It has been some time since we’ve written about the renovations on the Library Blog. While nothing has visibly changed here at the CCLA, that does not mean that our Renovations Committee hasn’t been hard at work, making the project possible. There are a good number of steps to a renovation project of this scale, and we’d like to share with you some of our key milestones so far.
In early 2011, the CCLA developed a Renovations Management Committee. This Committee is chaired by 2011 CCLA Past President Clive Savage, and has done a tremendous amount of work in moving this project along. As previously mentioned, the CCLA engaged Ottawa firm [in]Tempo to create design concepts for our Lounge and Library. After touring the CCLA’s space, and consulting extensively with CCLA board members and staff to identify spatial requirements and thoughts on how the space could be made better, a design was finalized early last year. This design was approved by the Board shortly thereafter. In April 2011, we held our first large stakeholders meeting to present [in]Tempo’s design. Invited to this meeting (from outside of the CCLA) were members of the Judiciary, courthouse administration, representatives from Infrastructure Ontario (the organization that manages government buildings on behalf of the province), and Martha Foote, the general manager of LibraryCo. The design was very well received by those in attendance, and in June 2011, the Ministry of the Attorney General (“MAG”) approved our renovations project.
Once approval for the design was granted from MAG, a fundraising committee was struck here at the CCLA during the summer of 2011, with 2011 CCLA President Mary Jane Binks, Q.C., serving as chair. This committee is made up of senior leaders from the Ottawa legal community and the Executive Committee, and will be reaching out in their fundraising campaign in the coming months.
Also during the summer, the CCLA Board met again to fine-tune our project proposal in anticipation of further talks with MAG. In the fall, we met with MAG’s Facilities Management Branch to develop the project charter for the renovation – a project charter essentially being the contract between the CCLA and the MAG, specifying the parameters of the project, the time line, and the financial obligations. As the CCLA is considered to be a tenant in the Courthouse, we are obliged to follow their processes for a renovations project of this scope. As such, these meetings also involved Infrastructure Ontario in their capacity as facilities manager, and the engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, who will serve as the construction project manager.
Our most recent milestone has been in setting the cost estimates for the project. As our initial estimate varied greatly from that provided by MAG, our Renovations Committee has been at work in moving the cost estimate back down towards our projections. In late 2011, MAG agreed to an estimate much closer to the that initially obtained by the CCLA.
This brings us to the present. We are currently creating a page on our website dedicated to the renovation. This page will include all of the concept drawings we have from [in]Tempo design, as well as the draft floor plan, which I’m sure many of you will be excited to see. We’ll be letting you know as soon as the page is ready, as well as providing more regular updates on the project. If you are planning on attending our AGM next week, we will have some of the images on hand for you to check out there – please do, and let us know what you think!