DND employees will be on the move again
Exodus from downtown HQ frees up space
• Another major move of Defence department employees and Canadian military personnel is being planned, this time shifting workers from multiple office locations in Gatineau and Ottawa into the downtown headquarters at 101 Colonel By Dr.
The planned move is the result of the domino effect created by the exodus of Department of National Defence and Canadian Forces staff from the Major- General G. R. Pearkes Building at 101 Colonel By Dr. to the department’s new headquarters on Carling Avenue in the former Nortel complex.
That shift of employees to Carling Avenue will leave the Pearkes Building 60 per cent empty by the end of next year, so the federal government will start repopulating it with DND employees now in other offices in Ottawa and Gatineau.
“We are currently working with Public Services and Procurement Canada to assess the scope of the project and develop the implementation plan,” DND spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier said. “It is too early in the process to determine timelines or costs. Details on the implementation and project schedules have yet to be finalized.”
DND and the regular Canadian Forces have around 17,400 personnel at more than 40 locations in Ottawa and Gatineau.
As DND employees move out of 101 Colonel By to the Carling Avenue headquarters, the vacant space will be renovated, at which point employees from other department locations can move in. DND officials, however, caution that such renovations could take several years.
The full scope of work and costing for the project will be determined over the next 12 to 18 months.
Bouthillier said the final number of staff who would work from 101 Colonel By had yet to be determined. It is estimated the building can accommodate approximately 4,500 employees.
By the end of next year, when the move of staff is completed to the Carling Avenue headquarters, there will be around 1,675 employees left at the Colonel By location.
Some minor renovations have already taken place in certain parts of the Colonel By building. For example, some “executive non- assigned areas” have been created, Le Bouthillier said. These are essentially temporary work spaces for employees who have moved to the Carling Avenue campus, but sometimes require basic work spaces if they are downtown for meetings. Other refits will include making better use of available space.
The federal government spent $ 800 million acquiring and outfitting the former Nortel complex in the west end for DND needs. It has argued it will see substantial savings from consolidating many of the department’s employees into one site.
By the end of December, DND estimates almost 8,000 staff will be working from the Carling Avenue headquarters. The third and final phase for that move will start in the new year, with 1,300 more staff sent to that location. The campus consists of about 28 hectares once owned by Nortel and 120 hectares leased from the National Capital Commission.
But the move of so many staff from downtown Ottawa to the west end has faced a number of problems. Employees have complained about a lack of parking and bus routes to service the Carling Avenue site.
Even before the move, some DND employees and Canadian Forces personnel raised concerns because they were worried about lengthy commutes, as a large number of DND employees live in east-end Orléans.
A June 2011 briefing note prepared for then-deputy defence minister Robert Fonberg described the Carling Avenue site as a “relatively remote location.”
Parking has become a major problem for employees as the Carling Avenue headquarters only has capacity for the vehicles of about half of the 9,300 employees who will eventually work there. As a short- term solution, DND is negotiating leasing agreements for various parking lots in the vicinity.
The DND has also held lotteries for employees who want to try to win parking spots. As a longer-term solution, it is looking at building a parkade at the Carling Campus to increase the potential on- site capacity by another 1,500 vehicles. The department, however, had no details on when that parkade might be built or how much it would cost taxpayers.