Getting It Right in Quebec’s Classrooms: How HVAC Coordination Makes or Breaks a School Build

A French-language public primary school under the Centre de services scolaire des Mille-Îles, École Saint-Pierre, is currently undergoing a full replacement and expansion, a project that will bring its capacity to 26 classes and is set to open for the 2026-2027 school year. SMP LeBlanc is on-site right now completing the air balancing scope in collaboration with Ventilabec, with wrap-up expected within the coming days. Like the other projects in this group, the work involves verifying that the new building’s airflow distribution meets the engineers’ design specifications before the school receives its occupants, the kind of field confirmation that has to happen before any building of this nature is handed over. 

What’s Actually Different About Schools

Ask any technician who has worked across different building types, and they’ll tell you: schools have their own set of demands.

The mechanical designs tend to be more complex. CO₂ monitoring is often factored into ventilation calculations to account for the density of young occupants in classrooms. Fresh air requirements are more stringent. And the systems have to perform across a wide range of occupancy patterns, a full school day, evenings for community use, and school holidays that sit empty.

Timelines are also less forgiving in school projects. Construction windows are typically planned around academic calendars, which means the pressure to hand over a finished, fully functional building doesn’t move. It’s a fixed target.

For all the projects, since construction always happens without students on site, access is more flexible, and the team can focus entirely on getting the systems right.

Even so, the coordination demands were real. Multi-trade sites are complex environments, and the work of getting HVAC systems balanced to design specifications requires that the right conditions exist, the right access, the right readiness from other trades, and the right communication channels when something needs to be resolved.

The Standard the Work Is Held To

Across all three projects, SMP LeBlanc followed standard SMACNA procedures, working directly from the mechanical engineering drawings. That matters because the goal of air balancing and duct testing is not an approximation; it’s verification that what’s been built performs the way the engineers specified it should.

When anomalies were found, they were communicated clearly to the HVAC contractor and resolved. When the work is done, each of these three schools will have air distribution that meets its design intent: the right CFM at every outlet, the right pressure relationships between spaces, and ductwork that has been confirmed to hold integrity.

That’s the standard building owners, school boards, and the occupants who’ll eventually fill those classrooms should expect. It’s also the standard that makes any future monitoring or building management system actually useful. 

What This Work Represents

There’s something worth saying about what it means to do this kind of work in schools specifically.

These buildings will be occupied by children for decades. The HVAC systems running inside them will affect air quality, thermal comfort, and by extension, concentration and well-being in ways that are hard to measure but easy to feel on a bad day in a stuffy classroom. Getting the balancing right at the construction stage means those systems start from a solid baseline, one that can be maintained, monitored, and trusted.

Working on an Institutional or School Build?

SMP LeBlanc has carried out air balancing, duct leakage testing, and water balancing on institutional projects across Quebec, from schools and universities to seniors’ residences and performing arts venues. If your project involves HVAC verification work, we’re happy to talk through the scope and what’s involved.

Reach out to us at estimation@smpleblanc.ca or call 514-383-0352.