Initiatives & Projects

The Campus Plan project webpage includes general information on the project, sustainability features, a live camera showing the project site and information on current construction and its impacts on the community.

Fast + Epp are the structural engineers for the project and have a page on their website about the project.

The CPF Vimeo site is where to find project videos including including drone footage, project updates and 3D renderings.

The Campus Plan project webpage includes general information on the elements of the complex which includes:

• Concert Properties Centre for Trades and Technology building
• Robert Bosa Carpentry Pavilion
• Marine and Mass Timber Workshop
• Campus Services Building
• Ecological restoration of Guichon Creek

BCIT names new Trades and Technology building after Vancouver developer Concert Properties | BCIT News, July 2022

Trades and Technology Project Update 2022 [PDF]

Trades and Technology Centre Opportunity Assessment Report May 2016 [PDF]

Energy & Greenhouse Gas Management at BCIT.

2022 Climate Change Accountability Report [PDF]

The School of Construction and the Environment (SoCE) hosted a three day sustainability charrette facilitated by Ecocity Builders in 2009. The purpose was to work with staff, faculty and students to apply ecocity principles to envision the transformation of BCIT’s Burnaby campus into a living laboratory of sustainability. Over the course of the three days, the focus grew from small-scale efforts for immediate implementation to larger scale efforts to reduce energy and materials by a factor of four at the north end of the Burnaby campus (known as the Sustainability Precinct), to ambitious transformation of the entire campus to achieve factor-ten reductions in energy and materials consumption without compromising service levels. The name “Factor Four Initiative” was later adopted as it reflected the mid-term focus for action.

Located in the Northeast sector of the Burnaby campus, the Factor Four Area comprises buildings NE1 through NE8. These buildings house the majority of SoCE’s programs. Applied research in reducing the ecological footprint of education delivery and campus operations while maintaining or improving the student learning environment serves as a key theme to align the concept of BCIT campuses as living laboratories with the Factor Four Initiative.

All of the projects that comprise the Factor Four Initiative are documented on the Factor Four web pages and include teaching resources such as case studies, videos, working drawings and real-time data feeds to enhance the learning environment for educational programs.

Explore the Factor Four website

The Sustainability Precinct: Establishing the Science of Ecocity Building at the British Columbia Institute of Technology — Burnaby Campus 2010 [PDF]

Factor Four Initiative: Implementation Update 2014 [PDF]

Factor Four at BCIT – An Authentic Living Lab Experiment 2018 [PDF]

Factor Four Initiative: Implementation Update 2019 [PDF]

The Elevated Lab is used to educate and train the next generation of students and local professionals in leading-edge green roof, living wall, and green façade technologies. From green roof performance to acoustical architecture, through to urban ecology and rainwater harvesting, the Centre is pushing the envelope to understand and develop best practices for healthy cities, healthy people, and healthy ecosystems.

Architectural Ecology systems have many direct impacts on the environment and community, such as limiting stormwater runoff, insulating and protecting buildings, reducing noise pollution, limiting energy consumption, cleaning the air and introducing greater biodiversity into the urban cores. Over 200 BCIT students aided in the construction of the Lab.

Current research on the Elevated Lab is focused on Technologies and Ecologies. The ‘Technologies’ section of the Elevated Lab showcases a range of what is possible for extensive green roofs with limited load bearing capacity, including solar panels, a small wetland, food growing, and Indigenous designs symbolizing truth and reconciliation. The ‘Ecologies’ section is used to advance our understanding of the capacities of extensive green roof systems with respect to community ecology (plants, soils, pollinators), while advancing the practice of regenerative design for healthy cities and ecosystems.

An article written by Sean Murphy, a student in Broadcast & Online Journalism provides an interesting perspective.

The Centre for Architetural Ecology’s website provides a wealth of resources for students including case studies.

What is SMART?

SMART advances the state of the electric power Smart Grid at national and international levels, working to:

• Chart a “path from lab to field” for cost-effective technologies and solutions for Canada’s evolving smart electricity grid
• Provide opportunities for electrical utility companies, technology providers and researchers to work together to develop architectures, protocols, configurations and models of the evolving Smart Grid
• Enable Canadian researchers to develop and validate technologies required to meet Canada’s priorities for co-generation, efficient transmission and distribution of electricity, load control, demand response, advanced metering and integration of clean energy sources into the existing and future grids.

