SMS Engineering Receives Keystone Award at the ACEC-MB Awards of Excellence

SMS Engineering was proud to attend the 26th Annual ACEC-MB Awards of Excellence, hosted at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada. The evening brought together Manitoba’s engineering community to recognize innovation, collaboration, and excellence in project delivery across the province.

The event provided an opportunity to connect with peers, clients, and partners, and to celebrate the collective effort behind infrastructure that makes a lasting impact in communities throughout Manitoba.

SMS was honoured to receive the Keystone Award for the Kinosew Sipi Nanatawiwekamik Health Centre of Excellence — the evening’s highest recognition, along with an Award of Excellence for the project.

We were also proud to receive an Award of Excellence for RRC Polytech’s Stevenson Aviation project, recognizing the strength and impact of both teams’ work.

We had an incredible evening celebrating alongside LM Architectural Group, who were part of bringing the Kinosew Sipi project to life.

Congratulations to all those recognized throughout the evening!

Kinosew Sipi Nanatawiwekamik Health Centre of Excellence

The Kinosew Sipi Nanatawiwekamik Health Centre of Excellence (also known as Norway House Cree Nation Health Centre) is a 100,000 square foot facility designed to deliver comprehensive, culturally grounded healthcare in a remote northern setting.

SMS Engineering provided mechanical and electrical engineering services focused on resilience, efficiency, and long-term maintainability in a challenging environment. The building systems incorporate dual-fuel heating, heat-recovery ventilation, robust emergency power, and a redundant fibre-optic communications backbone to ensure reliable and continuous care delivery.

Designing for a remote northern location required careful consideration of extreme climate conditions, limited utilities, logistics constraints, and fire safety requirements. Revit-enabled coordination supported extensive prefabrication and helped reduce construction risk, improving both schedule certainty and on-site efficiency.

The facility also integrates cultural considerations, including spaces designed to support traditional practices such as smudging, ensuring the building reflects and respects the needs of the community it serves.

The result is a resilient, high-performance health centre that brings modern healthcare closer to home and provides long-term value to the Norway House Cree Nation.

RRC Polytech Stevenson Aviation HVAC Upgrade

The RRC Polytech Stevenson Aviation HVAC Upgrade project demonstrates the impact of coordinated mechanical, electrical, and structural engineering in delivering practical, low-carbon building solutions.

The mechanical scope included replacing two rooftop gas-fired air handling units with four

new indoor air handling units utilizing air source heat pumps for primary heating and cooling. This upgrade significantly advanced electrification of the facility, reducing annual carbon emissions by approximately 121 tonnes.

A key achievement of the project was increasing building electrification to 99.5% without requiring an electrical service upgrade. This was accomplished through detailed system analysis and careful coordination to optimize existing infrastructure capacity while meeting increased electrical demand.

The result is a more efficient, lower-carbon facility that supports RRC Polytech’s aviation training programs while demonstrating how thoughtful engineering can deliver meaningful environmental improvements within practical project constraints.

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At SMS Engineering, we're proud to continue being recognized for the innovative and practical solutions our team delivers, alongside the clients and partners who make this work possible.

Learn more about our past ACEC-MB achievements on our Awards page.