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Adjacent to Toronto Pearson, Canada’s busiest airport, sits a jet manufacturing facility described as “the most advanced in the world,” and it's humming with activity. Designed by NEUF architect(e)s for Bombardier, the new aerospace campus marks a strategic leap for the 80-year-old company. It outgrew its facilities at the decades-old Downsview Airport in North York, now slated for a massive redevelopment. The new campus reflects a set of ambitious goals to raise the standard for precision, efficiency, and sustainability in the aerospace industry. Architect Marco Chow from NEUF and Bombardier project leads Adam Chan and Kaushik Gupta led UrbanToronto on a campus walkthrough, revealing an operation of similar scale and sophistication to a healthcare complex and showcasing the positive impact design can have on employee wellbeing, productivity, and company performance.
Downsview was the historic location of De Havilland Canada’s aircraft production, which operated from 1929. De Havilland Canada was purchased by Bombardier in 1992. Multiple aging buildings with limited interior daylight impacted performance relative to newer facilities across the globe. A new hub would address employee needs, customer expectations and Bombardier’s growth ambitions. Moving to the new location was completed over 6 months: a coordination and logistical feat given a 24-hour operation scaling between double- and triple-digit number of aircrafts per year.
At 40 acres, the new $670M privately financed facility occupies a fraction compared with the land they had at the old Downsview acreage, but it is now situated alongside Canada’s busiest runway on land under a 50-year lease from the City of Mississauga. The facility keeps 2,000 personnel busy and “indirectly supports tens of thousands of spin-off jobs across the country” according to Ontario Premier Doug Ford at the recent opening ceremony.
The project team designed the new campus around three elements, mirroring the assembly process. Aircraft components arrive at the Aerostructures Facility (ASF) for assembly. Next, the assembled aircraft are subjected to a battery of tests in the Flight Test Hangar (FTH). Finally, engines are tested in an outdoor Ground Run Enclosure (GRE).
Hiring long-term partner NEUF architect(e)s brought a 50-year track record of designing complex technology-based projects. The brief presented an opportunity to rethink and streamline the manufacturing process. This called for expertise, experience and an ability to align building design to the underlying business operations, all within a highly regulated, safety-first industry.
Graham Kelly, Vice President of Operations for Global Aircraft at Bombardier's Toronto facility says, "we needed a space that could not only handle the scale of our manufacturing operations but also reflect our commitment to innovation and exceeding client expectations while ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our employees.”
The principal building is the ASF, containing a 24-hour assembly line that ingests cockpit, rear fuselage, and tail stabilizers fabricated in Montreal, Mexico, and Ireland. The assembly floor hosts a sequence of jets at varying stages of completion. Two production lines run in concentric rings across the floor outputting Bombardier’s Global 6500 and 7500 series of business and private jets. With 3 shifts per day, it takes around a month for a finished product to emerge. A further month of testing across specialist air, fuel, and acoustic areas takes place in the FTH and GRE, before certification and shipping to Bombardier’s paint and interiors facility (also designed by NEUF) at Mirabel, Montreal. Here, customers receive their completed aircraft.
Detailed client discussions concerning Bombardier’s core business and operational challenges informed the design approach. Building complex flying machines requires sensitive coordination among the specialized teams responsible for automated equipment, robotics, tooling, and the mobilization of precision components and instrumentation. The challenges in configuring the spaces and activities are comparable to those of many large-scale construction projects. Office and assembly floor spaces each had varied programming and sizing requirements, which NEUF had to integrate while addressing site constraints, meeting zoning requirements, and challenging the typical cold and impersonal aircraft hangar typology.
The architectural layout enables the client’s business goals for efficiency, accuracy, and safety in their manufacturing ecosystem. Prior to the relocation, production at Downsview entailed a series of moves through multiple buildings. With production now largely unified within the new campus, staff have complete lines of sight throughout the manufacturing and testing processes. As a result, collaboration and efficiency have improved with employees reporting higher quality relationships and interactions.