SMART Research Areas

• Energy OASIS – Microgrid and Energy Management Systems
• Electric Vehicle Infrastructure
• Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity Lab
• Medium Voltage Testing Lab
• Electric Vehicle Awareness
• Remote Community Microgrid

The Burnaby campus is the largest campus at 130.7 acres. The south end of campus has a forested area with second growth coniferous trees and other vegetation characteristic of its Coastal Western Hemlock biogeoclimatic zone (CWHdm). The campus is situated in the Brunette River watershed and Guichon Creek runs through campus from the south campus forest to the north end of campus. The campus grounds are regularly utilized for experiential student learning.

The existing wetland was very small and shallow and had been impacted by human activities, so the site was excavated to create a larger pond area. After construction, students planted native riparian and aquatic plants and the wetland filled naturally with groundwater. The aim of the project was to create a more diverse ecosystem that could support a number of birds, mammals, and amphibians while also slowing, filtering, and storing water within the Guichon Creek watershed.

The area is a unique living lab, providing students the opportunity to observe how the wetland recovers from the construction phase and thrives over time. A key component of an adaptive management approach to ecological restoration is ongoing monitoring and maintenance as well as analysis of the effectiveness of the restoration. In 2023, Ecological Restoration students were required to respond to a hypothetical Request for Proposal by developing a proposed monitoring plan that would assess wildlife habitat characteristics within the wetland and surrounding forested area. The students carried out many of their proposed monitoring methods including vegetation and bird surveys, water quality assessments, as well as monitoring the site using wildlife cameras. The cameras captured mallards, wood ducks, song sparrows, and a raccoon in and around the wetland.

Read more about the wetland in the BCIT News

In 2021, Vancouver International Airport (YVR) partnered with the BCIT Centre for Internet of Things to obtain technical expertise and provide Living Labs for students and faculty to research new processes and technology from a wide variety of applications. The Internet of Things, or IoT, refers to the billions of physical devices around the world that are now connected to the Internet, all collecting and sharing data. Connecting all these different objects and adding sensors to them adds a level of digital intelligence, enabling them to communicate real-time data without involving a human being. The IoT is making the fabric of the world around us smarter and more responsive, bridging the physical and digital worlds.

YVR is located on Sea Island in the Fraser River estuary with an elevation of three metres. It is vulnerable to rising sea levels, storm surges and high flood levels in the Fraser River. As part of the airport’s need to address climate change and rising sea levels, more accurate data is required to monitor the watershed off Sea Island.

Utilizing expertise from multiple disciplines, the project team designed and implemented:

• A smart device using C programming to connect a wide range of sensors to an Arduino
• Communication and power design addressing NB-IoT cellular communication and power consumption by the device, ensuring data is sent to the cloud
• AWS cloud architecture to store the incoming data (mentored by external experts from Rackspace and Onica)
• Web-based dashboard enabling the operator to monitor and track changes in real-time
• Mechanical and electric design and fabrication of a working prototype

These stations will enable higher accuracy of measurements and enhanced sampling rates that will reduce labour costs while improving the quality of the data. The data is collected 24/7 and is stored in the cloud. When combined with sensor data installed into weather models and tide data, it provides a complete set of data for monitoring and analytics and predicting the flow of water around YVR.

The water monitoring station prototype was installed in Guichon Creek on BCIT’s Burnaby campus and went through several months of testing. Data monitored includes pH balance, conductivity, diffuse oxygen, water temperature, turbidity and Total Distributed Solids (TDS). The video below demonstrates the Guichon Creek prototype.

Read more at the BCIT News

The School of Energy’s research focus is on energy systems and efficient energy processes with expertise and facilities in electrical and mechanical manufacturing, renewable energy, industrial processes and power engineering.

Forty-eight percent of all energy produced in Canada is consumed by industry. As such, any improvements in industrial processes have significant impacts on our overall consumption patterns. The Spartan Controls Centre on the Burnaby campus is a nexus for academic connection, drawing together academics and researchers from across the Institute. Students, faculty and operations personnel work together in a cross-disciplinary living lab learning and research environment focused on energy production, distribution, sustainability and management.

Highlights of the Spartan Controls Centre include:

• The cleanest operating boiler in Western Canada, with controls to minimize emissions and maximize energy efficiency aligning us with the BC Government’s clean energy mandate.
• A 220 kW electrical generator to harness the output from the boiler as part of BCIT’s SMART microgrid.
• The multi-fuel boiler produces enough steam to supply multiple remote labs around campus, including the unit operations lab, the turbine co-generation lab, the pulp and paper lab, and the industrial instrumentation lab.
• Many of the key economic industries including bitumen and pulp processing require huge amounts of heat and steam. The research and teaching will help to shift Canada’s industrial plants toward cleaner and more efficient modern technology and processes.
• The centre is at the forefront of the greening of Canada’s industrial landscape.