Occupied office renovation with staged remediation
With Pentillion Construction, I helped deliver a two-floor renovation for a high-value professional office client while the space remained in use. The work included removing and adding walls, replacing flooring, painting and finish upgrades, a new kitchenette, a new reception area, custom feature walls, blind replacement, HVAC reconfiguration, and new data wiring.
Renovating around an office that still had to function
The project became more complex once the flooring scope exposed asbestos-containing tile below the existing finish. Because the office remained active during construction, the remediation and renovation work could not be handled as one clean shutdown.
We brought in a professional remediation contractor and broke the work into multiple stages so the tenant could keep operating while offices were shuffled around the floor.
Coordinating design decisions, trades, and tenant moves
My role was a mix of coordination, design support, and hands-on field work. I coordinated between the tenant, landlord, architect, remediation contractor, and trades while also helping the tenant work through design details and practical decisions.
The work had to keep moving without losing sight of how the space was being used day to day. Walls, flooring, abatement, painting, lighting, blinds, HVAC, data, and millwork all had to be coordinated around people who still needed to use the space.
Making the reception finish hold up under real lighting
One of the more detailed parts of the project was the new reception area. The client had a specific look they wanted for the feature walls, and the wall-wash lighting made the finish quality especially important.
Any waves, seams, or surface defects would have been highlighted by the lighting, so the wall needed a high-quality, Level 5-style drywall finish along with careful custom carpentry and detailing. I helped work through how to make that design intent buildable, coordinate the finish requirements, and bring the reception area together with the level of finish the client expected.
A clean finish
The difficulty came from the setting, not one dramatic detail. Everything had to happen in a real occupied workplace, in stages, with people still needing the office to function.
The result was a completed two-floor renovation delivered through staged work in an occupied environment. It shows the practical side of tenant-improvement coordination: communicate clearly, respect the people using the space, make finish details buildable, and keep adapting when field conditions change the plan.
HVAC controls retrofit and system troubleshooting
With Pentillion Construction, I helped audit, explain, and coordinate upgrades to an older HVAC control system. The building had existing controls and hardware that could not simply be replaced all at once, so the project needed a clear understanding of what was already there before the new work could be planned.
Understanding the old system before replacing parts of it
My role was to bridge the gap between the existing controls, the HVAC contractor, the controls contractor, and the practical needs of the building. I reviewed and documented how the system operated, helped explain the existing logic, and supported the retrofit so new equipment could be integrated without losing compatibility with parts of the older setup.
The upgrade included four new heat pumps. Because I had built much of the internal understanding of the existing controls, I became a practical reference point during the work. The value knowing what equipment was present and helping the contractors understand how the old controls, operating logic, and building requirements fit together.
Troubleshooting the shaking air handlers
That same system knowledge carried into troubleshooting. The building had two large air handlers that were shaking under certain operating conditions, and the cause had not been identified.
One proposed path was to bring in an engineering audit to measure resonant frequencies using specialized equipment. That may have been needed eventually, but before jumping to that step, I worked through a more direct inspection of the system.
Looking for the real field condition
I checked likely mechanical causes, including whether the air-handler shafts appeared to be off balance, the dampening system, and used a 360 camera and thermal imaging camera to inspect areas that were difficult to access directly.
That investigation pointed toward a loose sheet-metal wall dividing the large duct that supplied hot and cold air to the building. Under certain airflow and pressure conditions, the loose partition deflected until it relieved the pressure differential, then snapped back, allowing the pressure to rebuild and repeat the cycle. This created a low-frequency pulsation that transmitted vibration into the air-handler area and surrounding building structure.
A logical conclusion
I documented the old controls, identified what still had to work, coordinated the contractors around the real operating logic, and investigated the field condition before assuming the next step had to be expensive or abstract.
The result was a building system that became easier to explain, upgrade, maintain, and hand off.
