Vancouver International Airport’s West Chevron project earns praise
The new West Chevron at YVR is located in the international terminal and earned PCL Constructors Westcoast a silver award.
Category: General Contractor Over $40 Million
Vancouver International Airport’s West Chevron project earns praise
BRIAN MARTIN
CORRESPONDENT
Probably few sites have kept so many contractors busy for as long as the Vancouver International Airport (YVR). It’s not hard to see why. Back in 1992, YVR handled 9.9 million passengers. This year, it will greet some 17.5 million — an increase of more than 70 per cent.
No less spectacular has been the expansion of the physical facility to accommodate all those visitors.
This year construction projects at YVR scooped up an impressive five silver awards in the Vancouver Construction Association’s Awards of Excellence program.
The star of the show is the new 36,000 square metre West Chevron in the International Terminal built by PCL Constructors Westcoast.
For its work on the project, PCL has won a Silver Award for general contractor on a project worth more than $40 million. PCL’s share of the West Chevron job was $80 million and the total cost was $185 million.
The West Chevron features eight new gates and is designed to accommodate the latest in aircraft including the giant double-decker Airbus A380. Although the first A380 went into service this month with Singapore Airlines there are currently no plans for it to serve Vancouver. Industry observers, however, expect this will change as time goes by.
When it does, YVR will be ready.
The expanded West Chevron is a truly spectacular facility. Among its many special features is a salt water aquarium, fresh water stream with three bridges and solar panels to supplement the domestic hot water system. There are eight new passenger elevators, six escalators and five wheelchair lifts. There are eight new gates, including two special gates to serve the A380. The aircraft carries up to 800 passengers on two decks and needs to load and unload from two levels simultaneously.
The West Chevron expansion began in June, 2005 and was wrapped up on time and on budget in May of 2007. Its vital statistics are impressive: It swallowed 4,700 tonnes of steel in 1,200 pieces, 12,500 square metres of concrete and 7,700 square metres of glazing in 2,000 pieces. A large project comes with large challenges. According to PCL project manager, Paul Hobern, the airport’s increased post 9/11 security was near the top of his list of details that needed regular attention. Portions of the project were “airside”, which means they were adjacent to aircraft.
Part of the challenge of working on the West Chevron expansion project was working inside a busy, fully functioning airport.
In those cases, the site had to be completely blocked off from the runway.
Construction materials were transported to sites via escorted delivery and crews had to be accompanied by security and were bused in and out.
All the trades, Hobern said, were aware of the situation early on and flagged it as something to be dealt with and planned for right off the top.
That, he said, kept problems to a minimum.
Other challenges revolved around maintaining a schedule while working inside a very busy operating airport and dealing with value engineering to keep costs under control.
“With YVR however,” Hobern said, “we were working with a client who knows his business and with people who made our lives a whole lot easier.”
The West Chevron also brought a Silver Award to Protec Installations for electrical work and to Keith Plumbing and Heating (KPH) for the “thematic fit out”.
Also winning a silver award was Wesbridge Steelworks for the Link Building, a YVR project that is completely separate from the West Chevron.Keith Plumbing and Heating however, won a second silver award for their work on the West Chevron. It was in the category of a mechanical contractor on a project worth more than $3 million. KPH had a $13.5 million lump sum contract at the West Chevron.
They started work in January of 2006 when the project was already well underway and finished up on March 31, 2007.
An important part of their job was providing value engineering — in other words finding ways to cut costs.
They were successful in creating approximately $1 million in mechanical savings.
Like all contractors working at the airport, KPH found security to be among their biggest concerns.
Along with that came the job of having material and deliveries made to a secured job site location within the airport, placing large air handling units in the mechanical rooms, hoisting equipment to the roof and working with a schedule that allowed all operations to continue during construction.
The mechanical systems are state-of-the art and include a solar heating system for domestic hot water and a ground water cooling system.
The solar heating system was installed to supply the new wing as well as future expansions with domestic hot water.
KPH said the package is a great system which goes along with YVR’s task of being a green building, a cost effective building and a world class facility to serve its passengers.
Ray Zibrik is president of YVR Project Management, the subsidiary company responsible for overseeing the project.
He said that the completion of the building was made possible by the dedication of hundreds of people, who have provided more than 900,000 hours of work since the project’s inception in 2005. The expansion was finished on time and on budget.”
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