CCI's Building Undergoes Its Own "Treatment and Development"

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CCI Newsletter, No. 33, May 2004

CCI's Building Undergoes Its Own "Treatment and Development"

by Michael Harrington, Manager, Treatment and Development

As I write this, the CCI building has been under siege for over two years. Consultants have peered, probed and tested. Construction crews have torn out walls, drilled holes and rebuilt walls. CCI personnel have been displaced and building systems have been assessed, upgraded and replaced. Despite this upheaval, our staff have continued to deliver an admirable range of valuable client service.

In 1999, it was clear that the current facilities no longer met the needs of the Institute. A series of studies and a search for an available building or location suitable for the four CCI sites in the National Capital Region looked promising. A comprehensive functional plan developed in 2001 for a new building described in detail the facilities we would need to carry out our work in the coming years. The delivery of this plan coincided with the events of September 2001. It soon became clear that funding for a new facility was far from the Government of Canada's top priority.

As this planning was underway, we were also trying to find the source of the negative health effects being experienced by an unusually high number of staff members. An intensive survey of indoor air quality and building components led to a disturbing discovery — a toxic mould growing throughout the exterior wall cavity of the building. This discovery, in turn, led to an extensive disruption of all CCI activities. The mould is the result of introducing a high level of relative humidity (RH) into a building shell that began life as a large warehouse. Retrofitted in 1976 for our use, the exterior wall system eventually failed to contain the up to 15 500 litres of water per day that were injected into the airstream to maintain a museum environment. Once the mould colonies established themselves in the wet cavities, they flourished on the nourishment provided by wooden elements and the paper surface of the drywall sheets.

Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) hired Dunlop Architects, a Toronto firm with extensive health care and laboratory experience, to develop a solution for our problem. Working closely with CCI staff, they proposed a prototype remediation, following the New York Protocol, to remove the mould and contaminated material from the exterior walls. They would install a robust insulation and vapour seal system that could contain the high RH that we need to maintain to protect our client's objects, entrusted to us for treatment and research. Lessons learned in the prototype process were then applied to the design of the full-scale remediation project.

The mould remediation project obliterated a swath 3 metres wide around the interior perimeter of the building, where people had offices, labs, etc. This displaced every staff member. As this project progressed, it became clear that rebuilding as found was no longer an option. Changing operational needs and code compliance drew a significantly different floor plan. The need to separate office space from lab areas led to creating two new mezzanine areas — one to house office activities and the other to become the new home for our archival conservation research team, housed until now on the Tunney's Pasture Campus. Mining the information collected in the 2001 functional plan, we reduced the number of laboratory areas needing precisely controlled RH, then limited them to the interior core as much as possible. We surrounded those areas with offices that will act as dynamic buffer zones. The laboratory extraction systems and the building air handling systems are being completely reconfigured to provide a safe working environment for all of our staff, interns and visitors.

Throughout this project, CCI staff have shown incredible patience and commitment to professional service. They have been challenged to find innovative ways to continue to deliver client service. As our capacity to maintain an appropriate environment diminished, artifacts were moved to sister organizations, and laboratory-based treatments were delayed. Site visits, writing projects and in situ treatment projects increased.

Our clients and the larger conservation community have also displayed patience and generosity. Our colleagues at the Parks Canada Ontario Service Centre very kindly made room in their facility for us to continue treating a number of important projects. Perhaps the most affected group outside of our organization is the conservation students, who have not been able to access our library, or the interns who have been denied internship opportunities by these events.

The reward for this sacrifice is clear. By the time you read this, most staff will be housed in bright functional office areas and the laboratory reconfiguration will be well underway. The CCI Library will once again be a powerful research resource, but will feature a larger collections area and a reading lounge bathed in natural light. CCI will be housed in a facility that better meets its needs, and that offers a healthy, functional, safe workplace where staff and interns can focus on the challenges of conservation.