The BCIT Campus Services Building is a foundational piece of the new Trades & Technology Complex: a 35,000-sq. ft., two-story facility that brings together the teams responsible for the campus’s daily operations, long-term planning, and capital development.
Mercer Mass Timber supplied 852 m³ of cross-laminated timber (CLT) and 167 m³ of glulam, forming the building’s structural backbone. The CLT, manufactured from SPF (spruce-pine-fir), brings a bright, consistent grain to the panels, creating light-reflective surfaces that contribute to the calm, productive atmosphere the building’s daylighting strategy is designed to support. The glulam columns, beams, and CLT floor panels are Douglas-fir, its warm reddish tone and pronounced grain giving the structural frame a visual weight and character that grounds the interior. Together, the two species create a natural tonal palette that ties the building directly to the Pacific Northwest forests where both species originate.
Throughout the interior, the mass timber structure is intentionally left exposed, making the building a working example of contemporary construction within BCIT’s Living Labs initiative — turning the campus itself into a hands-on learning environment where students can study real-world applications of sustainable design.
Daylight performance reinforces the experience. A central atrium draws natural light deep into the plan, while a shallow floor plate maximizes solar reach across workspaces. From the exterior, the building reads as a progression: a grounded base giving way to a more open, timber-forward upper level that puts the structure on full display.
The result is a service building that demonstrates mass timber as a low-carbon, high-performance structural system — one that meets BCIT’s operational needs today while modeling the future of sustainable construction on campus.
