The Restoration Team: Owner – Neil Shepherd, Director, Physical Plant, Baycrest Centre; Consultant Harald Tiitson, C.E.T., Medhurst, Hogg Sobottka, Leong & Associates Limited (MHSL); Contractor Geoff Grist, Production Manager, Everest Restoration Limited.

The Baycrest Centre knew that exterior building sealants, coatings and other exterior envelope components required repair or replacement. With a number of structures to look after and additional buildings planned, Baycrest selected MHSL as their consultants to help determine repair priorities, establish scopes of work develop tender and contract documents and review the work in progress.

The Project developed by MHSL in consultation with the Owners, spanned five years and addressed the exterior restoration requirements of four buildings: the Baycrest Terrace, the Jewish Home for the Aged, the Joseph E. and Minnie Wagman Centre, and the Baycrest Hospital.

The Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care is dedicated to its senior citizens and takes its mandate seriously. In adopting this orientation, Everest Restoration made sure that all interests were carefully addressed, including various cultural-religious issues, safety, noise concerns, dust and the maintenance of respectful interactions with all concerned at all times.

Phase I of the Work began in 1997 at the Baycrest Terrace, and included caulking, brick replacement; repointing, shelf angle replacement and masonry anchorage. The first order of business was to set up a painted plywood hoarding and overhead protection. Other preliminary site and organizational issues were dealt with and the Work got underway.

Our next task was to obtain replacement brick. The brick selected was Darlington Brick No. 25, Royal Speckled, Smooth, supplied by Commonwealth, Brampton, Ontario. This was the actual matching brick but had to be specially manufactured for this project (it is no longer on the regular market). In addition to standard stretcher brick custom shaped angle bricks also had to be fabricated for corner applications. The work strategy and schedule had to accommodate the waiting period involved while the brick units were manufactured.

In addition to deteriorated sealants, two key issues were uncovered at the Baycrest Terrace. Insufficient allowance for movement in the brick panels had to remedied by installing horizontal expansion joints at shelf angle locations. In addition, the shelf angles themselves were not meeting the structural support requirements of the brick panels. As a consequence, brick units were cracking or scaling.

When the concrete floor slabs were placed originally, they did not terminate uniformly along the same vertical plane. Unfortunately, this fact does not appear to have been considered when the shelf angles were installed, so that some of the brickwork had proper seating, and some did not; that is, some of the brickwork was properly supported by shelf angles and some was not.

When areas were opened up, it was further noticed that not all of the shelf angles went far enough, and especially at corners, areas of brickwork were without any form of shelf angle support at all. One of the tasks became the replacement of the existing deteriorated, missing or incorrectly dimensioned shelf angles with new, galvanized units that accounted for the fluctuations in vertical alignment of the floor slab terminations. For the purposes of uniformity and life-cycle considerations (long-term savings), all of the shelf angles were replaced with location-specific dimensioning of the new, galvanized units.

As each new year is considered, the available budget is considered along with the prioritized schedule of repairs in order to minimize damage and risk Accordingly, each new Phase is tailored to meet fluctuating budget allocations, strategically adjusted to address the hierarchy of restoration priorities. This year, for instance, we are focusing on sealant replacement at the Baycrest Terrace and the Joseph E. and Minnie Wagman Centre.

In this regard, the phased restoration plan is a modified maintenance program that will span over five, meet annual budget requirements, and continually refocus itself on life-cycle priorities as opposed to first cost analysis.

First costs, what something costs at time of installation, are often more expensive solutions when viewed over the duration of ownership for long-term holdings. When the focus is on life-cycle costs, quality products are installed, reducing the long-term costs for the Owner. The Baycrest Project is a model of a life-cycle partnership that satisfies the interests of all parties concerned.

Written by: David Organ, Chief estimator, Everest Restoration Limited, April, 1998.