Molson Coors

In 2015, Molson Coors set out to build a new state-of-the-art brewery to replace its historic location at the foot of Vancouver's Burrard Street bridge. Omicron was brought on at the earliest stage to support the site selection process-conducting due diligence, zoning analysis, building general arrangement and fit tests, geotechnical investigations and preliminary foundation design, and facility planning and equipment/process integration with the Molson Coors brewery team across multiple candidate locations throughout the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley. After an extensive eight month search Chilliwack stood out for its ideal water profile, ready transportation access, acceptable geotechnical conditions and strong community support.

The result is a purpose built 400,000 sq.ft. facility tuned to the complexities of the brewing process. The design celebrates the brewing craft with two key features; expansive windows into the hot block revealing the mash tuns which are at the core of the brewing operation as well as highlighting the grain and fermentation silos in a striking display along the face of the building fronting the TransCanada Highway.  In addition to architectural, interior design, structural, mechanical and electrical engineering design services Omicron provided extremely close coordination with the Molson Coors brewing team and major equipment vendors and suppliers from Europe and China. Omicron also provided Construction Management services during the early site preparation and preloading process allowing a seamless transition from concept to construction.

The entire building systems and brewing process equipment layouts were accurately modelled to create an accurate three-dimensional model of the facility to ensure seamless integration of the brewing process with the supporting base building systems.This three-dimensional modelling minimized brewery/building systems conflicts and allowed for a highly compressed construction schedule as the building and brewery trades could pull key information from the model without the need to re-create their own drawing sets that accelerated the design, fabrication and installation processes.