Centre Block renovation facing timeline and budget 'pressures'

Inside look at Centre Block renovation project Mike Le Couteur looks at the multi-billion-dollar renovation of parliament's Centre Block building.

The multibillion-dollar renovation of Parliament’s Centre Block building continues to be on time and on budget, but construction crews are facing “pressures” when it comes to the deadline and total costs, according to the department in charge of the project.

During a tour with members of the media, senior director for Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) Siavash Mohajer said the department did plan for some level of inflation but they “didn’t expect 8 per cent”.

Still, PSPC believes it can stay within the budget of $4.5 billion to $5 billion and have the building ready by 2031.

Some delays to the project were factored into that timeline, however, excavating the basement and below the century-old building proved to be more complicated than expected.

“It's the location of it, it's the type of rock that we're dealing with, it's a heritage building,” Mohajer told CTV News. “So, when you combine all these factors, it's hard to find a project of this scale and complexity around the world.”

The most complex part of the dig so far, has been excavating around the foundation of the iconic Peace Tower. Teams have had to follow a very “rigid path,” according to Mohajer, using smaller excavators.

One part of the renovation is installing 800 posts to stabilize the building. A series of one thousand jacks will be used to raise Centre Block and lower it onto a new poling system, which will allow the building to withstand a 6.5 magnitude earthquake.

Crews have also dug 92 geothermal wells, down 250 metres, where a new Welcome Centre will sit to heat and cool the renovated building once it's reopened. The move is expected to transform the parliament building from one of the least energy-efficient government buildings to one that meets a net zero-carbon standard.

Keeping construction environmentally friendly has also been a goal from the start, and PSPC says they have managed to divert 95 per cent of construction waste away from landfills. That’s despite carting away 26 million pounds of hazardous materials, including asbestos and lead.

With most of the excavation on the site done, visitors to Parliament Hill will see three new cranes erected on the site. Those cranes will help build the three-story deep visitors centre which will be the newest feature, connecting Centre, East and West Blocks.

The welcome center’s foundation is expected to be finished by 2025.

Inside the building, the heart of Canada’s democracy has been stripped down to the studs. More than twenty thousand heritage assets are being removed and restored during the project. It includes hundreds of sculptures that adorn the Gothic revival-style building, both inside and out.

Danny Barber has lost count of how many hours he put into restoring a four-hundred-pound sculpture of a bison that hung from one of the exterior walls. However, the stone carver from PSPC’s decorative arts team is happy he is part of this project.

“I'm very proud to have worked on this stone,” Barber told reporters. “This isn't the sort of thing that we get on our workbenches very often, we were born 100 years too late for that.”

The number of MP benches and how much space in the House of Commons is another issue the Centre Block Rehabilitation Program team is currently grappling with. When parliamentarians left the building in 2018, there were 338 members of parliament. That number is going to be 343 in the next election as the Fair Representation Act dictates the number of elected MPs must keep in line with the population growth of the country.

However, the physical space of the House of Commons chamber cannot be expanded, so officials are looking at different options. “We've got to try and incorporate a type of seat - a type of work surface and a typology or a layout that will allow for that flexibility,” said Darrell de Grandmont, the House of Commons lead for the Centre Block Rehabilitation Program.

Canada is looking at possibly using benches or non-assigned seating like the U.K. House of Commons. “We’re at the point right now where we’re looking at mock-ups to have our MPs actually sit in the seats and understand what they’re actually going to be getting,” de Grandmont told CTV News.