The Design Bay—a space in Beamish Munro Hall dedicated to providing Design Teams a place to build their projects—is planned to undergo upgrades following ventilation concerns.
According to an anonymous source connected to Queen’s design teams, granted anonymity due to concerns of reprisal, students started raising concerns about ventilation issues in two Design Bay rooms in March 2023. The main room wasn’t affected, but problems in the composite room and sanding rooms, where work can produce hazardous inhalants, left students experiencing “headaches, dizziness, and lightheadedness severe enough that work had to stop.”
The source alleged that the issue has persisted for two years without adequate solutions, aside from minor repairs that didn’t fix the issue, along with ensuring students wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
To respond to the allegations made, The Journal spoke with Smith Engineering’s Senior Director of IT and Facilities, Stephen Hunt, Kyle Strike, the facilities and operations manager, and John McKay, a safety engineer for Smith Engineering.
Strike explained, if his memory serves him correctly, the faculty was made aware of the issue in Fall 2023 and began to act upon being notified. Hunt added that their initial response was to determine whether the ventilation system was working at proper capacity, only to then find out that it wasn’t, adding that a mechanical fix they then implemented still didn’t solve the issue.
This is when they asked campus engineering to conduct a review of the space and take readings of the airflow, according to Strike. It was found that the motor wasn’t adequate, but when they got the estimate of how much it would cost to fix, Strike said, “It was not inexpensive.”
“At that point, the recommendation was, ‘Okay, stop trying to band-aid this. You’re going to need to essentially redo [the system],” Hunt added.
Almost two years after the initial complaints, Hunt explained the faculty hired an engineering consultant, who, without specifying the name, has recommended a “six-figure project,” pending budget approval for 2026-27 year, that would introduce a new ventilation system capable of handling the work done in the rooms.
While Hunt, Strike, and McKayere unable to provide a specific completion date on the upgrades as there were “a lot of variables,” in their estimates, it’s unlikely to be completed over the summer.
“Those two rooms are going to be unavailable […] for at least some of the fall,” Hunt said. “Quite possibly this physical work could be happening in the academic year,” Strike added.
McKay later said that since teams need the space for their competitions, there may be some construction overlap, but that they’re planning to work with any affected teams to address issues that may arise.
“We’re going to have to look at what our options are to make sure that [design teams] can still do design work related to competitions and stuff like that,” McKay said.
He later clarified that the main concerns didn’t stem from those in the rooms with the ventilation issues themselves, but for those in the main Design Bay space while work was being done in the rooms. He explained that since respirators are worn by those working in the rooms, the real concern was fume leakage into the main area, where students weren’t wearing that kind of PPE.
To address this, the faculty created a system where teams that needed access to the rooms with poor ventilation would inform others of their intention beforehand. This way, other teams could avoid the main area while the rooms were in use, and a number of garage doors that connect to the main space could be closed.
The anonymous source took issue with this, explaining that “this violates the hierarchy of controls in occupational health and safety, which prioritizes engineering controls (proper ventilation) over PPE (respirators). The current approach essentially says, ‘the ventilation doesn’t work properly, so just wear masks,’ treating PPE as the solution rather than addressing the ventilation failure. This has been the situation for nearly two years.”
While a permanent fix is now in the works, McKay explained that teams have always needed to wear PPE when in these rooms and will continue to after the ventilation has been fixed.
The source said they believe the situation could violate the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA), noting that while the Act applies to employees rather than students, faculty members acting as team supervisors are employees who could also be affected.
“The key issue is even if students aren’t technically covered as ‘workers,’ allowing ventilation to operate at about 40 per cent capacity for two years while students experience respiratory distress raises serious questions about the University’s duty of care and basic safety standards,” the anonymous source said.
In response, Hunt said someone contacted OHSA, and although the issue fell outside its jurisdiction, the agency followed up with the University anyway. According to Hunt, OHSA inspected the space and held several meetings afterward, claiming the University was told that they were doing “exactly what [they] need to be doing.”
Tags
Beamish Munro Hall, Design Teams, Smith Engineering, The Design Bay, Ventilation
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