Automated event photo upload and print station
This project supported The Big DV public installation by making one of the interactive pieces easier for guests and volunteers to use. The installation invited people to contribute photos and design responses to a public wall, so the workflow needed to move images from a guest’s phone to a volunteer-operated photo printer without creating a messy manual process during the event.
Keeping the public interaction simple
The visible workflow had to be simple: scan a QR code, upload a photo, and let the volunteers print it. I did not want guests handing over phones, emailing files, or relying on a volunteer to troubleshoot every submission. That meant the technical side could be more complicated, but the public side could not be. The system needed to feel like a normal event interaction, not a tech demo.
Making the hidden workflow do the work
I connected a Dropbox File Request, Dropbox webhook, Cloudflare Worker, Join, Tasker, Autosync, and a Samsung Tab A9+ into one operating workflow. Uploaded images triggered the automation chain, the tablet was notified that new files were available, and Autosync moved them into a local folder the SELPHY printing app could read. For volunteers, the result was straightforward. Open the printing app, find the submitted photos, and print. They did not need to download files, search folders, move images around, or understand the automation chain behind it.
Designing for a live event
The setup also had to survive the realities of a public event. I configured the tablet more like a kiosk than a personal device, with separate accounts, minimal installed apps, public-use restrictions, and no unnecessary personal data exposed. I also built in fallback sync behaviour and failure alerts so the workflow was not dependent on someone noticing a problem at the exact moment it happened. Theft and recovery risk, account separation, volunteer handoff, and privacy exposure were all part of the design.
The final snapshot
I recognized the friction in a live public interaction and connected available tools into a workflow people could use without thinking about it. The system reduced volunteer handling, protected guest privacy better than an improvised process, and made the interactive part of the installation feel simple from the outside
Majestic Pines approval-readiness support
Majestic Pines was a proposed rural recreational development north of Campbell River, BC. The project began as an 11-lot bare-land-strata concept and later evolved toward a 10-lot bare-land-strata with a fee-simple remainder for future development.
I was contracted by the developer to support the project manager with regulatory research, approval-pathway planning, and coordination around unresolved Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, Strathcona Regional District, Island Health, water, septic, access, and strata questions.
Making the approval path easier to see
The project involved overlapping requirements from transportation, the regional district, the health authority, survey/legal work, well testing, road access, and future development planning. My role was to help turn those requirements into a clearer decision path before the project returned for formal review.
Organizing the working knowledge
I reviewed the preliminary layout review requirements, organized research and source material in Confluence, and helped prepare focused questions for agency and legal discussions.
The Confluence workspace became a working knowledge base for notes, embedded documents, regulatory sources, cross-linked questions, and evolving interpretations as the development strategy changed.
Challenging assumptions before they became costs
A key part of my contribution was challenging assumptions before the project committed to unnecessary work. For example, the water requirements allowed representative well documentation within a defined radius where the source could reasonably be shown to be the same.
Since existing drilled wells were located within range of the proposed first-stage lots, I identified that they may be usable as proof of water instead of assuming new wells had to be drilled for every second lot.
Flagging future-development risks early
I also helped flag approval risks around the proposed fee-simple remainder. Those questions included whether future access could be provided through a private strata road by easement, how parkland dedication might be affected by staged development, and whether conventional frontage requirements applied cleanly to strata lots fronting an internal strata road.
In addition to the research and coordination work, I attended site visits and participated in dug-well pump testing. That helped connect the regulatory questions back to actual site conditions, including water availability, access constraints, and the practical implications of the approval requirements.
The forest for the trees
The result was a clearer approval-readiness path. The project manager had better-organized source material, clearer questions for agency and legal discussions, and a more focused view of the assumptions that could affect cost, sequencing, access, and future subdivision strategy.
The work shows a different side of my project experience: organizing complicated requirements, identifying assumptions before they became expensive, connecting field information to regulatory questions, and helping a high-value development proposal move toward review with fewer unresolved unknowns.
