SNC Lavalin

SNC Lavalin Inc.’s new Vancouver Headquarters is just under 130,000 sq. ft. over 8 floors in Vancouver’s downtown core at 745 Thurlow St. Similar to Deloitte, this was a fit-out in a new building. Each floor has a typical floor plate with a large main boardroom, kitchenette area, print/copy space and private offices. Floors 5/6 were a custom design that included a new steel interconnecting staircase, executive boardrooms, custom walnut wood paneling and wood slat ceilings. The designer for the project created eight unique elevator lobbies that would highlight the market segments of SNC Lavalin projects. Each design element for this project needed to be well coordinated and therefore Turner provided over two-dozen mock-ups for this fast track project to ensure that the design intent was correctly interpreted and implemented on site. Turner managed 37 trades with over 100 trades people on site at the peak of construction. The construction was completed in four phases to allow for SNC move-in despite late turnover by the base building contractor. One of the major challenges for the project was getting materials on and off the site. At the time of the project base building did not yet have occupancy and was still active in the building and several other tenants were also fitting out. Recognizing this limitation, Turner implemented an “everything on wheels policy” and built garbage bins that could be moved around and roll into the elevator. This meant that items could be stockpiled and moved around on-site until the elevator was free. Another major challenge was that the project started before the base building had received occupancy/commissioned the systems so we were mandated to use the base building trades. This burdened Turner with an underperforming mechanical trade. To address this, we re-organized our team structure to support this trade to manage their work.