When Redevelopment Projects go Awry

Canadian Property Management | November 2023
Bernardo Garcia Ramirez, BSc, MSc, P.Eng. | Design Engineer

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Redevelopment projects are defined as any new construction project on a site that has pre-existing structures and uses. These projects can be large or small, ranging from a single building to entire neighbourhoods, and they often involve the demolition of some, if not all, the existing structures. Bernardo Garcia Ramirez, Design Engineer out of RJC Engineer’s Edmonton Office, has worked on many redevelopment projects—all of which have presented his team with some new and unique challenges. In fact, his current project in Edmonton has been anything but straightforward, with surprises ranging from curious to downright costly.

“The original building was a three-storey, concrete office constructed in the 60s,” he explains. “It has had a variety of uses throughout its lifetime, but it has sat unused the last few years.”
When complete, the new facility will provide important programs and supports for vulnerable populations. The scope of the redevelopment project includes the demolition of the existing concrete stairs and elevator cores, the construction of two new cores in different locations, and the reconfiguration of every level.

“It’s nothing we haven’t done before,” Garcia Ramirez points out. “We even had a full set of existing drawings—detailed ones at that—which led us to believe this would be a very straightforward project.”

But straightforward it was not. While the structure was only three storeys tall, the drawings indicated it was designed to be seven. Meanwhile, some of the columns had steel reinforcements that weren’t included in the drawings and presumed to have been added after the fact.

“We got concrete cores from the slabs and we tested them, and the capacity of the concrete was 35 per cent of what it was supposed to be,” he says. “The math told us that the capacity of the building was less than its own self-weight, and that the building shouldn’t be standing. To resolve the issue, we would need to reinforce every single floor, adding approximately 2.5 million dollars to the already constrained budget.”

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