Building the future of the construction industry, one project at a time

Ontario’s first mass timber, net-zero carbon emissions institutional building of its kind, George Brown College’s (GBC) Limberlost Place, has set the precedent for mass timber construction as a model for 21st-century smart, sustainable, green building innovation. 

The 10-storey, mass timber educational facility is creating a new era for GBC students, the industry, and the community. Home to the college’s School of Architectural Studies, Limberlost Place represents GBC’s vision of a flexible, forward-thinking, and future-proof facility that will act as a living lab for students to learn in and from. 

In addition to the many innovative student spaces, Limberlost Place features Mary’s Place Child Care Centre. Embodying the importance of early childhood education, Mary’s Place provides care for infants to preschool children while also helping to develop interprofessional relationships with students, staff and faculty. The Brookfield Sustainability Institute will be based at Limberlost Place and is focused on aligning digital transformation and sustainability to benefit communities everywhere.

The building’s award-winning design integrates unique sustainability features, including optimized daylighting and natural ventilation systems, two solar chimneys and photovoltaic panels. Targeting LEED® Gold certification and Toronto Green Standard (TGS) Tier 4, the 225,000-square-foot building has significantly impacted the province's mass timber industry. 

A collaborative preconstruction phase is crucial to any project, especially one of this complexity. Working closely with the college, the architects, consultants and trade partners, the team played an active role in design development to help determine the overall constructability of the project. 

With a long lead time, AKTOR was able to engage trade partners early in the preconstruction process to assist with value engineering, mitigating risks and pricing. Together with the consultants and trade partners, the team tendered the project and began Building Information Modelling (BIM) coordination and preparing the construction schedule well in advance. 

North West Refining Inc. and Canadian Natural Resources Limited formed the North West Redwater Partnership (NWR) and embarked on a joint venture to build a first-of-its-kind refinery that champions sustainability and brings resources and revenue back to the community it is built.

Located north of Edmonton, Alberta, the North West Redwater Sturgeon Refinery megaproject is the first new refinery built in Canada in over 35 years. Designed to produce high-quality energy products, it is also a key step in a new process that both reduces carbon creation and captures carbon that can be later utilized or stored indefinitely. 

The refinery is an essential part of the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line system. It is the first of its kind in the world to create a sustainable emissions solution that converts a bitumen blend into ultra-low-sulphur diesel and other high-value petroleum products such as vacuum gas oil (VGO) and diluents.

“NWR brought us on because the work we had done with them was incredibly beneficial and they knew we would help them accomplish their goals. They trusted that we would help them create the impact they want to have on the industry.” - Grant Mombourquette, construction manager at AKTOR Industrial Management Inc.

Construction spanned four distinct elements: building the utility plant, building the refinery tank farm, building the gasified process unit — one of the most complex units on the project, with a key role in the refinery’s carbon capture process— and pre-commissioning the facility prior to start up.

Central to the unique capabilities of the refinery, the gasifier unit is the heart of the facility. As bitumen is transformed into light oil, the gasifier converts waste byproducts into cleaner, usable gases which minimizes environmental impacts. Compared to traditional methods, this process reduces the production of carbon by approximately 70%.

Kearl is home to one of Canada’s highest-quality oil sand deposits and largest open-pit mining operations. With regulatory approval to produce up to 345,000 barrels of bitumen per day, it’s estimated that one in every eight barrels of oil in Canada is produced at Kearl. Built in three stages, Kearl was developed with a "design one, build many" approach to its facilities. 

We worked on all three stages of Kearl’s development and provided fabrication and modularization for the project. Initially, Imperial Oil planned on having the fabrication of the modules done overseas, but as the transportation route was finalized, they realized that transporting them through the last leg of the journey was virtually impossible. Instead, the modules were cut into smaller pieces and transported to AKTOR ’s industrial fabrication yard, where we reassembled the units into the original shipping configuration and shipped them to the site.

To offset any delays associated with module transportation, we worked with Imperial Oil to identify available work fronts that we could execute without the modules to minimize the impacts to the overall schedule. 

In the first phase, we assembled 134 modules, erected four steam boilers, and constructed a water treatment plant, two ponds, and a 72-kV electrical distribution system. In the second phase, the team assembled 150 modules, erected four steam boilers and constructed a water treatment plant, an electrical distribution system and a 72 KV distribution system. The final scope of the project was a tank farm for which we installed 18 pipe-rack modules, two vapor recovery units (VRUs), 29 pieces of equipment and pipe rack tie-ins. 

Kearl represents the next generation of oil sands mining and was built with technological innovations that reduce cost.