After more than a century in business, PCL has cultivated in-house experts and construction specialists in a broad range of fields to ensure project success. That includes in-house experts who validate the work of client consultants, apply their subject matter expertise to optimize design and constructability, mitigate risk, enhance schedule and drive measurable value to clients. All of this enables PCL to deliver a client-focused approach that focuses on what is best for the project.

While much of this work is best done during preconstruction, PCL also has specialists who can be called in at any time over the project lifecycle when their specific expertise can make an important improvement to the project’s execution.

Below are just three examples of the kind of expertise that PCL offers clients, saving them time and money. 

PCL’s director of elevating services, Cliff Ayling, recently got involved in a project that involved the ambitious heritage redevelopment of a 70-year-old building and added two new 20-storey office towers on either side.

Planning for elevators and escalators was especially challenging because the building is subject to a municipal “view cone” bylaw which seeks to protect certain sightlines in the city by limiting building heights.

The initial plan was for more than 20 elevators to be “side-mounted,” meaning the drive equipment is off to the side of the elevator rather than directly above the shaft. Suspension cables must be guided from the drive equipment, across the machine room and down to the elevator car and counterweight.

“That creates a lot of reverse bending of the elevator ropes, which has a substantial negative impact on their lifespan,” Ayling says.

Working with the project team during preconstruction, Ayling redesigned the system and used an off-set design only where necessary. “We ended up with just seven or eight off-set cars,” says Ayling. “The capital cost was less, and the operating cost is much less — those are savings for the owner as long as the building is up and running.”

Ayling also got involved in the tendering process. The project team split the contract in two to ensure the best pricing for both the elevators and the escalators.

They also worked with the successful bidder to install two destination dispatch elevator groups. Destination dispatch allows the system to pool people who are going to floors in proximity and assign them to a specific elevator cab. It is an efficient system in an office building where you have the same people going in and out regularly, as it reduces the number of elevators required.

All told, Ayling estimates that the changes to the project saved the client more than $6 million in the budget for elevating devices alone. 

Every construction project requires temporary structures — things like cranes, shoring, formwork and work platforms. When PCL projects require subject matter expertise for such structures, one avenue teams can turn to is PCL’s Construction Engineering group. Led by Warren Tutton, senior manager, construction engineering in PCL’s North American headquarters, the group provides temporary structures engineering services across North America. The group frequently unlocks time- and money-saving options that also ensure safety and compliance with regulatory and client requirements.

The Construction Engineering team got involved in the same heritage redevelopment project, making two significant contributions. First, the team provided valuable insight to site managers about the best place to position the tower cranes. For building refurbishments, the usual option is to have the tower crane at street level, adjacent to the structure. But that can have drawbacks, namely:

• The crane needs to be taller and heavier, requiring more support infrastructure.
• The lifting capacity and range are reduced because the crane is at the edge of the project.
• The crane may need to be tied into the existing building for lateral support, requiring additional equipment and building reinforcement, as well as requiring holes in the building’s envelope that cannot be closed off until the crane is removed.
• Cranes occupy street-level areas, reducing available space for material handling and storage, creating narrower pedestrian and vehicle access, and reducing clearance to property lines.

The Construction Engineering team reviewed the existing building’s structural integrity with the engineer of record at various stages of demolition and rehabilitation, and determined that the tower cranes could safely be placed on the roof. That allowed them to stand taller without tie-ins and to have greater reach and capacity, and enabled them to assist with demobilization of adjacent tower cranes.

“The Construction Engineering team provided advantages that directly increased the efficiency of the construction process and reduced the cost,” Tutton says. 

Second, the team took a closer look at the consulting engineer’s reshoring plan for the towers. Reshoring is the process of placing additional supports to distribute the load of the floors under construction onto the floors below. The challenge is that temporary supports take up space, preventing crews from performing finishing work until those supports are removed.

By challenging assumptions and analyzing the plan, the Construction Engineering team was able to safely reduce the amount of reshoring by approximately 30%, bringing the finishing work closer to the reshoring operation, saving time and money.

One final example of PCL’s experts bringing value to a project involved the LEED certification of a new light rail transit (LRT) system. This was a joint venture project with a vision to install a 115,000-square-foot operation, maintenance and storage facility for electrically powered LRT cars.

The project’s LEED Certification was at risk because of “project boundary” rules that determine how much power is consumed by the building.

When the LEED project boundary was initially defined, it included a high-voltage feed for transportation power to the LRT cars. That system draws significantly more power than the storage facility itself, and including it made the facility appear to be a poor environmental performer. With this large power consumption added to the facility load, Green Building Certification Inc. (GBCI), was not prepared to certify.

In addition to putting the client’s LEED aspirations in peril, it also introduced the specter of a $2 million penalty. “It was an ironic result considering the LRT cars were going to replace diesel buses,” says Stephen Montgomery, a mechanical engineer and sustainability specialist with PCL.  “If we did not challenge and seek to correct this, we would have been sending a signal that diesel buses are better than LRT!”

To meet the challenge, Montgomery gathered the team together to develop a response to the rules. They reaffirmed energy modeling principles and organized a meeting with GBCI.

Armed with energy modeling calculations that demonstrated LEED’s project boundaries should not apply to the LRT’s energy system, the team was able to show that the rules created inconsistencies.

“Through context, experience and relationships, we were able to bring enough evidence and point out to the certifiers that it wasn’t reasonable,” Montgomery says. After review, the GBCI accepted PCL’s submission and was persuaded to recognize the project accordingly. The project got back on track and avoided the costly penalty.

Montgomery says there’s one piece of advice he shares with any project team seeking a certification. “Certifications can be as detailed as a building code, and the language can be just as specific,” he says. “You need to get certification-related considerations into budget, schedule and logistical plans as early as possible.”

Ayling, Tutton and Montgomery are just three of dozens of PCL’s in-house experts who project teams can call on to help find cost, schedule and quality improvements for clients. Stay tuned for subsequent Insights stories showcasing the value of PCL’s subject matter experts.