Overview
Mackenzie Village Phase 4 is a multi-building residential development located in Revelstoke, British Columbia. The project consists of three buildings constructed simultaneously, requiring careful planning and coordination.
The community was designed with a focus on enhanced lifestyle amenities for residents. One of the client’s key design goals was to create shared rooftop gathering spaces, including hot tubs, barbecues, and lounge areas. These features required careful structural design to support heavy rooftop loads and withstand local climate conditions, especially since snow in Revelstoke can significantly increase the overall design load requirement. LBS helped bring this vision to life by delivering the engineering solutions needed to make it possible.
Simultaneous Construction Across Three Buildings
Constructing three residential buildings at the same time required an exceptional level of coordination across design, fabrication, delivery and on-site installation. With multiple trades working in parallel, maintaining alignment in scheduling, sequencing, and quality control was critical. For example, equipment, workers, and materials had to be managed across all three sites simultaneously, while overall scheduling needed to account for shared resources such as crane use and material deliveries to avoid delays and overlapping critical path work. LBS supported this complexity by streamlining communication and leveraging our experienced 3D modelling process to keep all phases of construction aligned.
Heavy Rooftop Loads
Why is it impressive to have a hot tub and rooftop gathering space in a residential building? Because these amenities require additional structural strength, and our steel stud building is engineered to handle it. Here’s why that matters:
- A typical large hot tub filled with water and people can weigh between 3,000 and 5,000 kg.
- That’s a major load for any roof, and one that most residential structures aren’t built to support. Our steel stud system is designed with this in mind, ensuring both strength and safety.
To meet this challenge, the LBS team developed a customized structural solution: We introduced a steel and q-deck support frame that was designed to transfer the large loads into the building’s already available corridor steel stud load-bearing walls.
This innovative approach provided the necessary support and the location needed to transfer the heavy loads down to the designed foundation, without compromising on architectural layout, roof joist capacity, durability, or cost performance.
Balcony Design Flexibility at McKenzie Village
To optimize cost and construction efficiency, the LBS team implemented a hybrid balcony design that utilized three different structural systems:
- Cast-in-place concrete balconies
- Precast concrete balconies
- Steel-framed balconies with metal decking
By mixing these approaches strategically across each of the three buildings, we avoided being tied to a single method and instead customized the balcony design based on architectural design requirements, structural conditions, budget constraints, and installation logistics. This flexible, value engineered strategy ensured that the client received maximum benefit without compromising structural integrity or architectural intent.