NEUF developed an ‘all under one roof’ architectural strategy, largely driven by the program. Tall ceilings contribute to a sense of openness – bright, white, and airy. Fittingly, the buildings’ high-performing mechanical systems are exposed throughout, as is the structure. The ASF’s production layout and 246-foot (75-metre) clear spans allow a continuous workflow. This dramatically increases the speed of assembly, without sacrificing the quality of the product or the work environment – each individual staff now has more working space. Staff used to see each other a handful of times a year. Now, they can interact regularly with minimal travel distances between workstations, offices, self-serves, and toolrooms, situated along the periphery of the production floor. As you might expect, the space is neat. No debris. Everything in its place.
The buildings feature some of the widest aviation doors in the industry. These ‘Megadoors’ incorporate a novel translucent PVC material, washing the interiors with daylight. A series of barcode-like vertical strip windows with translucent polycarbonate bring more diffused natural light into the production area. These strips are aligned with glass doors at exit corridors – an intuitive wayfinding strategy.
Tight electrical, thermal, humidity and air quality specifications needed a strategy that optimizes energy use while reducing waste. With its integrated workplace approach, the new manufacturing facility is targeted to reduce energy consumption by nearly 60 per cent and lower greenhouse gas emissions by more than half, compared with the Downsview site.
The purpose-built design prioritizes employee morale, wellbeing, and safety. Ample natural light, dedicated training and collaboration spaces, and visual connections across various functions boost employee connection with each other and their work environment, while improving productivity outcomes. The upper levels’ office spaces, meeting rooms and main dining area enjoy views over the production area. This overview yields opportunities for management and staff to share stories and talk about the larger picture over lunch, or over a game of dominoes.
Bombardier and NEUF came together in late 2019. When the pandemic hit in 2020, the project team pivoted from face-to-face to remote collaboration. Eschewing forests of paper plans for digital drawings yielded more positives: project teams strengthened their integration and collaboration as information was more easily shared and ideas more readily explored. During construction, on-site cameras relayed real-time information further improving the quality and speed of decisions.
Construction is a complex and risky endeavour, more so at an airport with stringent fire, life safety, and flight operations standards. NEUF led a complex collaboration among many partners: Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), the City of Mississauga, NAV Canada, Transport Canada, the lead construction (Ledcor) and engineering (Stantec) firms, and more. At peak, the project had nearly 75 design and engineering personnel navigating a host of complex regulatory, safety and production needs.
Complexity was also present at site level. The site needed remedial work after finding animal remains. Dust-free zones were required adjacent to busy production areas where grinding, and machining parts generate dust. Tanks 3-4 storeys deep containing fire suppression material had to be built. New sewage lines had to be routed across aircraft taxiways, while minimizing disruptions. Sandwiched acoustic ceiling panelling was needed to attenuate the noise from passenger aircraft taking off 500m from the facility. Building roof lines had to accommodate heights safety limits (Obstruction Limitation Surface OLS), sometimes within a 15cm tolerance. This and more was achieved within the project’s cost, scope and schedule constraints.
Demand is shifting to larger body business jets. Manufacturing adapts, and this must be designed in. The new space incorporates cutting-edge manufacturing technology, although much is hidden from view. Seven tonne cranes traverse the space, crossing carbon fibre floor plates concealing underfloor cabling. Yet, kilometres of computer cabling have been swapped out for Wi-Fi connectivity, allowing for speedy space reconfiguration as aircraft types and capacity needs change. Extensive overhead ventilation and fire safety controls are integrated with comprehensive underfloor fire suppression services. The floor incorporates specialized trenches for engineers to work in. Under-floor GPS sensors ensure robotic riveters (these stitch together large aero structure components, such as fuselage sections) can locate their targets precisely, every time. The innovation on display here says something of our Canadian talent pool: aerospace, mechanical, industrial, electronic, and software engineering supporting a variety of skilled trades.
Walk past any manufacturing structure and it’s easy to consider it as a simple shell, disconnected from the activity within. It’s humbling to imagine conditions two generations ago when employees toiled under hundreds of incandescent lights, traversing perhaps kilometres a day among snow covered buildings to construct planes in Downsview. Eighty years on and a twenty-minute drive away, in 2021, while construction was underway, a Bombardier Global series aircraft became the first business jet to break the sound barrier and the fastest civil aircraft since the Concorde. The new campus showcases how developing a shared understanding of form, function and future-readiness can directly impact operational efficiency, staff cohesion, and organizational capability. Investing in good design takes us further.
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