Architecture is a consultative process often involving multiple stakeholders with competing requirements and desires. Architects play a key role in bringing together this wide range of views and needs into a single coherent design that meets all requirements, and does so within a specific budget and schedule. In this post of “The Architects behind the Games”, B+H Architects shares with us their experience as the Master Planning and Planning, Design and Compliance consultant for four Pan Am / Parapan Am venues, and the Architect of Record for three venues, illustrating the consultative process and exemplifying the architects role as master collaborators. The projects involved stakeholders from four municipalities, two of Ontario’s largest universities, a professional Canadian Football League franchise, dozens of accredited amateur sport organizations, the Pan Am / Parapan Am organizing committee, Toronto 2015, and municipal, provincial and federal funding agencies, not to mention the 25 sub-consultants led by B+H Architects . The story provides insight into the design process and the large design teams required to bring complex world-class sport venues into fruition.

From the architects:

In 2010, Infrastructure Ontario (IO) issued a Request for Proposal for Master Planning and Planning, Design and Compliance (PDC) Services for several sport venues for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am / Parapan Am Games. The team that B+H assembled clearly impressed the crown corporation responsible for delivering public infrastructure improvements for the province of Ontario: although two separate Master Planning/PDC packages were to be delivered under the Province’s Alternative Financing and Procurement model, as well as a third package for Architect of Record responsibilities under a traditional Building Finance model, IO ultimately awarded all three contracts to our team.

What this meant was that we had Master Planning and PDC responsibilities on four major new venues for the Games that would commence in Toronto and around the Greater Golden Horseshoe on July 10, 2015. These included the facility known during the Games as the CIBC Pan Am / Parapan AM Aquatics Centre and Field House, and afterwards as the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre. Featuring two Olympic-size indoor pools, a diving tank and a vast field house, this $205-million complex on the University of Toronto’s Scarborough Campus is the largest single investment in Canadian amateur sport history and the new home of Canadian Sport Institute Ontario. We also had Master Planning and PDC responsibilities on the velodrome, the track and field stadium and the soccer stadium for the 2015 Pan Am / Parapan Am Games; the last of these, Tim Hortons Field, will do double-duty after the Games as the home of the Canadian Football League’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats and a community soccer stadium. As well, we are Architect of Record on three other projects: a state-of-the-art aquatics and athletic complex in Markham, Ontario; the Toronto 2015 field hockey venue; and the renovation of the Etobicoke Olympium into the aquatics events training facility for the Games.

In IO’s AFP system*, the Planning, Design and Compliance consultant (PDC) is involved at every project stage from master planning through to construction completion. With B+H Architects in place as PDC consultant, Infrastructure Ontario was not just pricing a program, but an exemplar or illustrative design developed for each venue’s actual site, through an intensive process involving research of recent best-in-the-world facilities of the same type and in-depth consultation with each facility’s full spectrum of end users and stakeholders. It was an intensely creative process, designed to get all stakeholders on the same page through Visioning Sessions, concept design and schematic design. On average, meetings involved no fewer than 16 people, with two or three stakeholders, IO representatives and consultants sitting down with us at the table. This intensive design programming process was completed in approximately six month.

For each of the sport stadium projects within the scope of work, B+H began by developing a master plan and functional program, followed by the preparation of block diagrams and budgets for approval purposes. Sports venues for international competition at its highest level are extremely complex facilities. Before the bids were issued, we as PDC consultant had determined through the illustrative design process that the program would in fact fit and work on the site. Significant advancement of the site planning process, including pre-negotiation of the urban design with the municipal authorities, was also part of the PDC role. Our team produced the Blocking, Stacking and Massing drawings indicating what needed to go where and how the primary vertical and horizontal circulation patterns would connect the elements. From this, B+H developed detailed design drawings for each venue. In addition to validating the program for legacy, for the communities they will serve, and games modes, this level of detail added to the conversation about materials, finishes and assemblies. The PDC team was also responsible for ensuring that the specifications, called Project Specific Output Specification (PSOS), developed for each facility would meet or exceed all relevant performance standards. Although unforeseen complexities can never be eliminated from a major design and construction project, the highly detailed design developed by the PDC consultant provided a higher degree of cost certainty than would otherwise have been possible.

In the early phases of planning for the Games, B+H led a team of 25 sub-consultants, with areas of expertise that included scheduling, geotechnical and environmental consulting, code, ergonomics, sound and AV, signage and wayfinding, and food services. In consultation with this wide-ranging complement of highly skilled specialists we developed the PSOS for each venue. This was very much a design process as well as the creation of a detailed set of specifications: it in fact encompassed a complete illustrative (or exemplar) design set of drawings for each venue. After developing the PSOS, we assisted with the preparation for the Request for Qualification (RFQ) and Request for Proposal (RFP) documents for the AFP bidders. The most intense stage of the bid process was the Open RFP Stage. B+H led the full consultant team through four rounds of Design Presentations (DP) and several Commercially Confidential Meetings (CCMs) related to design for each of the three consortia. Following the close of the RFP, B+H worked with Infrastructure Ontario (IO) in evaluating the bid responses to choose the successful proponents. Lastly, during the construction stage, we managed compliance monitoring on IO’s behalf.

With work now complete on all facilities and the games in full swing, it is especially gratifying to look back on our contributions to this spectacular event. In May 2015, TO2015 announced that they were approximately $53.5 million under their $672-million budget for capital infrastructure spending. B+H and the expert team we assembled played a vital role in ensuring that sports venues designed for the Toronto 2015 Games would be among the best in the world – not only during the Games but for decades of intensive legacy mode use. We are proud of our accomplishments and invite you to learn more about B+H’s contributions to the games via our case study, High Performance Design. In this case study we outline the roles we played in delivering the best possible sports venues to the athletes of Canada and the Americas, on time and in a way that demonstrably managed risk successfully on the public’s behalf.

Bill Nankivell, CEO

* Infrastructure Ontario (IO) managed the delivery of the facilities for Toronto 2015 Pan Am and Parapan Am Gams using the delivery model that the Province of Ontario terms Alternative Financing and Procurement (AFP). This model is also often referred to as P3, which stands for Public-Private Partnership. IO uses AFP as a means to achieve the on-time and on-budget delivery of complex projects involving public funding.