Saskatoon hospital upgrades funded from utility savings

The Royal University Hospital (RUH) provides acute-care services for Saskatoon . Working with a building technology and energy service company (ESCO), it has invested $13.6 million to provide critical facility upgrades expected to save $1.4 million annually, along with providing a healthier environment both inside the hospital and in the larger community. Find out what was changed.

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Parliamentary privileges

When you come to Parliament on your first day, you wonder how you ever got here. After that, you wonder how the other 263 members got here,” said John Diefenbaker while addressing the Canadian speaker’s forum, the Empire Club, during the Canadian flag debate in 1967.

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Architects and Specification Writers: Part two

A basic tenet of a good set of construction documents is “Mention it once and in the right place.” The contract is between the owner and the contractor, and the specifications communicate to the latter what is required (without telling the contractor how to construct). This second article in a three-part series on architects, specifiers, and construction documentation focuses on language and specification format.

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Architects and Specification Writers: Part 1

In more than one instance, this author has heard an architect tell a specifier something along the lines of “You want 250 hours for specifications? I have only budgeted 70 hours.” A project manager once told me, “We provide specifications only because the client requires us to do it—the contractor does not look at the specifications until there is a legal issue.” This is a dangerous line of thinking because it eventually has negative impact on the architectural firm and its reputation.

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