Award

A PR IL 2019 | 51 Stoney CNG Bus Storage and Transit Facility AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY THE CITY OF CALGARY; PHOTOGRAPHY + RENDERING COURTESY AECOM CANADA LTD. Stoney CNG Bus Storage and Transit Facility by ROBIN BRUNET W ith service having commenced on March 18, the new Stoney CNG Bus Storage and Transit Facility in northeast Calgary is one of North America's largest indoor Compressed Natural Gas bus fuelling complexes. Even more remarkable is that this innovative 44,300-square-metre facil- ity was developed via a public-private partnership approach under a tight schedule, and despite many chal- lenges faced by the design-build team of PCL Construction Management Inc. and architects AECOM Canada Ltd., completion was achieved without any major setbacks. The designed LEED v4 Gold facility is capable of housing over 470, 40-foot buses and contains 36 maintenance bays (including two detailed cleaning bays), an on-site compressed natural gas fuelling infrastructure, as well as diesel bus fuelling and operations. Other components include a two- storey office administration area with extensive outdoor amenity spaces, including a green roof terrace and ground floor patio. Construction commenced in the fall of 2016, when The City of Calgary signed a fixed price agreement with Plenary Infrastructure Calgary LP Project Co, – a consortium of Plenary Group (Canada) Ltd.; PCL Investments Canada Inc.; PCL Construction Management Inc.; and Johnson Controls Canada – to design, build, finance, and maintain the facility for Calgary Transit. AECOM Canada Ltd. was brought in as the lead designer on the project. Danny Panday, senior project man- ager, transportation infrastructure for The City of Calgary, says, "estab- lishing the indoor natural gas fuelling element was the most difficult aspect of the project for us, because it was new to us. However, the regulatory process wasn't onerous thanks to good planning and engineering." The infrastructure design would see high- pressure inlet gas at 550 psi pumped by compressors into buses at a rate of 3,600 psi. High-pressure inlet gas would contribute to an annual fuel sav- ings of $10,000 per bus. For the sake of efficiency, major changes were made to the fuelling oper- ations. "While the CNG fuelling system is designed for six buses to be fuelled at the same time, we decided that first-in first-out – or three buses, one for each of the three services lanes – was the best scenario, given all the steps necessary to make the buses ready for service." Chris Ross, project manager, alter- native delivery, for AECOM, notes that aside from satisfying a large number of stakeholders, one challenge was "maintaining wide open sightlines and a bright ambiance throughout the facil- ity, which took significant effort in order to maintain the feel of the origi- nal conceptual renderings." He adds that The City of Calgary had undertaken preliminary plan- ning and site layout, "and from this information, the P3 team was able to perform necessary assessments, reconfiguration, and alignment. There were equally extensive deliberations about building materials, from the structural components of the building and insulated metal panel envelope system, right down to the carpets, which were integral to achieving the LEED v4 Gold designation." One way to create an airy ambi- ance in the massive transit facility "was to bring in as much natural light as possible via hundreds of skylights throughout the facility," says Ross. In addition, The City of Calgary's require- ment of using The City's official colours of red, white, and grey proved to be useful. "For example, the use of red panels on the walls not only adds accents to the building, but also indi- cates the bus entrances and exits to provide intuitive colour coding for cau- tion and awareness," says Ross.

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