Construction starts!

...and we hit rock!  

Considering the options: do we reduce the ceiling heights, shrink the floor thickness (we have designed for thick floors to hide all the ducting and plumbing, but more on this later) or raise the building?  The client won't give up the ceiling heights (...and we completely agree! ), the floor thickness allows us to keep a bulkhead-free ceiling + makes our lighting placement easier and the building is already at the maximum height permitted by the the city of Ottawa.  Since none of those options work the excavator checks out the rock and luckily for everyone it was relatively easy to break up - what surprise is next?