by Momoko Price
News Staff

Ongoing employee complaints about poor air circulation, rainwater leaks and stifling heat have highlighted the need for ventilation system repairs in UBC’s Strangway building, a number of which are scheduled to begin this week.

Jon Waplington works as human resources secretary in the development office on the fifth floor of the building. Soon after moving into the office last year, he came down with an undiagnosed illness, which forced him to leave his job for four months. He suspects the illness was brought on by poor air circulation in the new building.

“At first they were treating me as a neurological case in the hospital,” he said. “I had impaired speech, motor skill issues, stuff like that.”

“I was just like a zombie,” he continued. “They were treating me as if I had a brain tumour or something, but then they started ruling things out…they could tell me everything I didn’t have, but nothing that I did have.”

Waplington contends that he was not the only one suffering chronic discomfort in the building at the time. “I got sick quite quickly. But certainly after I got back I heard people hadn’t been feeling well,” he said. “And I think that’s a pretty common thread throughout the whole building.”

Bob Woollard, head of the UBC department of family practice, is also seriously concerned about Strangway’s air quality. His office, as well as the rest of the UBC department of family practice, is located on the third floor of the building.

“It’s been a very real problem,” Woollard said. “It’s been pretty thoroughly investigated in terms of its status by the WorkSafeBC compensation board, and the air quality reports that have come in have basically confirmed [our] concerns.”

“In my personal opinion, there’s virtually no air circulation. We’ve measured it; there really isn’t. When the system is up and running, the air doesn’t circulate at all in my office.”

Woollard said the department brought in consultants from Siemens, the original installers of the air management system, to assess the situation. When the engineers shut off all the side channels between the main plenum and his office, Woollard said even with maximum output they could only get 40 per cent of the minimum required standard for air movement in the area.

He added that the lack of air circulation is contributing to soaring temperatures within the building. “Routinely, if it’s a sunny day, even with low ambient air outside, [the] temperature goes up to 33 degrees in my office, which is, needless to say, challenging. Even my IT people tell me it has an adverse effect on the computers.”

He went on to say that the conditions have affected office productivity and even forced some employees to work from home.

Dan Leslie, associate director of UBC Plant Operations (Building Operations and Maintenance), has been helping to deal with the problem since the building was turned over from UBC Properties Trust to Plant Operations last September.

“There are various things that [UBC Properties Trust] is doing right now to address the problem,” he said. “It’s a holistic issue, if you will, with the heating, ventilation and air conditioning. There’s no one specific area that has been identified as causing the issue. There’s a whole pile of related pieces of equipment and so on and so forth that they’re trying to adjust and fine-tune.”

According to Leslie, UBC Plant Operations and UBC Properties Trust are currently working together to address the problem through a series of adjustments to the ventilation and heating systems.

“The engineers are involved, it’s not strictly trial and error; they do have their engineering behind them,” he said. “The technical term is they’re trying to do ‘commissioning of the building.’ That means you do something, see if it has the desirable outcome, if not you go back and do it again.”

In addition to ventilation problems, employees in the development office have noticed numerous leaks in the ceiling, resulting in several brown stains lining the ceiling tiles on the fifth floor.

Greg Hashimoto, consultant for UBC Properties Trust, has not heard of leakage on the fifth floor, but said that water infiltration has occurred before on the lower floors, caused by rainwater from storms getting sucked into the air intake mechanism on the roof. “Where the intake of fresh air comes into the building, the design of the opening by the manufacturer was incorrect,” he said. “We’ve done a recall on it and they’re re-manufacturing that particular location, and that will be modified probably [this] week.”

With regards to the “stuffiness” on the third and fifth floors of the building, Hashimoto said that just before Christmas, it was determined that the speed of the ventilation fans were “maybe a bit on the low side.” He also said that the complaint registered by WorkSafeBC was not confirmed by their own air quality assessments. In any case, he stated that it’s a minor concern that will soon be rectified.

“We haven’t got the fan speed quite right yet,” he said. “It’s being looked after and dealt with right now, but there’s nothing of a serious nature in there.”

Both Leslie and Hashimoto contend that structural and systemic adjustments are common issues for new buildings.