June 24, 2010

Alberta School Alternative Procurement project benefitted from early documentation

JEAN SORENSEN

correspondent

VANCOUVER

An Alberta construction team recently outlined how they designed, commissioned and built 18 LEED schools in Alberta, on a P3 contract, with a month to spare inside a 20-month timeline.

The team was speaking at the Canada Green Building Council’s (CaGBC) national conference in Vancouver.

“These 18 schools were all delivered at the same time. If you have done one school, you know how much documentation there is. We did it 18 times,” said Calgary architect Louis Aussant, a LEED accredited professional (AP) and a consortium member on the project.

The P3 project was the first of its kind in Alberta for social infrastructure and became known as the Alberta School Alternative Procurement (ASAP 1) project. Alberta has since awarded another 10 schools (ASAP II) to the consortium. The first project was awarded to BBPP Albert Schools Limited to design, build, finance and maintain 18 schools in both Edmonton and Calgary.

There were three main types of schools, a two-storey version and two styles of one-storey structures.

“There was a financial penalty, if we did not meet LEED Silver specifications,” said Aussant, who presented at the conference with Andrew Bond, LEED AP, and LEED consultant for Graham Construction & Engineering for the Graham-Bird construction portion of the consortium, as well as Calgary architect Bob Stirling, LEED AP.

Bond said that in order to ensure accurate LEED documentation, they designed easy-to-use and understand documents for subcontractors and suppliers.

They also trained individuals, who worked with suppliers and support people, to assist them in obtaining the right information.

All documents were inspected to ensure they met the requirements and that there were no oversights.

The structures also had to be flexible to serve what would be changing demographics.

The buildings also have to be maintained over a 30-year period.

Aussant said the winning team established the parameters for the delivery of the schools and full project design.

There were areas where priority could be given to obtaining LEED points that provided the biggest bang for the buck. They were established by team members, who met in Red Deer. For the most cost-effective LEED points, the team looked at a number of key factors and relied on past experiences, combined with the financial constraints, in achieving the 33 plus points.

“Costs pushed down what you could do, while LEED pushed up costs,” he said. “It was a constant struggle to find a happy medium.”

The repetition of doing 18 schools provided areas, where trades would implement systems, although work had to be staggered.

Stirling outlined one of the key factors in delivery. The core school areas were the nucleus of a permanent structure, while modular classroom units were positioned around the core.

Stirling said one lesson learned was that specifications had to be accurate.

“If you have one or two things that go wrong with one unit – you can fix it,” he said,

“But, when you have this many (in different areas), problems spread like a virus through the whole project. Luckily, that didn’t happen to us.”

Bond added that LEED should be integral to all design, not simply a specification. By working with the quantity of units they did, there is a greater ability to meet higher environmental standards, he said.

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