INNOVATION May-June 2013

2013 ACEC BC Awards for Engineering Excellence

The Awards for Engineering Excellence celebrate outstanding achievement in BC’s consulting engineering industry. This year, the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies British Columbia recognized the following projects for innovation and technical excellence in five award categories.

Award of Merit Harvest Energy Garden

Buildings Award of Excellence UBC Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences

highlights China’s natural beauty. Using Canadian wood, the Fast + Epp team developed 39 solid-laminated wood roof panels to be fabricated on site using ordinary lumber. Concurrently, 93 glue- laminated wood columns of varying length were individually milled and fitted with custom universal connectors, and shipped to China. Thanks to extensive prefabrication and planning, western designers were able to achieve innovative vision executed in detail with sophisticated design and building materials unfamiliar to local construction partners in just eight months. Municipal Award of Excellence Bridgeview Sewer System

Consultant: Opus DaytonKnight Consultants | Owner/Client: Harvest Power The Harvest Energy Garden, in Richmond, BC, uses an innovative high- solids anaerobic digestion technology to process solid organic waste material into biogas and high quality compost. Opus DaytonKnight worked with GICON and Harvest Power to deliver the project through design, construction and commissioning. At design capacity, the facility will process approximately 30,000 tonnes of mixed food and yard waste annually, and will generate over 8.0 million KWh of renewable, GHG neutral, electrical energy for sale to BC Hydro. It will also contribute to reduced emissions of approximately 23,000 tonnes of CO 2 .

Consultant: Glotman Simpson Consulting Engineers | Owner/Client: UBC Properties Trust The UBC Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences building combines four structurally distinct buildings into a single complex. The design required a structural solution that combined individual elements, making them behave together as a single entity seismically. Glotman-Simpson integrated the building’s structural elements through the use of thin-link slabs. These slabs were integrated into the overall design, and transfer loads throughout the structure. Building information modeling (BIM) was incorporated into this project, with completion in under 34 months. Opened in September 2012, the building is pursuing LEED® Gold certification. Award of Merit Tsingtao Pearl Visitor Centre

AECOMCanada Ltd. | Owner/Client: City of Surrey

Transportation Award of Excellence South Fraser Perimeter Road - Eastern Section

Surrey’s Bridgeview was home to some of the poorest soil conditions in the Lower Mainland and an existing vacuum sewer system plagued with low reliability. In order to minimize costs and the number of pump stations that a conventional sewer system would require, AECOM developed an innovative replacement strategy that combined conventional sewer installation with GPS-based trenchless technology in a manner that had never been used for municipal sewer servicing in BC. AECOM’s solution resulted in a highly reliable sewer service that saves the city $1 million per year.

Consultant: Fast + Epp Structural Engineers | Owner: China Vanke Co. | Client: StructureCraft Builders and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson Architects Welcoming visitors to Qingdao, the 28,000 sq. ft. Tsingtao Pearl Visitor Centre

Consultant: Stantec Consulting with exp services | Owner: BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure | Concessionaire: Fraser Transportation Group Partnership | Client: FTG Constructors

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