The Ontario Construction Report – March 2011 – PAGE OCR 7
New building a welcome addition to Loyalist College
JENNIFER YOUNG – The OCR Construction Report Special Feature
The new Sustainable Skills, Technology and Life Sciences Centre at Loyalist Col- lege provides updated facilities for the multi-modal transportation technologies, biotechnology and architectural technology programs for hundreds of students in the Belleville area.
“The skills centre will be housing some of the premiere programs, really, for skills training,” said Edina Cappuccitti, college advancement and external relations officer. The $16.6 million building nearing completion has been built by Bell Con- struction, with financial support from both the federal and provincial governments. Loyalist secured funding through the Fed- eral Knowledge Infrastructure program and provincially in Ontario’s 2009 budget. Each government contributed $8.3 million. The college’s four other buildings will be also be revamped and linked to the new building.
This expansion has been “in the col-
lege’s plans for a number of years,” said Kirk Fleming, Loyalist College’s director of facility services. “I certainly believe we got what we expected and what will meet our needs.” The new 110,000 sq. ft. building has achieved LEED Silver certification, appro- priate since a LEED building technology training program will be offered in the building.
The college sought an environmentally- friendly building from the beginning and Ball Construction Ltd. based in Kitchener gave them just what they wanted. “I think it’s turned out really well. Everything’s been on-time,” said Brent Cochrane of Ball Construction’s estimating department.
“The real difficulty was not going over budget to obtain the LEED Silver certifi- cation,” he said.
The project earned LEED points with a design allowing for direct sunlight, the ability to open the windows and a heating system with heat recovery components. “The college was looking for that. We
wanted a sustainable building,” said Flem- ing.
Fleming says that overall the project is proceeding as planned. “It’s actually moved along very well,” he said The building has a number of unique features to accommodate the college’s spe- cialized classroom and training require- ments.
For example, in the automotive area, “there is an in-ground exhaust system,” he said. “(It) is very unique. It was a bit of a tricky operation there.” Not surprisingly, as well, special ex- haust and fire protection systems are re- quired for the area where welders are trained.
The new building will accommodate 250 students and allow the college to ex- pand some of its programs.
“What we’re looking to have happen is that there is some state-of-the-art equip- ment so that the students here can learn on the same type of equipment they are going to encounter in the field,” Cappuccitti said. Work started in January 2010. Con- struction, for the most part, was finished in December of 2010 with only a few final touches to link the new building with the rest of the college.
Both Fleming and Cappuccitti believe the new building has already enhanced the college’s programs and contributed to the community. “It’s a fabulous new building and it’s an important step for the entire community to have this building go up and to be able to offer the kinds of training that we’ll be doing,” Cappuccitti said.
We are proud to be working with Loyalist College and Ball Construction
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