Optimized Retrofit, Adaptive Reuse and Extension

• Up to 50% savings, new construction
• 47% retrofit energy improvement
• 40% reduction in 1920-built section

For this Ontario community property, the building owner needed to evaluate energy efficiency and capital planning options for both the existing structure and potential future multi-family housing on the site, all while meeting CMHC MLI Select program requirements. Adaptis was selected to build a baseline energy model of the property using available building data, then generate and compare multiple Energy Conservation Measure scenarios against that baseline.

Rather than treating the retrofit and any future new construction as separate exercises, Adaptis modeled them together: one retrofit scenario targeting the building as a whole, a second scenario isolating the section built in 1920, and a set of new-construction options benchmarked against NECB 2017 standards. The platform's interactive dashboard let the owner explore existing conditions, design options, material breakdowns, waste, carbon, and cost benchmarks side by side, so capital planning decisions could be based on a single, consistent data set rather than separate reports for each scenario.

The property's owner faced two intertwined challenges: improving the energy performance of an existing building that includes a section dating to 1920, while also evaluating whether new multi-family housing could be added to the site. Both needed to be assessed against CMHC MLI Select's energy-efficiency criteria, which sets specific reduction targets that a design must meet to qualify for financing.

Because the portion of the building built in 1920 has different envelope and mechanical characteristics than the rest of the property, a single blanket retrofit strategy risked either under-delivering on energy savings for the older section or over-investing in upgrades the newer areas didn't need. The owner needed a way to model the older section separately from the rest of the building, compare that against a full-building retrofit and new-construction scenarios, and see which combination of Energy Conservation Measures delivered the required savings at the lowest cost.

Before adopting Adaptis, a capital planning and energy-efficiency evaluation like this would typically have required commissioning separate energy modeling and mechanical or envelope assessments from outside consultants for each scenario under consideration. Comparing a full-building retrofit, a section-specific retrofit for the portion of the property built in 1920, and new-construction options for the CMHC MLI Select program would have meant several separate reports, each built on its own assumptions and formatted differently, making it difficult to compare them side by side on a consistent basis.

Tracking material breakdowns, waste, carbon, and cost benchmarks across those scenarios would similarly have required manually compiling data from multiple sources into spreadsheets, rather than viewing it in one dashboard. That kind of fragmented process makes it harder to move quickly from analysis to a funding-ready decision, particularly under a program like CMHC MLI Select with a hard energy-reduction threshold to hit.

Modeling the property's existing building alongside potential new construction let the owner compare energy-saving pathways on a consistent basis rather than evaluating each option in isolation. The full-building retrofit scenario reached roughly 47% energy savings against the existing baseline, while a scenario isolating just the section of the property built in 1920 still delivered a 40% reduction, meeting the CMHC MLI Select program's minimum threshold even for the building's oldest and most constrained portion.

For any new construction considered on the site, the modeled options showed energy savings of up to 50% while targeting compliance with NECB 2017 building code standards. Because Adaptis's dashboard summarized existing conditions, Energy Conservation Measure options, material breakdowns, waste, carbon, and cost benchmarks in one place, the owner could weigh the retrofit and new-construction paths against each other, and against CMHC's funding criteria, using a single, consistent data set rather than reconciling separate reports for each scenario.