Page 196 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

172 GETTING STARTED—PREDESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

3 Design a building with signature architecture that would serve the company’s busi-
ness needs for the next 50 years.
4 Help to revitalize downtown Winnipeg with a major corporate investment, by
ensuring that the building design is open to the public and helps to create street life
in the downtown area.
5 Make financial sense, so that it wouldn’t have a large impact on electric rates.

Goldsborough and Manitoba Hydro’s inside project team had one hidden
strength: they really understood project management, because that’s most of what
they do at the company; build and operate large energy production and distribution
facilities. So the prospect of managing a $270 million project was not that intimi-
dating. To get started, the team hired an architectural consultant and visited 10 high-
performance buildings in the United States and western Europe. After interviewing
eight leading international architects, the Hydro team settled on KPMB, based on its
body of work, experience with the Integrated Design Process and demonstrated
commitment to sustainable design. (The architect of record is Smith Carter
Architects of Toronto and Winnipeg.) Somewhat unique to this project is that all
consultant contracts are with the owner, not the architect; the owner’s goal was to be
able to select the key individuals who would work on the project and to “incentivize
right behavior.” The project chose Poole Construction as the builder and Hanscomb
as the Quantity Surveyor.
The project team held several multiday charrettes to tease out a project vision, delve
into design issues and specifically to focus on obtaining a high level of energy effi-
ciency in the building. The team hired an outside charrette facilitator and an energy
expert. In the owner’s view, this project had no important compromises: all of the
original design goals are being met, and Goldsborough feels that the project could
receive a LEED Gold rating, perhaps even Platinum, when all documentation is done.
(As of May 2008, the project was close to the Platinum goal, according to the design
team.) The delivery method was about 60 percent to 70 percent design/assist, and the
owner thinks they might have even put too little focus on using the contractors to com-
plete the design concepts. There is a postoccupancy evaluation process in place, and
also a $1 million bonus to the design team if the project meets its stated energy per-
formance goals.
KPMB’s design work had a strong focus on Hydro’s workforce and on creating a
flexible building that could handle changing staffing needs and changing workplace
habits over the next 50 years. The architect wanted to strongly link performance to
aesthetics. Every design option was evaluated with three questions:

1 How does it work?
2 Does it work well?
3 How does it look and feel?
The climate engineer, Transsolar, made an early decision to decouple the ventilation
system from the space conditioning system and to use the three, six-story atria in the
building as a strong part of the fresh air and temperature regulation system. A system