Gary Lamphier: Deep space mine.
Self-described “kid off the farm” celebrates 50 years with world-renowned, Edmonton-based engineering firm
John Chomiak heads a consulting engineering firm with a global reputation for building top-level containment laboratories and energy efficient buildings.
But more mundane things also occupy his time — like a broken combine during fall harvest on the Vegreville-area farm where he breeds award-winning Charolais cattle.
“Oh, that’s operating now. I can weld and fix things and have good service people,” he laughed, when reminded of the mishap during an interview at the Hemisphere Engineering Inc. headquarters — a former automotive supply building just west of Edmonton’s downtown core.
A self-described “kid off the farm” who tutored students in physics to earn extra money while he studied engineering at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary, the 73-year-old Chomiak favours the “flexible mind” of young engineers raised in rural areas.
“On the farm you have to solve problems all the time, and you get dirty. A lot of young people today just throw up their hands when they have a problem, but kids from farms tend to try and figure out what’s the next step to take.”
Chomiak says he was told that as a newborn he was placed in an apple box and strapped to a binder while his parents worked. When the box fell off, his parents placed him in the field, stopping to check on him on every pass.
“I guess I was sleeping most of the time and they had a crop to get in.”
He takes a similarly pragmatic approach with his engineers, giving them “plenty of rope” to try new approaches, while allowing them to view failure as a learning experience.
Chomiak also loves a good laugh, as evidenced by the collection of shorn neckties hanging in his office.
“One Christmas, contractors and clients were drinking too late and I said it is time to go or I will cut off your ties. They wouldn’t go, so that night I took 40.”
He does the same thing at home with friends and relatives, and they have turned the scissors on him. Chomiak’s playful streak doesn’t end there. A director of the Alberta Charolais Association, Chomiak and former premier Ed Stelmach loaded Snowflake, Chomiak’s prize-winning 270-kilogram Charolais cow, onto the LRT in 2004 as part of a publicity stunt for FarmFair. The reluctant Snowflake became a media star.
And while he is well-known in Progressive Conservative backrooms, and chaired the 1988 federal election campaign in Alberta, Chomiak is perhaps best known as president of Hemisphere.
Ken Pilip, chief executive of Consulting Engineers of Alberta — an association representing 90 firms — has known Chomiak for 50 years.
“As a structural engineer, I worked on many projects with John. And as part of a consortium, we were pioneers in construction north of 60,” he said.
“He is an unbelievable individual. Hemisphere has always offered engineering services that set them apart because it was always state of the art and always demonstrated a high degree of innovation,” said Pilip. “And that is the ticket for success in this business.”
Although Chomiak never obtained an engineering degree and iron ring, the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta this year conferred an honorary membership on him for his work.
And on Oct. 4, Hemisphere is celebrating its 55th anniversary and Chomiak’s 50 years with the firm.
“John was able to take this little homespun company into a global setting,” said Pilip. “By doing the Winnipeg laboratory (Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health), it parlayed them into one of the only experts in the world for these bio-containment facilities.”
In the mid 1980s, as Hemisphere was coming off the success of the Walter C. MacKenzie Health Sciences Centre project in Edmonton — their use of interstitial space between floors to accommodate mechanical systems led the industry at the time — the federal government decided it wanted a major national laboratory. It was to house Canada’s first Level Four lab, the highest containment for the most dangerous microbes. The MacKenzie project had included a provincial lab and Hemisphere believed it had the expertise for the containment lab project.
“We went after the job,” said Chomiak. “And the two consortiums bidding for the job said they wanted us on it.”
But then followed what Chomiak calls his, and Hemisphere’s, defining moment.
“One consortium suggested we hook up with a Toronto firm as a joint venture. We were OK with that, since we had done that before and it worked out well. But I went down and was told the Toronto firm was actually proposing to do the major work itself and leave us some of the peripheral work.”
Chomiak said no, stood up and left.
“I walked out and phoned up the other architectural firm from Winnipeg who had said they wanted us. I gave them a choice — take us now within the hour, or we won’t go.”
It was a gutsy move that forced a decision. The Winnipeg firm won the contract with Hemisphere on board. To make sure the project ran smoothly, Hemisphere built a mock-up Level Four lab in Lacombe, at the federal agriculture research station.
“We did a lot of testing of systems and controls and a lot of firms were eliminated at the time. It was a box within a box and everything was tried and tested there first,” he said.
Because even solid concrete walls breathe, architectural finishings and surfaces were tested and various epoxies were eliminated.
“People said the Winnipeg lab was a guinea pig, but the real guinea pig was the Lacombe mock up lab. Everything we learned there went into the Winnipeg lab.”
The result was a smooth-running facility and expertise that was now noticed in the U.S.
“We got a call from architects in New Jersey working on a bid for a major lab at the Atlanta Centres for Disease Control. We had addressed some challenges in labs, such as easier access through pressure zones, filtration and waste digesters.”
Hemisphere’s group won the bid and went on to design the mechanical systems for most high containment labs built during the last decade. Their most recent project is an $800-million U.S. army lab near Washington. Hemisphere is also scouring Asia and India for more lab work, but its largest business remains designing energy efficient buildings. Five years ago they designed the systems for Calgary’s Cardel Place, a recreational centre that was the first in Alberta to win the Gold LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating.
Barry Johns, an Edmonton architect who is also chancellor of the College of Fellows of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, says Hemisphere “is a household name in the architectural community. We have always relied on the quality of their work.”
It’s a bit hard to believe that it all began when Chomiak joined the tiny, two-man firm of Vinto Engineering, a shoestring operation that had big aspirations and later became Hemisphere. They designed the systems for Hillcrest Junior High in Jasper Place, a windowless school which had its own diesel generators for power, heating and cooling — a novel idea called a “total energy school.”
The firm expanded into highrise towers during the booming 1970s, but it was the health sciences project begun in 1976 that foretold their future.
“This became the hospital for the globe because so much of what we were doing had not been done before,” said Chomiak, adding many of the techniques were copied by others over the years.
For example, interstitial space — an intermediate space located between regular-use floors, now commonly located in hospitals and laboratory-type buildings to allow space for the mechanical systems of the building — that allows labs and hospital rooms to be easily rearranged throughout their life cycles.
“There was a lot of debate about that concept back then,” he said.
There is no debate about the future of Hemisphere. While many firms in the industry have merged, Chomiak won’t let that happen.
“The culture would change with a buyout. The culture here is the client is the boss, and at times engineering is not perfect and things happen. But we will never let down a client and work until the problem is solved, which at times has cost us dearly.”