Manitoba Hydro Building Winnipeg

[mcarlton]

Hey everyone, I am doing a case study project on MHP for a grad school project. I was wondering if there is anyone that is willing and able to answer some questions about the details of the construction, building, or experience within the building.

Thank you!
Matt Carlton

Please contact me at mncarlton@gmail.com if interested.

[esquire]

ICYMI, good article in the Free Press about Manitoba Hydro Place:

Livable efficiency
Manitoba Hydro Place isn’t just kind to the utility’s energy bill, it’s also comfortable for the people who work there
By: Alison Gillmor
Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Monday, Apr. 25, 2022

This Earth Month, a lot of us are thinking about the buildings where we live and work and how they can be made more sustainable and energy efficient.

As our province’s electrical power and natural gas provider, Manitoba Hydro thinks about these things a lot, so when it came time to construct its new downtown headquarters on Portage Ave., the provincial Crown corporation looked to innovative green building approaches, as well as a new way of thinking about the collaborative connections between architectural vision and engineering function.

Designed by Toronto-based Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects (KPMB), Manitoba Hydro Place is a 690,000 square-foot, 22-storey office tower that opened in 2009. The original mandate for this award-winning structure was driven not just by the need to make its construction and operation more environmentally friendly, but also by the desire to create a space for its employees that was functional, comfortable, healthy and, yes, beautiful.

"It was the first large scale office tower in Canada to achieve Platinum LEED certification," says engineer Mark Pauls. (LEED — Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design — is a green-building rating program used worldwide.) This achievement is even more remarkable when you consider the challenge of building an energy-efficient structure in our extreme climate. "We get the worst of everything," Pauls remarks cheerfully. "We get the coldest winters and hot summers."

More here: https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ar...576430492.html

[drew]

According to someone I know who works there, people are starting to return to the office as early as next week.

[trueviking]

yup...everyone back no exceptions. They are allowed to work from home on Wednesdays I believe....and of course they don't work every second Monday for some reason.

[1ajs]

still a tourist atraction no?

[bomberjet]

Got a big, empty building to fill up.

Lots of places I hear say things like that. Or we need to be back at work so the corner restaurant that is only open for lunch will survive. The greater problem we all know is downtown empties out at 5pm. That is the problem with downtown. Not empty offices.

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by trueviking

yup...everyone back no exceptions. They are allowed to work from home on Wednesdays I believe....and of course they don't work every second Monday for some reason.

Work option is to work from home Monday and Wednesdays with every second Monday off (each workday is 36 minutes longer to get that Monday off) how many will choose that option is to be seen. So essentially the building will only be fully occupied Tuesday, Thursday and Fridays, kinda crappy for downtown biz!

All dept.'s to be back in office by mid June!

[wags_in_the_peg]

The few people I know at Hydro office say it's an extremely low stress, low output atmosphere and every 2nd Monday off. think about that next time you see your Hydro bill going up, up, up

[esquire]

Originally Posted by wags_in_the_peg

The few people I know at Hydro office say it's an extremely low stress, low output atmosphere and every 2nd Monday off. think about that next time you see your Hydro bill going up, up, up

Even if you fired everyone and outsourced Hydro management to someplace cheap, how much would that even save you? Everything I've read has led me to believe that massive capital overspending and lack of projected sales has led to the current situation, not lavish spending on employees.

Besides, is it really a "day off" when you're working extra on the other days? I used to work with someone who came early and stayed late M-Th so she could take every Friday off. I didn't begrudge her.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by wags_in_the_peg

The few people I know at Hydro office say it's an extremely low stress, low output atmosphere and every 2nd Monday off. think about that next time you see your Hydro bill going up, up, up

You guys really complaining about Hydro employees? Hydro's salary and benefit bill was $453 million last year, which represents 16% of its expenses. At the same time, Hydro paid the Manitoba Provincial Government $480 million in water rentals, debt guarantees and capital taxes. In other words, Hydro subsidizes provincial healthcare, education, and infrastructure expenditures in this province at a rate that is higher than their wage bill. If you think Hydro's wage bill is burdensome to provincial coffers somehow, then you should also ask the Premiere to not squeeze Hydro so hard for cash, right?

I don't think picking on the productivity of individual employees at the utility is very fair. To put things into contrast, the City of Winnipeg Police department's entire budget is $301 million this year, with probably 95% of that being salary costs. And that's just to provide ONE service to ONE city in this province.

People rag on public employees just because they can, with no real insight into how the institutions work or what its like to work there. If you people think government work is such an easy and lazy way to make money, why don't you go try working for them yourselves? Hydro has a lot of job postings on their site right now - but it looks like a lot of them require a P.Eng., which isn't exactly an "easy or lazy" qualification.

