Evidence of meeting #145 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was project.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Deputy Clerk, Administration, House of Commons
The parties will determine, yes.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
Is this the official parties or every party that has a seat in the House?
Deputy Clerk, Administration, House of Commons
It's the recognized parties.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
You mentioned there are a lot of lessons you learned from the construction of West Block. You mentioned that having MPs involved was something that had been overlooked at this time.
Can you be more specific as to what actual physical lessons, aside from the involvement of members of Parliament, you learned from the opening of West Block, what things were overlooked here?
Deputy Clerk, Administration, House of Commons
It could be a very long list. Obviously, we're going to do a report and we're going to assess. We're still learning things.
Liberal
Deputy Clerk, Administration, House of Commons
One of them, I would say, is about the operationalization of the building versus the construction. How can we do that better? We had a model. When it was developed it was that we finish the building—the construction, the structure and so on—and then we integrate the technology and the testing. We accelerated that process toward the end of the project, when we started to do it in parallel to basically shorten the time to operationalize and make the building fully operational. I think it's a qualified success, but I think we have learned that, if we want to do that and do it in a more serial manner, the way that we do the project—we've discussed it often amongst ourselves—is by zone. We need a clean zone before we start doing the technology.
Liberal
Stéphan Aubé Chief Information Officer, House of Commons
If I could add to this, as we just talked about, instead of saying an end date 10 years ago, but kind of focusing on an end period, to give ourselves maybe a return of Parliament versus saying it has to be that September. We can look within a yearly period. It gives us the proper time to do the operationalization, as Michel talked about, so we can move in at the proper time for Parliament. That's one big thing.
The other one is the balance between security and operations. We want to make sure.... For example, we had some issues with the exterior doors on this building. Security requirements were very high to meet requirements for this building, recognizing that it caused many operational issues. These are lessons learned that we want to make sure are folded into the design of the Centre Block, as an example.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Thank you to our guests for being here today.
Based on what came out of the previous discussion regarding the effort to try to move toward getting authorization for a plan at the front end from parliamentarians, I think that makes sense. I think it's a logical way to start approving the overall theme and needs. Facing up to some of the compromises it involves on our part would be helpful.
I do observe that there are some things for which we can't avoid putting off some of the decisions, based on the fact that our needs and expectations are going to change. I'll give you an example of one.
We're going through this process with my family's business. We're building a new head office. We have to deal with the fact that expectations about washrooms are changing. Washrooms were traditionally women's washrooms and men's washrooms. Now we've started to incorporate the idea of baby changing washrooms. Now you have three sets of washrooms with less space in each one. Maybe we want a gender non-specific washroom in the future. We can actually guess at what our future selves are going to want.
Given that the washrooms in Centre Block are a vexed question anyway, this is something where an approval process may have to occur several years down the road for certain aspects of the building. We can get to some of the lighting—I'd point to that as another example—possibly as changes occur, as well as ventilation, because expectations as to acceptable carbon dioxide levels are likely to shift over time. I throw those out.
I wanted to ask a couple questions on general themes here. On the relationship between the Centre Block renovation and the long-term plan, is the group that's being set up just meant to feed back regarding Centre Block only, or on long-term plans as well?
Deputy Clerk, Administration, House of Commons
I would suggest it's the long-term plan as well, because it's all part and parcel of a bigger project, which is the parliamentary campus.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Right.
I have just been reading that the rehabilitation of Centre Block isn't what is referred to as the “functional requirements” gathering phase. Do you have an end date in mind for that phase?
Deputy Clerk, Administration, House of Commons
I will just give you the end date of what we talked about as design completion. We're talking about January 20, 2022.
Susan, would you go more into—
Senior Director and Executive Architect, Real Property Directorate, House of Commons
Yes. The gathering of the requirements is part of the pre-design and schematic phases, which essentially are ongoing until February 2020. We're at the very beginning of schematic design.
Conservative
Senior Director and Executive Architect, Real Property Directorate, House of Commons
Pre-design and schematic design go to February 2020.
Senior Director and Executive Architect, Real Property Directorate, House of Commons
Then we enter a phase that's called “detail design”. That would go until the beginning of 2022.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Okay. Are these timelines published on some website somewhere?
Senior Director and Executive Architect, Real Property Directorate, House of Commons
No. These are the planned timelines by PSPC at this point.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Right. Is this the sort of document—I think you're referring to something—that you would be comfortable tabling with us so we can have a better grasp ourselves?
