Government Operations Committee on March 24th, 2015

[Nancy Chahwan]

Allow me to find the information. I'm not sure I have the breakdown on an annual basis, but I can provide it to you on a phase basis.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Sure.

[Nancy Chahwan]

Total approvals to date for the LTVP amount to approximately $3 billion, and as of the end of March of this year, of the current month, we expect to have invested approximately $1.8 billion of that amount. The period between 2006 and 2015 would amount to $1.4 billion in investments.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

That's a fair bit of money, but they're obviously beautiful buildings.

Just moving to security issues, I think one of the areas parliamentarians are seized with is the evolving security situation here on Parliament Hill. There wasn't a whole lot of information provided in the initial presentation. But we have seen that, even prior to the tragic incidents of October 22, there have been incidents where security has been reformed. For example, after the scaling of the West Block by Greenpeace we saw an increased presence by the RCMP in cruisers stationed around the parliamentary precinct—especially around the Justice and Confederation buildings, the West Block, East Block, and Centre Block.

How have the plans changed for integrating security infrastructure, not just cameras but actually places to be able to hold security personnel in comfort and with proper vigilance? Would you be able to go through that for us?

[Nancy Chahwan]

I understand that security is of the utmost importance for the workers, the visitors and, of course, the people using these buildings as their places of work every day.

Public Works and Government Services Canada acts as a service provider, so we do not define the requirements for security. What we do is work very closely in an integrated manner with the RCMP and the parliamentary partners—the House of Commons and the Senate—mainly through the master security planning office for the parliamentary precinct. This is where the discussions about the security requirements are developed and confirmed. Based on confirmed requirements, this is when Public Works hires security consultants and design consultants to incorporate those into the design and the construction of the project.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thanks very much.

Then answer this question. Since you're not the decision-taker but the implementer, how have the plans changed since October 22, or have they?

[Nancy Chahwan]

I will turn to Ezio in a minute to talk about the visitor welcome centre and what is already involved in the current design. But to address your question specifically about the changes since October 22, we have been working on upgrades to the vehicle screening facility for the RCMP, and we are still in constant conversation—with no confirmed scope change yet—for the buildings under construction.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

One key area, of course, is visitor screening outside of the building.

I think most security experts would have been able to point out that security screening inside the building creates a substantial risk. Now that's done outside of the building; it's done in a canvas tent.

Is there any plan to create some sort of permanent infrastructure outside of the building to conduct those preliminary or first-tier visitor screenings?

[Nancy Chahwan]

Thank you for pointing that out.

We have worked, for example, on exterior guard huts just outside of Centre Block. That's one example of the work that has been done since October 22.

For the longer term, the visitor welcome complex will be underground and will be outside of the imprint of the buildings. If you look at the plans for phase one of that visitor welcome centre vis-à-vis the West Block, you will see that this is outside of the imprint of the building.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Was this a change that was implemented within the last six months?

[Nancy Chahwan]

No, this was embedded in the original design.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

I'm afraid I'll have to interrupt you there, Gerry. Your time has expired.

Then for the Conservatives, our parliamentary secretary for the minister is Chris Warkentin.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thanks, Chair.

Thanks to our witnesses for coming.

This is an exciting project, and something that we've been wanting an update on for some time. It is fascinating to us as well as to most Canadians.

I come from a bit of a construction background, and the project that every contractor fears is a renovation, especially one of a historical building. This is the mother of all renovation projects, and obviously there are unexpected encounters when you tear into a building like this. You will maybe speak a bit to those unexpected encounters. You've already told us that you're still on time. That's a remarkable achievement to run into those things but maintain the timelines that you have.

In addition to that, I'd like you to speak to the importance of maintaining the historical integrity of the buildings. Obviously there's some incredible architectural detailing that has been maintained and renewed. It's an interesting dynamic. The project that's being undertaken obviously has to maintain that historical integrity, but you also have the opportunity to use new materials and take advantage of new energy efficiencies and different things like that.

I'm wondering how you've been able to incorporate all of those priorities into this project. Could you tell us a little more about those things?

[Nancy Chahwan]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to go back to the heritage aspect. I may not have completely answered Mr. Kerr's earlier question on this.

One complexity of the LTVP is that we have to juggle several driving factors, including new functional requirements, the security aspects, the heritage element, and the complexity of working on buildings that were built in times when the blueprints were not necessarily very accurate. You're right that we have run into discoveries that have forced us to rethink the approach for some work packages. Ezio will be able to give you a few examples of that.

Before I turn to Ezio, we adopted an innovative approach when we started to work specifically on the West Block, and that was by hiring a construction manager. That has allowed us to proceed with work packages concurrently. It has allowed us to make sure that the construction manager and the designer were working very closely, hand in hand, early on in the project. That has introduced flexibility in adapting to the realities of these buildings.

