Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/147234
e photo: Terence Foran photo: Adam Cotter Forensic Services and Coroner's Complex by Yvan Marston ust north-west of Keele Street and Highway 401 is a long unassuming one-storey building clad in limestone-coloured precast concrete. A ribbon of frosted glass runs the length of its south face and above it a clerestory window brings in sun to a workspace not typically bathed in natural light. This is the podium of Ontario's new Forensic Services and Coroner's Complex. The exterior's simple appearance belies its morbidly fascinating function. Beyond the veil of its glass ribbon lie ten steel tables where skilled teams of forensics pathologists will have the capacity to perform more than 2,500 autopsies a year. "Case load is very much linked to population growth, so as the number of people in Ontario grows, we will see a growing need for these services," explains Jeff Arnold, the manager of the Provincial Forensic Pathology Unit who was seconded to the task of project manager when the need to build a new complex became apparent. Now Arnold and his colleagues are slated to occupy one of the largest forensic services complexes of its kind in the world. Using the province's Alternative Financing and Procurement model to construct this large and complicated public infrastructure project was found to be the very best solution. In 2010, Infrastructure Ontario awarded a design-build finance maintain (DBFM) contract to Carillon Canada with Stantec Architecture in association with MWL Architects. The team J targeted LEED Gold certification. The complex, which will be ready this summer, is essentially three buildings, explains John Archondakis, the project architect for Stantec Architecture. There's a five-storey tower mostly dedicated to lab space, a four-storey office block and an expansive podium that holds much of the forensic pathology infrastructure. The two blocks are joined by a four-storey atrium that starts on the building's second floor. All the labs are supplied by 100 per cent outside air variable volume air handling units that are provided with chilled water cooling coils and glycol heating coils. With so much treated air being pushed out the building, there's a plate-to-plate heat recovery system to salvage some of the lost heat, explains Andrew Pratt, whose firm Crossey Engineering Ltd. served as the mechanical consultants for Carillion's DBFM team. Separate air handling is important, not only for health and safety reasons but to guard against the cross contamination of evidence. In the biology lab the workflow is built around the DNA post amplification lab, the last step in the process, explains Dave Riley, the Centre for Forensic Sciences' project manager for the new lab design. There are two separate but identical workflows that move in clockwise and counter-clockwise directions around this central core – one for collecting, extracting, preamplifying and amplifying DNA from known parties (reference samples) and another for doing the same with DNA from unknown parties (exhibit samples). Firearms analysis on the fifth floor has firing rooms equipped with ballistics water tanks and is surrounded by labs where bullet analysis can be done. A firing range for distance determination is located in the basement because it was not practical to place a 150-foot range on the building's top floor. The office block on the west side of the Forensics Commons is a conventional steel structure. The patterning of the floor-to-celing glazing on this building was inspired by the electropherogram patterning of DNA . Given the tight timeline, Carillion's Ron Hicks, project director, says it was important to be able to work on both buildings at the same time and to enclose them quickly to allow the interior fit-up to occur in a timely manner. The podium's south end is occupied by the Provincial Forensic Pathology Unit. This space includes a large autopsy area with eight open bays and two enclosed rooms for cases requiring segregation, such as homicides, and one for forensic anthropology that is equipped for the examination of skeletal remains. The north end is the only conceivably public space in this highly secure building (there are more than 300 CCTV cameras and a combination pass card and iris scan are required in many areas). Once through the airport-style security gates, users can attend proceedings in one of two Coroner's courts – a 140-occupant court and a second smaller 80-occupant court adjacent. Given the nature of the work conducted here, almost all the building is off limits to the public. It is not secrecy but integrity of evidence and case information that drives this need for security. The atrium, however, remains an area for free circulation and is meant as an interaction space. Despite all its technology, perhaps the most significant part of this building is this space. It imbues its environments with a cheerful level of natural light and enhances cross service collaboration in a manner not typical of a highly secure facility. n Location 25 Morton Shulman Avenue, Toronto, Ontario Owner/Developer Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services Project Manager Infrastructure Ontario Architects Stantec Architecture/WZMH Architects Associate Architect McClaren Wilson & Lawrie Inc. design-build-finance-maintain contractor Carillion Canada Structural/Electrical/ Landscape Architect/Civil Consultant Stantec Consulting Mechanical Consultant Crossey Engineering Inc. Total Area 531,206 square feet Total Project Cost $ 497 million October 2013 ANNUAL INDUSTRY FEATURE: Insulation Book your ad space now: Dan Chapman 604.473.0316 Alexander Sugden 604.473.0358 Forensic Services and Coroner's Complex p82-83Extendicare_Forensic.indd 83 august 2013 /83 13-07-12 2:06 PM