Once built, the Trottier building completed the new McGill University development on University Street. A concrete building of some 7,000 m² spread over five floors, it includes classrooms, laboratories, an auditorium, large open workspaces and all of the related services usually found in a university building.
For this building, the client required two separate entrances, one on the level of University Street and the other on the campus. Due to the height standards of the City of Montreal, this requirement meant excavating into the rock to an average height of 5 metres and more specifically to a depth 1.5 metres below the existing foundation of the adjacent Rutherford Building. In fact, the new building is connected to the Rutherford building by an underground passage. The program also included a column-free auditorium on the level of University Street. A transfer beam with a span of 18 m was therefore installed to support level 2 up to the roof and retain level 1. Bracing for the building was able to be introduced without compromising the architectural design.
For this project, NCK offered complete structural engineering consulting services within the framework of an accreditation that has led, in the last few years and still today, to the completion of more than 150 different mandates for the maintenance of its building stock, mainly consisting of heritage buildings.
