Servus Headquarters

Last year Servus Credit Union made headlines in Edmonton when it snapped up the former Dell call centre located in the Edmonton Research Park. While the building would enable Servus to bring all its staff under one roof, it required a major overhaul to bring it into line with user needs and to reflect the Servus brand.

The former Dell building shared the same basic design as an office building located in Oklahoma and was not particularly well-suited to Edmonton's climate. The concrete building had serious insulation and moisture management issues. As a result, Servus decided to undertake a development project with Manasc Isaac to dramatically change the building's appearance and to reduce its operational costs by re-cladding the building.

From an insulation perspective, adding insulation to the interior would have had limited practicality and so the major effort focused on improving the building envelope, which would also allow its appearance to be dramatically 'reimagined'.

New cladding was designed to fit over the existing concrete and brick facade to increase the wall insulation from around R10-R12 up to a respectable R30, while a custom Visionwall® glazing system was developed to increase the insulative value of the windows from approx. R1 up to R8.  All in all these measures have brought the projected energy costs of the building down to 0.75 GJ/sqm/year which is considered exceptional.

Interestingly, the window system re-used the existing glazing and enabled the windows to be upgraded very quickly and cost effectively.

Perhaps one of the most noticeable and welcome features was a large central light well that penetrated the building's core—from the roof right through to the ground floor—bringing much needed daylight into what was once a typically gloomy office interior.

Corporate Responsibility

For Servus, while the energy savings are welcome, there are also significant benefits that will come from the impact that the building will have in defining their image and staff satisfaction.

While energy savings contributed to their investment as follows:

the value to Servus derived mainly from having a modern light-filled office, that truly represented the progressive corporate culture. This benefit was to represent the most significant return on their investment and it was estimated that the cost of the redevelopment would pay back in just 5 years.