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It is a long journey from the mechanical contracting jobs of a century ago to the mechanical contracting jobs of 2010.
FEATURE | VRCA Awards
It is a long journey from the mechanical contracting jobs of a century ago to the mechanical contracting jobs of 2010.
It’s nothing to worry about, however.
Keith Plumbing & Heating (KPH) of North Vancouver, which is about to celebrate 100 years in business, is more than capable of handling the complex high-tech jobs of today.
KPH proved that once again by winning another VRCA Silver Award of Excellence for a $2.6 million contract at the cyclotron addition to the BC Cancer Agency next door to Vancouver General Hospital.
The company won it in the mechanical contractor up to $3 million category.
Among other things a cyclotron is responsible for producing the isotopes used in the treatment of cancer.
KPH was responsible for providing the HVAC, plumbing and fire protection work in the new addition required to house the cyclotron.
An existing courtyard at the corner of Heather Street and West 10th Avenue was converted to house the unit.
Kevin Collier, a construction manager with KPH said the project was tendered at the peak of the recent construction boom in Vancouver.
Prices came in above the budget available and a considerable amount of work went into pulling the project’s costs back.
Gibbs Wilson from Ontario was the general contractor and Stantec was in charge of the design.
KPH sat down with Stantec, Collier said, and went through the project looking for savings wherever they could find them.
“We just tried to look at things a little differently,” he said.
The HVAC system consists of custom-made air handling units with HEPA filters and a stainless steel air distribution system.
Wilson Cheng, in charge of special projects for Keith Plumbing & Heating, managed the project.
Precision type air valves (Phoenix Air Valves) are provided to hot cells, decay maze, cyclotron and all fume hoods to actuate air flow controls (in other words to tell the equipment when to go on and off and so forth).
Clean steam is generated by a steam-to-steam humidifier to ensure there is no chemical content in the steam for humidification processes.
A central exhaust system with three strobic style exhaust fans were installed at the high roof with stainless steel exhaust duct rises on the outside surface of the existing building to reach the roof fans.
Cooling for the cyclotron is provided by an air-cooled chiller with connection to an existing facility main chiller for redundancy that would be needed in the event of a system failure.
The new chiller also serves the existing PET and MRI scanners with domestic water for emergency back-up.
The challenges on this job were considerable.
The facility operates 24 hours a day and seven days a week.
It cannot stop.
As Collier said, you can’t tell people when to get sick.
Commissioning of the chilled water system required careful scheduling, as well as co-ordination and co-operation with the cancer agency because the new and the old chilled water systems were tied together.
Testing of the system required some shut down of medical equipment and re-scheduling of patients. KPH, however, managed to keep that to an absolute minimum.
Other challenges included an extremely complicated air distribution system which meant KPH’s sheet metal contractor, Viaduct Sheet Metal Ltd of Surrey, had to prepare 3D drawings for site co-ordination.
It was, in the end, a modern job successfully done by a historic company.
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