • Design for high containment labs (CL3) and vivarium
  • Management of staff across Canada to deliver projects internationally.

Recently, Anthony served as the discipline lead for an important project representing over one million square feet of greenfield data centres in Canada. He is working with an international team of consultants and client stakeholders at the ground level to deliver this complex project where he is responsible for multiple scopes of work. Anthony’s colleagues know him to be extremely hard-working, approachable, and a leader with exceptional technical knowledge that he generously shares.

Congratulations, Anthony – you are a very deserving recipient of CCE’s ‘Top 10 Under 40’ honour!

Click here for CCE Magazine article - see Page 9

 

HH Angus est fière d'avoir une fois de plus été reconnue parmi les sociétés les mieux gérées au Canada en tant que member Or.

C’est la septième année consécutive que nous sommes reconnus parmi les sociétés les mieux gérées au Canada, grâce à nos performances constantes et notre vision à long terme.

Le programme des sociétés les mieux gérées au Canada (CBMC) est l’un des principaux programmes de distinction des entreprises du pays, qui reconnaît les entreprises novatrices et de classe mondiale. Célébrant plus de 30 ans d’existence, le programme CBMC reconnaît l’excellence des performances d’ensemble et de la croissance des meilleures entreprises canadiennes, dont le chiffre d’affaires est égal ou supérieur à 50 millions de dollars.

« Les lauréats des sociétés les mieux gérées de 2025 illustrent les normes canadiennes les plus élevées en matière d’innovation, d’adaptabilité et de leadership audacieux, » a déclaré Derrick Dempster, associé, Deloitte Sociétés privées, et co-responsable du programme des sociétés les mieux gérées au Canada. « Leur ambition inébranlable, leur détermination et leur agilité stratégique leur ont permis de rester compétitives sur la scène internationale, créant ainsi une croissance économique durable dans un marché mondial en constante évolution. »

Pour obtenir cette distinction, les entreprises sont évaluées sur leur leadership en matière de stratégie, de culture et d’engagement, leurs capacités et leur innovation, leur gouvernance et leurs performances financières. Paul Keenan, président de HH Angus, a commenté la distinction reçue aujourd’hui : « Être nommée l’une des sociétés les mieux gérées reconnaît la valeur de notre gestion rigoureuse des opérations quotidiennes, de notre planification minutieuse à court et à long terme de l’avenir de l’entreprise, ainsi que notre capacité à identifier les occasions de croissance dans des secteurs, des services ou des régions géographiques. Nous sommes très honorés et très heureux d’être à nouveau reconnus par le programme des sociétés les mieux gérées. »

HH Angus jouit également d’une solide culture d’entreprise qui valorise et célèbre l’innovation, l’excellence technique et le dévouement au service de la clientèle. Notre équipe, composée d’environ 450 professionnels répartis dans nos bureaux de Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa et Montréal, se consacre entièrement à la réalisation d’une vaste gamme de projets fructueux au Canada et à l’échelle internationale afin d’aider nos clients à atteindre leurs objectifs. Ils partagent l’intérêt croissant de l’entreprise pour la décarbonisation de l’environnement bâti au profit de l’environnement et fournissent une large gamme de services pour soutenir le développement de villes intelligentes et durables. Le fait de remporter la distinction des sociétés les mieux gérées année après année témoigne de leur engagement et de leur loyauté, ainsi que du rôle essentiel qu’ils jouent dans le succès de HH Angus. 

Nous reconnaissons également que la distinction du prix des sociétés les mieux gérées ne serait pas possible sans la confiance et la fidélité de nos précieux clients. Nous apprécions le rôle important qu’ils jouent dans le succès de HH Angus.

L’année 2025 marque la 106année d’activité de HH Angus. Le fait que l’entreprise soit prospère et mérite cette distinction après plus d’un siècle d’activité témoigne d’une tradition de leadership ingénieux, résilient et innovant. Forts de plus d’un siècle de succès, nous continuons à renforcer l’entreprise afin de relever les défis et saisir les opportunités de demain.