The Canada Green Building Council has awarded LEED Gold certification to the Capital Regional District’s (CRD) McLoughlin Point Wastewater Treatment Plant’s Operations and Maintenance (O&M) building in Victoria, British Columbia. The O&M building is just one component of the CAD$775 million wastewater program undertaken by the CRD.
The wastewater treatment plant and associated O&M facility was built by Harbour Resource Partners, a consortium of Graham, AECOM and HDR. Graham and AECOM formed a design-build partnership leveraging Graham’s well-established construction capability and AECOM’s wastewater design expertise and environmental specialist abilities. HDR was the architecture design lead, providing full architectural services, including an initial iterative design and site selection process.
Promoting sustainability and energy efficiency was a critical consideration to the design planning, architecture, building engineering, and program construction management of the wastewater treatment program. The team examined CRD’s goals, project site context, and sustainability targets at the outset to deliver an integrated plan and building process, leveraging the strength of the team’s technical excellence in designing and constructing many large-scale, multi-phase water projects.
“Wastewater treatment plant projects always present complex environmental construction challenges. The CRD project was an extreme example of this with the site being contaminated from its previous use and the location prominent on a rocky headland in Victoria’s outer harbour.” said Ian Dickinson, Graham’s Executive Vice President, Water. “Our team was able to address these challenges because Graham, AECOM and HDR worked as a fully integrated design-build team to create solutions that were cost effective and constructible. We are proud the project is recognized a LEED Gold certified.”
“AECOM is committed to making a positive impact to the communities we serve. Achieving LEED Gold certification is a testament to our team’s mission of providing transformative green and resilient infrastructure,” said Marc Devlin, AECOM Canada’s Executive Vice President. “We are grateful to the CRD and our project partners, including Graham Construction and HDR, in receiving this formal recognition from the Canada Green Building Council.”
Situated at a critically important location in Victoria, the McLoughlin Point Wastewater Treatment Plant was designed to minimize visual impacts from the water with mature landscaping and an observation deck. Special features of the facility include an education and interpretive area to engage the community with the plant’s water cycle, local natural environment, and importance of stormwater management and a green roof that helps maintain onsite animal habitats and aids stormwater management. In addition, the building’s relatively small footprint incorporates heat recovery from within the facility, with opportunity to extend these energy resources into the surrounding neighbourhood in the future. The facility also includes electric vehicle charging stations, low consumption plumbing and lighting fixtures, and enhanced energy monitoring. Advanced construction and commissioning techniques were also employed to reduce pollutions and waste as well as improve indoor air quality.
“Critical to the success of the CRD Wastewater Plant was the collaborative teamwork between all the players including the design-build team, the CRD and the Township of Esquimalt. The complex challenges of the site, program, zoning and environmental restrictions brought out the most creative solutions from the team, resulting in a visually striking, energy efficient, state of the art facility that will serve many future generations, said Jim Mann, HDR’s Senior Project Architect. “We are proud to have been the architectural lead on this significant LEED Gold certified project.”
About Graham
Graham is an employee-owned construction solutions partner with revenues exceeding $2.8 billion annually. With over nine decades of experience, Graham provides general contracting, design-build, integrated project delivery, construction management, public-private partnerships and development services in the buildings, industrial, infrastructure and project finance sectors. Graham has offices throughout North America and employs over 1,900 passionate professionals focused on delivering lasting value. Graham has the resources, capacity and expertise to undertake projects of every scope, scale and complexity. Visit us at grahambuilds.com to discover how we’re building for a better tomorrow.
About AECOM
AECOM is the world’s trusted infrastructure consulting firm, delivering professional services throughout the project lifecycle – from planning, design and engineering to program and construction management. On projects spanning transportation, buildings, water, new energy and the environment, our public- and private-sector clients trust us to solve their most complex challenges. Our teams are driven by a common purpose to deliver a better world through our unrivaled technical expertise and innovation, a culture of equity, diversity and inclusion, and a commitment to environmental, social and governance priorities. AECOM is a Fortune 500 firm and its Professional Services business had revenue of $13.2 billion in fiscal year 2020. See how we are delivering sustainable legacies for generations to come at aecom.com and @AECOM.
About HDR
We believe that the way we work can add meaning and value to the world. That ideas inspire positive change. That coloring outside the lines can illuminate fresh perspectives. And that small details yield important realizations. Above all, we believe that collaboration is the best way forward. We specialize in engineering, architecture, environmental and construction services. While we are most well-known for adding beauty and structure to communities through high-performance buildings and smart infrastructure, we provide much more than that. We create an unshakable foundation for progress because our multidisciplinary teams also include scientists, economists, builders, analysts and artists. Our employees, working in more than 200 locations around the world, push open the doors to what’s possible each and every day.
