July 8, 2009

An aerial shot shows early progress on the community centre, as well as some adjacent projects in Coquitlam by TASK Construction Management.

Municipal Infrastructure

Project management firm focuses on TASK at hand in Coquitlam, British Columbia

Brian Martin

correspondent

How do you keep a busy community arena fully operational while rebuilding it? That is the greatest challenge, among many, that TASK Construction Management of Burnaby has been dealing with on an on-going project in Coquitlam.

The company is involved in a $62.4 million remake of the Coquitlam Sports Centre.

Among other things, it will bring a cluster of buildings, identified by Sandwell Engineering as the worst five buildings in Coquitlam from a seismic point of view, up to current standards.

John Hiebert, president of TASK, pointed out the original centre was constructed in 1962, shortly before seismic standards were even included in the building code.

The project involves constructing two new arenas, upgrading an existing arena and demolishing an existing arena annex and curling facility. One of the new arenas will be used for curling.

The project also involves construction of new amenities including public washrooms, concessions and service areas.

A new entrance and space for a sports hall of fame are included in the refurbished centre.

Site work including landscaping and parking are also part of TASK’s contract. The project was designed by CEI Architecture Planning Interiors.

TASK won the job through a competitive process, while handling several other jobs immediately adjacent to the sports centre.

One project was a municipal pool, which is now part of the sports complex.

TASK also completed an upgrade to the municipal library next door.

In the sports complex, the biggest trick is to ensure there are always two arenas in operation.

Currently there are a pair of arenas.

One will be maintained and the second, the arena annex, will be demolished when the two new arenas are finished.

The community is heavily dedicated to sports –hockey and curling in the winter, along with lacrosse in the spring and summer.

Therefore, maintaining the existing arena has meant finding a way to bring the roof up to seismic standards, while the building is still in use.

Working with an array of advisors, Hiebert and TASK’s co-owner and operations manager, John Bowser, studied a plethora of options, but each of them with its own problems and drawbacks.

Primarily the problem is that they involved closing the arena for almost a year and added something in the neighbourhood of $1.5 million to the cost of the project.

Finally, however they settled on an innovative approach from Europe that has never before been used in North America.

It literally involves thinking outside the box.

TASK isn’t shoring up the existing Glulam beams by working on the inside of the arena.

Instead, they have gone outside onto the roof and cut slots above the existing beams.

They are dropping Parallam beams into those slots and connecting them to the existing Glulam beams on the underside of the roof, with specialized four-foot-long engineered screws from Germany.

The Parallam beams are quite obvious and have been incorporated as an architectural feature of the complex.

Another innovation involves the heating system.

IMEC Mechanical is the design-build contractor for all mechanical systems on the project and are working with a system called Thermenex.

This is a new system that will see the complex take advantage of the heat produced from the ice-making equipment in the arenas and the water-heating equipment in the pool to warm the entire complex.

It is already being used to heat the library.

Preliminary energy modeling is projecting a 30 per cent saving on energy costs.

Currently, said Hiebert, the sports complex is well within budget and ahead of schedule.

The complex is being built to LEED Silver certification levels.

However, in a decision that is becoming more and more common in the industry, Coquitlam, doesn’t plan to apply for LEED certification, as obtaining it can be very expensive.

LEED Light or LEED Shadow are being heard more and more, and could be used to describe this project.

“When you go greener you can have an economic payback,” said Hiebert. “But, if you go for the greenest, you are doing it for reasons beyond economics.”

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