Regarding the heritage aspect and energy efficiencies, we work very closely with our internal heritage experts, the heritage conservation directorate. We also work with the federal heritage buildings review office. Their representatives review every design decision that is being made and the progress of the construction to make sure that we are not losing the heritage designation of the buildings in the parliamentary precinct. That does not preclude us from introducing efficiencies in the buildings, whether these be, for example, in water consumption, green roofs, more efficient windows, or more efficient HVAC systems. To the contrary, we are aiming at achieving the equivalent of a LEED silver certification for the buildings.

Ezio will give you some examples on the unexpected surprises.

[Ezio DiMillo]

Mr. Chair, the West Block specifically was built in three different building campaigns, and that in itself required that some methodologies we used in construction were different in all three of those campaigns. Once we removed all the surface finishes from the walls, we did find a number of openings in the brick supporting walls in the building. Those were caused in the 1960s when the West Block was last renovated. Those are being repaired as we speak.

We are also including a number of other elements that will assist in coordinating with the heritage aspect of the building.

One of the challenges, as you mentioned, is that we need to integrate IT, security, and so on into a heritage building—not to mention all the seismic requirements for the structure. These are some of the challenges we are designing in. For example, we're putting in a structured cabling system for IT, security, and so on. That will future-proof the building; it will be flexible so that in the future if changes need to be made, they can be made quite simply.

I mentioned some of the new materials we're adding as well. We're using stainless steel anchors to solidify the wall. Because of the construction of the building, you will see that on site today. There is a requirement for those stainless steel anchors to be inserted so we improve the seismic stability of the building.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Mr. DiMillo.

Thank you, Mr. Warkentin. Your five minutes is up.

Committee members, we've used our time well with concise questions and answers, so we're right on time; in fact, we're a bit ahead of time. The clerk has arranged green buses to take us over from the west door of Centre Block to the construction trailer near the West Block site where we'll be fitted out with the gear we need.

With the one or two minutes we have left, though, I'd like to take the chair's prerogative and ask one question that's been on my mind for a long time.

I too, like Mr. Warkentin, come from a building and construction background; I'm a journeyman carpenter. I used to work for the company, PCL, that is doing the renovation. It's long been my view that the reason everything on Parliament Hill costs ten times as much and takes ten times as long is that there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Unlike other parliamentary precincts in Washington, D.C., or London, England, we've got the Speaker, the House of Commons Administration, the Department of Public Works, the department of Canadian Heritage, the National Capital Commission, all working at cross purposes and, I believe, bogging down the whole operation.

Would you agree, as the parliamentary precinct branch ADM for this project, that we could be a lot more streamlined and arguably save a lot of money if we had one central office like the chief architect of the capital region in Washington, D.C., as has been recommended by a number of blue ribbon panels over the years? We could put that person in charge of one office and get things done so that these things don't drag on for decades.

I just looked it up. At comparable cost, they built the whole McGill University hospital for $1.3 billion, even with all the graft and corruption that went to Arthur Porter. It's a lot more expensive to build a hospital than it is to even renovate a historic building—a 1,300 bed hospital, which consolidated five other hospitals into one. And that's been done over a couple of years, not a couple of decades.

Could you share your view briefly on whether or not it would have been of benefit to you if you were in charge as the chief architect of the parliamentary precinct to just get the job done?

[Nancy Chahwan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for a very interesting question.

As we mentioned before, the money that has been invested so far, and will be invested until the end of the long-term vision and plan, is a significant amount. It would probably cost us less today to build a new parliamentary precinct, but because of the symbolism and the importance of the seat of democracy, we have to be very careful that we are maintaining that historic value and symbolic value of these unique buildings. The Centre Block itself will be a very complex and unprecedented project.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

I'm going to interrupt you.

The only question I had was, would you benefit from a single governance operation instead of those five or six actors getting involved and, I believe, throwing spanners into the works all the time?

[Nancy Chahwan]

I believe this was addressed in part by the creation of the parliamentary precinct branch within Public Works. So we do have one, and I am personally accountable for the delivery of these projects on time and on budget.

You are right to say there are many stakeholders in these projects, not only the parliamentary partners, but also the FHBRO, which we mentioned earlier, and the National Capital Commission, the RCMP, and I can go on. What we have done to address that is to put in place a governance structure where we have all the players sitting at one table to be able to address the common issues. I can tell you that in my tenure in the parliamentary precinct branch, I have seen good efficiencies come out of that common governance.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Okay.

Well, thank you very much. We won't go any deeper into that.

[Nancy Chahwan]

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

The meeting will be adjourned, and we can reconvene at the west door of Centre Block for our little green bus.

Thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.