The new standard

The new standard

Charter Telecom Headquarters will be one of the first office buildings meeting the Passive House standard

By Samantha Sommerfield

The desire to be on the cutting edge is a standard practice for telecommunication companies. The race to be the first to know or implement the newest technology is something that’s always strived for. So it’s no surprise that Charter Telecom took this ideology and implemented it in the building plans for their national headquarters in Langford.

Making their office a high performance building was a pillar of conversation early on while talking with Graeme Verhulst and Will King from Waymark Architecture. Knowing its importance to the company Waymark Architecture and Road’s End Contracting Ltd. developed a thorough plan to ensure the client’s goal was achieved. And as of spring 2019, Charter Telecom’s headquarters will be known as Western Canada’s first Certified Passive House office building.

“One of the hopes for the building early on was to make it something that would set a tone for how the surrounding area would redevelop. They also wanted to demonstrate their commitment to creating an excellent environment for their staff,” says Verhulst. “Achieving the Passive House standard is a good way to do both those things.”

As per the Passive House Institute, to achieve Passive House standards, there are detailed requirements to be met, all relating to five basic principles for construction: good thermal insulation, high-quality windows, heat recovery ventilation, airtightness and thermal bridge reduced design.

Currently in British Columbia, there are only a few buildings that meet this standard, and those are almost entirely within the residential sector.

“We haven’t seen it yet primarily with offices because of industry knowledge. It is relatively new (being around for just 10 years) and some design teams aren’t quite ready yet, as you do need training,” says Mark Bernhardt, president at Bernhardt Contracting. “But we are slowly seeing it being picked up.”

Bernhardt was brought on to the Charter Telecom project because of their many years of experience with producing high performance buildings in British Columbia.

Another reason why contractors may be hesitant taking Passive House to office buildings is the fear of increased cost and materials required.

As for the materials, Bernhardt says, “I get these questions from clients all the time: ‘Is adding all this extra insulation worth it?’ and ‘Does it just wipe out the gains of the building?’ And the answer to that is quite simply no. The materials are very low-carbon materials and adding the extra is quite often paid off very quickly through the highperformance of the building.”

This Charter Telecom project becomes considerable to adding to the square footage of high-performance buildings found in British Columbia, as it is a 16,000-square-foot building. The size of the project and the envelope produced for this building will only be less than a few percent of the overall budget.

This building has become an important piece in the continuation of the industry’s high-performance building conversations going forward.

“It is not just the right thing to do environmentally; it is also the right thing to do for the occupants of the building, as essentially you get energy efficiency out of the project but you also get comfort in air quality and thermal comfort, and that is part of the motivation for the client to go this route,” says Verhulst.

There are a lot of key stakeholders in any project, and high-performance buildings provide benefits for them all.

“Building users deserve to be healthy and comfortable; building owners deserve to have an affordable, durable, and low-maintenance building. And the public deserves real solutions to climate change, and I think Certified Passive House buildings delivers on all of those,” says Verhulst.

Charter Telecom has plans on programming and managing a data collection system that will monitor and report the energy performance of the building in real time. The data collected and knowledge acquired from this is substantial for further development and case study research. It is also something that Verhulst is excited about as he believes it will only confirm what he has been focusing Waymark Architecture's mission around.

“As a designer, I am really excited to see the data and how closely it matches the modelling we have been doing. That will be really solid proof of concept,” says Verhulst. “It is this kind of project that got me into this industry to be a part of something that is exciting, innovative, intellectually stimulating, but also something that encourages sustainability and is a tangible contribution to efforts to reduce climate change.”

46 Vancouver Island Construction Association 2019