Mail processing plant built with environment, employees’ well-being in mind
When Canada Post built its mail processing plant in Winnipeg, the company decided to go with a design that had special consideration for its employees’ health and safety.
Officially opened on June 4, 2010, one of the most prominent considerations for designers was the building’s air quality. A dedicated exhaust from the photocopy room ensures fumes are directed outside rather than circulated throughout the facility. Similar features are included in the rooms where staff charges batteries.
“The fumes from our battery charging for our forklifts would be a primary (concern),” said Michael Bryson, Canada Post’s director of real estate project delivery. “Any welding we would do in our mechanical rooms all are exhausted directly outside so there are no fumes within the building.”
To ensure employees do not find themselves dealing with contamination, a separate storage building houses hazardous materials on the site to keep potentially harmful chemicals away.
Canada Post was so focused on creating a healthy atmosphere that it hired consultants specializing in health and safety construction.
“Apart from the fact that we use professional architects, mechanical and electrical engineers to ensure that the building met all building codes, we also engaged a third-party life safety expert-consultant who then reviewed the design from a life-safety perspective,” Bryson said. “They reviewed all the drawings and the plans to ensure that all of the building’s egress codes were met.”
Canada Post also included aspects to help encourage healthier lifestyle choices.
“A bicycle-storage room is located near the front entrance of the building and change rooms with showering facilities are located on the main floor just off the main lobby,” he said.
One of Canada Post’s main goals was to create its first LEED-certified mail processing plant. LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a third-party certification process that recognizes leadership in green building. It provides a way to verify a building was designed and built to improve energy savings, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality and reduce harmful emissions.
LEED aims to create a new sense of direction for the building market while creating competition amongst companies to increase their environmental awareness, says Mark Hutchinson, director of green building programs at Canada Green Building Council, the certifying body of the Canadian LEED program.
When a team decides to commit to constructing a LEED-certified building, it allows all parties — including contractors, engineers and builders — to work towards the same target, he says.
“It’s a confirmation of what has been accomplished because, it’s sad to say, but in a lot of building projects there’s no kind of report card on certain objectives that we set out for ourselves and this is how we actually did,” he says.
LEED allows for a series of very small decisions to be publicly acknowledged as a series of positive decisions that result in a very different product and different experience for people who are going to end up working in that building, Hutchinson says.
There are different levels of certification developers can work towards attaining: certified, silver, gold and platinum. Canada Post is hoping its Winnipeg facility will reach gold certification and will serve as a model for the company’s future operations across the country, says Bryson, noting Canada Post has another 19 buildings working towards LEED certification.
Buildings are assessed for LEED certification after construction is complete and occupants have moved into the facility, says Hutchinson. This allows the evaluation to include post-build health and safety considerations.
“Health and safety for the people that are going to be occupying the building is an important part of LEED,” he says, acknowledging most people think the LEED program looks solely at environmental aspects.
The program looks at the paints, sealants and adhesives used in the construction of the building that will have long-term health effects on occupants. It also looks at the flooring and different types of woods that could give off fumes long after construction is completed.
“If you have HVAC systems and you have ducts in place during construction, are those sealed off and protected so that there’s no dust and other things getting in there?” he says. “There’s nothing worse than firing up an HVAC system in a brand new building and having dust coming out of all the ducts because it wasn’t properly protected during construction.”
LEED actually takes the health of occupants into consideration early on during construction.
“The same thing with the initial commissioning of the building, there are requirements there to ensure that you’ve allowed a certain amount of fresh air to pass through the building to get any chemicals from the paint and other things out into the atmosphere and out of the building,” he says. “In essence, you don’t want that new building smell — it’s not a good smell.”
Environmentally-friendly organizations show higher engagement
Organizations with environmentally progressive policies may actually see higher engagement from their workers, according to Michael Kerfod, vice-president of Environmental Careers Organization (ECO), which provides employers with resources to find and retain the best environmental professionals.
“You certainly are seeing this widespread dispersal of environmental professionals in non-traditional environmental sectors,” says Kerford, noting these professionals can exist within any sector of the economy. “Those are employers who are starting to see that operating in a more environmentally friendly way is a cost-savings, or in some cases it might be appealing to a particular segment of their marketplace where greening their operations actually impacts consumer decision making.”
ECO Canada conducted a survey looking at the relationship between 974 environmentally conscious employers and the productivity of employees. In the 2011 professional engagement study, about 81 per cent of respondents said it was very important to have an environmentally-friendly employer.
“The more your organization is credible, trusted, transparent, respected, the more you’re going to attract these high achievers,” he says. “More and more they’re looking for that connection with their employers and the environment is a key element in that equation.”
Operating a business out of a LEED-certified building can actually lead to more engaged staff, Kerford says.
“It’s a very clear, demonstrable way of demonstrating your commitment to environmentally, socially responsible decisions,” he says.
