St. Teresa Place facility located in Calgary, Alberta is a total precast supportive living building. The project was a successful collaboration between Armtec Precast, Covenant Care, FWBA Architects, MPE Engineering Ltd. and Manshield Construction. Located at 10 Redstone Place in Northeastern Calgary, this supportive living complex is 4-storeys in height, contains 250 units and has a gross building area of 205,000 square feet. The building was completed on a condensed installation schedule, without compromising the architectural design.

FWBA Architects worked with Armtec to replace the traditional building method of this care facility with an innovative total precast concrete building solution. Since its inception, the project has been a rewarding journey of integrated design, collaboration, value engineering and cross-functional brainstorming meetings. The structure, supplied by Armtec, is comprised of architectural insulated wall panels, solid interior wall panels, precast columns, stair stringers, steel Deltabeams and hollowcore floor and roof slabs.

Armtec created architectural features and elements with formliners and concrete stains. Seven different forms were used to create 32 different sizes and styles of architectural panels and a penetrating concrete stain was used to attain several different colours on the building. 

Peikko Group’s Deltabeam concrete connections, made of fibre-reinforced polymers, were used to ensure no thermal breaks in the walls. The building has 64 precast stair stringers installed throughout and hollowcore planks were used for the floor and roof.  

This building method facilitated a fabrication and installation schedule of mere months – starting with precast production in June, precast installation starting in August and completion by the end of November. This aggressive schedule is very much in line with the province of Alberta’s commitment to building an inventory of 2,000 continuing care beds as soon as possible. Building these facilities with traditional construction materials would not be possible under these tight and accelerated schedules. Total precast construction provides a state-of-the-art solution for continuing care needs by delivering a safe, fast, sustainable and resilient building. 

Beyond the tight timeline and building aesthetics, other key advantages to using precast on this project were:

• high level of quality assurance
• a controlled production environment
• operational & energy efficiency
• reduced on-site labour
• enhanced project safety
• minimized need for winter “heating & hoarding”
• use of local labour & materials
• multi-hazard protection
• schedule savings
• durability & low maintenance

Watch this interesting video about the project at https://youtu.be/g0uGae0k6nk.