From the Rockies to the Prairies

Mar 1, 2024|Consultants|Kaija Wilkinson

Kaija Wilkinson
Mar 1, 2024

Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise; image courtesy of Signature Hotels

GUNN Consultants celebrates 10 years of growth in Calgary.

In June 2013, the city of Calgary was devastated by floods. The city’s worst flooding incident since 1897, it resulted in up to CAD6 billion (US$4.48 billion) in financial losses and property damage across the western province of Alberta.[1] That damage included elevators, and GUNN Consultants, a vertical-transportation (VT) consultancy that celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2023 (ELEVATOR WORLD, July 2023), jumped in to help. It would mark the beginning of the firm formally planting its flag in the Stampede City (nicknamed such for the annual summer rodeo/fair The Calgary Stampede).

Key clients from GUNN’s Vancouver office had property and associates in Calgary, and asked the company for assistance. Initially, a two-man team from GUNN worked out of a small office in a high-rise tower in downtown’s West End close to the Bow River. They worked with various building owners, contractors and insurance adjusters to assess elevator flood damage and bring the units (and, in turn, the buildings) back online. Amid a significant shortage of parts and labor, the GUNN team supported affected parties by coordinating emergency VT repairs and modernizations so buildings could return to service quickly. The disaster led to the opening of GUNN’s Calgary office, which marked its 10th anniversary in January 2024.

Growing relationships and expertise are driving expansion at the location.

Through their flood mediation work, GUNN team members met numerous property managers and owners, which led to VT inspection work at their buildings. Significant new construction jobs followed. Among GUNN’s first major new construction jobs in Calgary were the 59-story, 729-ft-tall Telus Sky downtown skyscraper served by a TK Elevator (TKE) VT system; the 17-story luxury condominium Concord Eau Claire, served by a Fujitec VT system; the ATCO Commercial Centre, described by architect Pickard Chilton as “a dynamic composition of two four-story office buildings and a partially submerged parkade interconnected by the ATCO Commons, a central multi-purpose facility designed with mass timber,”[2] and served by a TKE VT system that consists of eight machine-room-less (MRL) and one hydraulic traction elevators, and:

The London at Heritage Station high-rise condominium development, consisting of two towers served by a gearless traction elevator system
Brookfield Residential YMCA at Seton, at 330,000 ft2 the largest YMCA in Canada — an architecturally compelling low-rise building designed by GGA-Architecture and served by an Otis MRL elevator system
Place 10 East Towers 1 and 2 (now Oliver Towers 1 and 2), 35-story residential towers on Calgary’s beltline served by an Otis and Elpro VT system
The UXborough/Stadium mixed-use development, five distinct buildings adjacent to the new Calgary Cancer Centre and Foothills Medical Centre. The two buildings under construction will be served by a Schindler MRL traction elevator system.
The Dorian, Autograph Collection hotel, a 35-story development served by a TKE elevator system consisting of three gearless high-rise and three gearless low-rise elevators

The Calgary office’s first big modernization jobs were at the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, where GUNN managed the modernization of eight traction elevators at the historic turn-of-the-20th century resort on the eastern shore of Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies near Banff, Alberta. The office also managed the modernization of three traction units at 5/5-550 11th Avenue S.W., an 11-story office tower in the Beltline area of Calgary.

Both new construction and modernization work has extended beyond Alberta, including Manitoba (True North Square Towers and 444 St Mary, both in Winnipeg) and Saskatchewan (River Landing Towers).

Albert Ng, who originally started at GUNN’s Vancouver office in 2014 and was made partner in 2020, transferred over to Calgary in 2015. From the original 6th Avenue S.W. location, GUNN has moved a total of three additional times to accommodate a growing staff and workload: in 2015, to a mid-rise office building at 909 17th Avenue S.W.; in 2016, to a space in the five-story, historic Hudson Building at 535 10th Avenue in the heart of downtown (when it had a staff of five); and finally, in 2023, to larger space at 528 22nd Avenue S.W. in Calgary’s hip, inner-city Mission District. The office now employs six. Besides Ng, the Calgary staff consists of Office Manager Andy Bakshi, Proposal Coordinator Dayna Andersen, Project Manager Neville Fleming, Project Engineer Dilkamal Soni and Technical Delivery Coordinator Kyle Yin.

Growing relationships and expertise are driving expansion at the location. In addition to new construction and modernization, the Calgary office handles maintenance management and contracts, and is an accredited agency with the Alberta Safety Codes Authority, the Safety Codes Council for performing regulatory safety inspections.

Doing business in Calgary is not without its challenges. The Calgary economy is tied closely to oil and gas, so it has more of a tendency to experience peaks and valleys — particularly in new construction — than other major metro areas in Canada, observes GUNN Consultants President and CEO Eric Peterson. In addition, its office market is more condensed compared to cities like Toronto or Vancouver. Calgary is also a city with a strong ranching background, perhaps no better exemplified than by The Calgary Stampede — the annual rodeo, exhibition and festival held every July and dating to the late 1800s. The 10-day event, which bills itself as “The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth,” attracts more than 1 million visitors per year and features one of the world’s largest rodeos.[3] To commemorate GUNN Consultants’ 40-year anniversary, the Calgary office hosted a client-appreciation party at the beginning of The Stampede last year. Planning to make it an annual shindig, GUNN describes the client-appreciation party as “a tribute to our history, a celebration of our present achievements and motivation for continued success in the future.”

Of GUNN’s Calgary office, Peterson says:

“On the horizon, we plan on continued steady organic growth, spreading our unique brand of solutions-based consulting with a focus on premium communication. Our goals for the Calgary office are not just for Alberta, but throughout the Rockies and across the Prairies.”