Skip to main content

BACKGROUNDER ON THE PREFERRED PROPONENT REDEVELOPMENT OF THE OTTAWA CONVENTION CENTRE

These companies form the largest general contracting organization in Canada and the eighth largest in the United States, with an annual construction volume of more than $5 billion.

The PCL family is made up of more than 3,000 full-time professional and administrative salaried staff, and upwards of 5,000 hourly trades people. Since the organization is 100 per cent employee-owned by the majority of their salaried employees, the people who own the PCL family of companies are, in large measure, the people who lead the work.

Their founder Ernie Poole started out in Saskatchewan in 1906 as a builder of small projects, such as farmhouses and four-room schoolhouses. A good businessman with long-term vision, Ernie knew that the key to securing client confidence was to not only deliver a project on time and on budget, but to deliver it using the time-honored principles of honesty, fair play and providing good value for one’s construction dollar. Those principles have made PCL what it is today, and are still very much a part of their culture.

About Brisbin Brook Beynon Architects
Brisbin Brook Beynon Architects is an architecture, design, planning and strategic consulting firm, established in Ottawa in 1986, with both a national and international clientele. The firm specializes in a wide range of building and facilities for businesses, institutions and public agencies. Their services engage the full building cycle from initial planning through design, implementation, and management. They focus on the client’s goals and strategies, and seek to add substantial value to their enterprise through their design services. They believe that their designs should embody the client’s core values, enhance their corporate culture, the efficiency in which they operate and their public profile. In short they believe that good design is an investment, not a cost, and that the business of design is the design of business.

The firm is known internationally for their sports and stadium work, which includes the new Madison Square Garden and Air Canada Centre. In Ottawa their award-winning designs includes the World Exchange Plaza, La Cité Collégiale and the NCC headquarters complex the Chambers. Their recent work in Ottawa includes the new McDonald Cartier International Airport for which they won the RAIC’s excellence in Urban Design Award. Their design for the City of Ottawa won them an accessibility design award, and the Canadian Medical Association Headquarters garnered the Ontario Architecture Association award for architectural excellence.