Innovative Project

Once complete, the Calgary Cancer Centre will be the largest Cancer Treatment Centre in Canada, with 2.1 million square feet of space including:
160 inpatient unit beds
100 chemotherapy chairs
12 radiation vaults
Outpatient clinics with 100+ exam rooms
clinical and operational support services
Space for clinical trials and R&D
1650 parking spaces over 5 underground levels

The Lafarge Canada team supplied over 125,000 m3 of concrete with over 40 different mix designs to meet the project’s unique requirements.

The use of concrete in place of structural steel enabled the overall reduction of building height, provided the durability required for the underground parkade levels, and addressed any vibration issues.
In addition, a specialty high-density, heavyweight concrete was developed to meet the radiation shielding requirements for the Centre’s 12 radiation vaults.

~600m3 of high-density, heavyweight concrete was produced for the project. After deep investigations, a heavy weight aggregates source wasn’t available within the WCAN region. Magnetite was not an option as it would interfere with the medical equipment. A final solution was to use the Heavyweight hematite. A search was conducted and after consultations with Universal Minerals their heavy weight coarse and fine aggregates were chosen for use in this concrete.

Heavyweight coarse and fine hematite material was sourced from Kentucky to achieve the required concrete density (3850 kg/m3).

Significant development, testing and quality assurance activities were undertaken to ensure product strength and density were met
Trial runs were completed to correlate plastic to hardened densities. Plastic densities were measured on site for product acceptance
Due to the weight of the concrete loads, attention needed to be taken in transportation
In addition, the project also took place during winter months, requiring special product handling due to frozen aggregates, including the use of steam pads and special batching procedures. Coarse aggregates were loaded through Ada-bins while
Based on trials conducted prior to supply, the target plastic density for acceptance was 3900kg/m3 onsite.