The City of Surrey has implemented a Community Climate Action Strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep energy affordable for its residents. As part of this strategy, a District Energy plant was built to generate heating and hot water more efficiently through a series of underground piping that directly connects to buildings within the Surrey Downtown core.

Trotter & Morton was responsible for all own forces and sub-trade management for the mechanical scope which included: heat exchangers, piping, air handling units, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), plumbing fixtures, boilers, valves, and pumps.

In order to meet the schedule, Trotter & Morton used BIM software to model the project and determine what components could be prefabricated and partially assembled off-site. They prefabricated 60-70% of the large components for the mechanical systems off-site and then assembled them once they were craned into the energy centre.

These district energy systems are a new direction that municipalities and institutions such as universities are moving toward, but the difference today is that they utilize hot water, rather than steam found in older systems. The new facility uses high-efficiency boilers that utilize 80 percent natural gas and 20 percent renewable biogas obtained from Surrey’s bio-fuel facility that converts food scraps and yard waste.

This is the third B.C. energy system that Trotter & Morton has installed, with the others at the universities of British Columbia and Victoria. (The company is currently working on a fourth at Vancouver International Airport). As a result, the company came into a project that had challenges but with a solid foundation of expertise to mitigate them.

Despite the challenges, Trotter & Morton’s project came in on budget and through the use of value-engineering and innovations such as silencers for the breeching on the boilers, the use of BIM for clash detection and efficiencies through prefabrication were achieved.

Trotter & Morton captured the Vancouver Regional Construction Association Silver Awards of Excellence in the category of mechanical contracts on a project valued at $3 million to $9 million.