Montreal, October 12, 2004 – The GENIVAR-AECON-DIVCO Consortium has won the Canadian Design-Build Institute’s Award of Excellence for the expansion of the Montreal convention centre (MCC). The CDBI presented the award at its annual conference held recently in Edmonton.
The award honours the top design-build project in Canada and shows how the design-build method makes it possible to deliver projects on budget and on schedule in fast track mode. It also recognizes the concerted work of the design and construction teams, one of the method’s key aspects. The MCC expansion project was the first design-build contract awarded by the Quebec government for the construction of a major institutional building.
“The project team included engineers, architects, technicians, project managers and other members of the construction trade who worked hand in hand and used innovative methods to transform a bold concept into realizable and lasting structural elements,” said Ali Ettehadieh, P.Eng., Senior Vice-President of GENIVAR and Consortium representative.
Located in an urban setting, the MCC expansion project presented a significant challenge, Mr. Ettehadieh explained, as the work, which began in January 2000, had to be carried out while the convention centre maintained its full schedule of activities. In 2002, at the height of the work, 166 events were held involving more than 500,000 visitors with no decrease in the quality of service. In fact, 2002 was the best year in the MCC’s history. Project personnel also had to deal with other issues such as complex and unusual technical challenges, logistics, tight deadlines, coordination, the building’s location, space constraints and pedestrian and vehicular traffic through and around the site.
The context in which the work took place necessitated, among other things, close coordination of the many players at every phase of the project, from the covering of the Ville-Marie Expressway to the integration and earthquake-resistant rehabilitation of the Tramway Building as well as the construction of docking areas, an underground car park and a new lobby facing Place Jean-Paul-Riopelle.
With a surface area of 375,000 square feet, the new Montreal convention centre has double the meeting and exhibit space as its predecessor and can host between 15,000 and 20,000 visitors at a time. Functional and versatile, it remains one of the city’s strategic centres of tourism and business.
The developed concept is open to the outside, to the city and to its people, and emphasizes colour, transparency and light. Located in the heart of the Quartier international de Montréal, the MCC has helped bring order to the urban district by creating a user-friendly, event-oriented space and restoring links between downtown and Old Montreal that had been severed by the entrenched Ville-Marie Expressway.
Besides the ICDC Award of Excellence, the MCC expansion project has received awards from the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction (CISC), the Institut d’acier d’armature du Québec (IAAQ) in 2003 and the Institute of Design Montréal for landscape architecture in 2004.
The project has also been featured on the covers of several prestigious Canadian and international magazines, including the May-June 2004 issue of Design Architecture Art Azure (Canada); the April 2004 issue of Archiworld (Korea); the August 2004 issue of id+c Interior Design + Construction (Japan); the August 2004 issue (No. 193) of L’Arca (Italy); and the October 2004 issue of Architecture Review (England).
The Société immobilière du Québec was the project’s principal contractor while the Palais des congrès de Montréal is the owner. To carry out the project, the GENIVAR-AECON-DIVCO Consortium assembled a team of specialists from several firms including:
AECON
DIVCO
GENIVAR
Saia Barbarese Topouzanov Architectes
Les architectes Tétreault, Parent, Languedoc et associés
Ædifica
Pageau, Morel et Associés
Dessau-Soprin
GENIVAR
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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Marlène Casciaro
Director, Communications
GENIVAR
Tel.: (514) 340-0046, ext. 184
marlene.casciaro@genivar.com