[trueviking]

Originally Posted by wags_in_the_peg

The few people I know at Hydro office say it's an extremely low stress, low output atmosphere and every 2nd Monday off. think about that next time you see your Hydro bill going up, up, up

I have never understood how a crown corporation that is always under fire for its management has gotten away with a four day work week all these years. The 30 minutes extra is completely bogus. You would think just for optics they would make them work like a regular company.

Working at Mother Hydro is a gravy train.

[trueviking]

I have also heard that they took away all their computers and office supplies from home, so it might not be a complete ghost town on those vacation, i mean work from home days.

[bomberjet]

Not pile on here haha but..

I know people who have gone either to or from Hydro to consulting engineering, as an example. Hydro is like being on permanent low urgency mode. Work on one project all year and only worry about that. Sit at your desk for ages doing basically nothing. This is not everybody, but many people.

Consulting engineering is billing out every hour you can. Same thing in architecture and other industries. It's not like I'm constantly running around with my head cut-off. But more urgency, lots of projects going on, etc.

But the change can be quite shocking to people I find. This one guy went to hydro maybe 5 years ago. I saw him at hockey and he was blown away. Best change ever he said. Depending upon your attitude. This isn't blanket statement about Hydro. Many people in the field for example are busy and get called out at all hours.

Engineering in general can be pretty like low stress, lackadaisical at times. And then you get to Hydro and are on the gravy train lol And then Hydro can be absolutely terrible to deal with because they don't want to be rushed. Because they're soooo busy.

Sorry for piling on.

[esquire]

Like I said, even if you fire everyone from Hydro, how much is your hydro bill realistically going to go down? According to Winnipegger, maybe 16% at most.

Would we feel like we were getting better bang for our buck if everything about Hydro stayed the same but their workforce was made up of a bunch of stressed out, miserable, hard drinking, divorced workaholics?

And before anyone gives me the old side-eye glare, I don't work for Hydro and I don't have any friends or family who work in the head office. The only Hydro people I know are my kid's Timbit hockey coach from way back and a friend's wife. The latter is an engineer and legit one of the smartest people I know. One of my buddies works on the LNG side of things but he's out in the field doing distribution stuff with his hands so no one is going to accuse him of being a soft, coddled head office flunky.

[1ajs]

hydro also is in midle of fixing the winnipeg hydro mess still and that draining

[cllew]

Originally Posted by trueviking

yup...everyone back no exceptions. They are allowed to work from home on Wednesdays I believe....and of course they don't work every second Monday for some reason.

Does Bell still do that with their office staff? If I am not mistaken when it was MTS the non craft staff did either 30 or 45 minutes a day to get every 2nd Friday off.

[EdwardTH]

Originally Posted by trueviking

I have never understood how a crown corporation that is always under fire for its management has gotten away with a four day work week all these years. The 30 minutes extra is completely bogus. You would think just for optics they would make them work like a regular company.

Working at Mother Hydro is a gravy train.

That's such a silly thing to get mad about. There's plenty of evidence that a 4-day work week doesn't reduce productivity. Everybody should be on a 4-day week at this point.

[WinCitySparky]

Vike for all his good insights comes across as someone who puts productivity over better quality of living for workers

[bomberjet]

I'll take a 16% reduction in my hydro bill. Yes please.

I guess the point is they just have a big empty building where people casually meet up and do a bit of work. Hydro now is switching from big new hydro plants, to maintenance on existing infrastructure. They already farm out all the heavy work to consultants anyways. They were big time over staffed. Pallister cut that down, which is one good things he's done.

I'd love to be on a 4 day work week permanently like some other countries.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

I'll take a 16% reduction in my hydro bill. Yes please.

I guess the point is they just have a big empty building where people casually meet up and do a bit of work. Hydro now is switching from big new hydro plants, to maintenance on existing infrastructure. They already farm out all the heavy work to consultants anyways. They were big time over staffed. Pallister cut that down, which is one good things he's done.

I'd love to be on a 4 day work week permanently like some other countries.

16% reduction up front when everyone gets fired. But then who runs the utility? Ernst & Young won't do it for free.

This complaining reminds me of when people gripe about fuel taxes driving increasing costs when in reality they are a small portion of the overall price. Strip away all fuel taxes and you're still paying over a buck a litre for gas.

I really don't get this lobster pot mentality. One of the nice spinoffs of having crown corporations like MPI, Hydro, etc. is that it brings some good jobs to town. Are we really going to get upset because some Hydro staff work slightly longer days to have every other Friday off?

I spent one summer in university working at a software company in China. Most people there worked 6 days a week. On paper you'd think it would be amazing. But do you really think the office was a beehive of productivity on Saturdays? They could have easily chopped that requirement and no one would have noticed. If the work is getting done and the staff are putting in the hours, who cares if the Hydro staff are in the office every Friday?