An article from
Project Wins
The facility at the University of Fraser Valley near Vancouver is being funded to a large degree by British Columbia.
Award: Mass timber student housing facility
Value: $54.5 million
Location: British Columbia, Canada
Clients: University of Fraser Valley
New York-based Turner Construction and its majority-owned partner company Clark Builders have won a CA$73 million Canadian dollars ($54.5 millionUSD) contract to build a six-story, mass timber student housing facility at the University of Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada, according to a Turner press release.
The six-story mass timber building will house 398 beds on the university’s Abbotsford campus, about 40 miles southeast of Vancouver. British Columbia is providing CA$70.3 million toward the project as part of its larger effort to deliver more than 8,000 new on-campus beds across the province by 2028, according to a provincial release.
The student housing facility, which is being built to Passive House Building Certification standards, will include lounges, shared kitchens, study and mixed-use and cultural space. Passive House standards are viewed as some of the strictest energy and resource efficiency thresholds in the world.
The project will be delivered through the Integrated Project Delivery method, a construction process that aims at increased efficiency and engagement of all project participants through each phase of design, fabrication and construction. Born out of the construction industry’s lack of productivity gains in the last half century, the process is modeled on lean construction as well as Toyota production methods.
The Turner and Clark construction team will include modularization and pre-fabrication into the building program, with Calgary-based DIALOG + Group 2 serving as the project’s architectural team, according to a University of Fraser Valley press release.
Construction will begin this year and the facility will be ready for occupancy in the fall of 2024.
