New Academic Building

IMEG provided MEP, Acoustic, and Technology engineering services for the Robert W. Plaster Free Enterprise Center project at Concordia University. The academic building houses Concordia’s Batterman School of Business and CUW’s six academic schools that are focused on healthcare. This design will create opportunities to bring business and healthcare learning together. The 41,000-sf academic building is a unique addition to the campus.

The building features mixed-use laboratories, work rooms, analysis centers, and public areas, including a cross-disciplinary “collaboratorium”, or incubator/collaboration space that matches students with educational mentors and community entrepreneurs; a medical clinic co-managed by faculty and students in the health care administration program; and a meeting space for the Rx think tank. These spaces were designed to support student and community startups and provides an environment that brings people together, fostering learning and problem solving.

Concordia set a goal to reduce the building’s carbon footprint and reduce operating costs. IMEG worked with the team to maximize the efficiency of the building envelope, while being mindful of simple payback of the outside air used for the building’s ventilation system with the buildings exhaust air. That along with high efficiency boilers, demand control ventilation, and LED lighting reduced the buildings energy use intensity by 49% compared to code.