With a building footprint of over four hectares, the centre is comprised of 48,000 square metres of mail processing plant and 15,000 square metres of two-storey office space. The 17 hectare site features paved truck circulation, docking space to serve 99 shipping and receiving bays, secured heavy vehicle parking area and parking space for over 750 vehicles.

Although the mail processing and conveying equipment was installed under separate contracts by Canada Post, Bird was responsible for coordinating the equipment into the building’s design under the contract. With hundreds of separate pieces of equipment and over five miles of conveyors to be installed in the building, equipment integration was considered at every phase of design development and was a huge driver for our construction schedule and methodology.

The most challenging aspect of the project was meeting the demanding schedule. In order to achieve Canada Post’s commitments to their equipment vendors, various areas of the processing plant had to be handed over at earlier dates to allow equipment and conveyor installation to commence. Bird successfully met each milestone date by obtaining building permits in phases, pre-ordering major structural steel sections before the design was finalized, constructing the building out-of-sequence and strategically accelerating critical work activities.