The Shangri-La Hotel Toronto Project consists of nine underground parkade levels and 68-storey reinforced concrete tower 705 ft, providing 202 hotel rooms and 395 luxury residential homes on University Avenue in Toronto. Stratum team members took over construction management in 2009, when the project’s ownership terminated the original construction management team due to poor performance. At this time, the project had been delayed for eight months and had issues with budgeting and cost monitoring. The project was successfully delivered before the 2012 Toronto Film Festival, meeting all ownership expectations for schedule, budget, quality, and safety.

Project type:
Mixed-use (hotel and residential tower)
Client:
Westbank Project Corp. and Peterson Group.
Architect:
James KM Cheng Architect Inc.
Contractor:
180 University Management Inc.
Location:
Toronto, ONT
Services:
Construction management
Construction duration:
42 months
Completion date:
2012
Construction value:
$304 million
Project size:
873,270 ft2

Challenges / solutions

When the team took over construction management, the project had an 8-
month delay and problems surrounding budgeting and cost monitoring. The
approach to rectify this involved utilizing:

  • A 3-day structural cycle for 15,000 ft2 typical floor construction
  • A 3-storey unitized tower curtainwall installation on the same day
  • A wind protection screen wall for open façade tower structure construction
  • An offshore materials control management system
  • Guaranty site dimensions for offshore products such as kitchen cabinets, stone slab countertops, stone slab bathroom wall cladding

Additional challenges related to the design process whereby the design was a progressive design providing details as the construction moved forward in order to obtain the overall schedule. This required additional detailed coordination and document control to ensure that the “just in time” design documents were delivered and incorporated into the fast-tracked construction process and execution.