Small to mid-sized industrial construction projects benefit from the same rigor that goes into large multibillion-dollar projects. Our exceptional commitment to safety, lean project delivery, and quality execution ensures that we deliver construction excellence for industrial projects of all sizes.
Industrial Special Projects is an integrated business unit within PCL’s Heavy Industrial division focused on being flexible and adaptable to the needs of clients with scaled industrial projects. We adopt lean construction principles and optimize your project with preconstruction planning, a collaborative approach to contracting and experienced supervision, resulting in world class execution. Special Projects delivers tailored programs for new construction, existing plant upgrades and facility CAPEX projects. We provide direct-hire services across all major disciples and manage specialty subcontract scopes to fully control the construction window your project requires.
Scaled project delivery includes PCL’s leading safety, quality, and productivity controls as the standard and delivers them in the flexible and adaptable way that your unique project demands. We start with our detailed estimating processes and systems, cost-coding and reporting systems, then use our Enscope and IQ work-packaging and test-tracking systems to accurately gauge progress and forecast to project completion. We scale our processes, systems and subject matter experts as your job requires, giving you exactly the pieces that you need, and nothing more.
Since 2013, PCL has partnered with Suncor on 13 new well pads at their steam-assisted gravity drainage facilities in the Alberta oil sands. We worked closely with them to standardize, modularize and economize their installations. Over the 13 well pad projects, we have worked collaboratively to reduce installation cost by 75%, and the construction schedule from nine months to 15 weeks.
Through Special Projects, PCL has assigned the same core team from one well pad project to the next, building a strong team bond with the owner’s project and operations team. We polished our plans and approaches to take a repeatable approach to installing these well pads, leading us to higher quality installations on shorter schedules. This approach, working collectively with all project partners, helped reduce the number of site-noted deficiencies from thousands to a handful of minor ones. This approach also let us deliver over 13 projects with 600,000 direct labor hours without a single lost time safety incident.
Rio Tinto, a world leading resource extraction company, has invested in and has been developing the northern Saskatchewan diamond field near Prince Albert over the past 15 years. When Rio Tinto decided to move from exploratory to a larger sampling program, Special Projects was there to complete the installation of a bulk sample plant. The expansion has the potential to drive a world class mining/extraction facility to the province, which will benefit many.
The modular bulk sample plant and its respective equipment were shipped from overseas in more than 30 sea-cans. We installed the piping and equipment to supply water to the bulk sample plant including tailings and slimes pipework, structural steel erection and commissioning of the plant and ancillary equipment.
Uniquely, we joined the project once it was already underway, as a local contractor had initially been contracted to complete the work. When we came on site we spent 10 days modifying our work plan to account for time lost to date and to develop an accelerated plan that would allow us to eliminate the two months the project was behind schedule and turnover the plant to the owner on the original schedule.
To meet the schedule we assigned additional supervision, coordination and HSE resources and updated the schedule to include a night shift and additional workers. Open and transparent communication between our team and the owner’s team allowed us to complete the work in a manner that exceeded the owner’s expectations and achieve a zero total recordable incident rate.
We are committed to providing our clients with the support, solutions, and agility to tackle any challenge quickly, efficiently and safely. No matter the project size or complexity, we will work with you to ensure that you have the required skilled expertise and planning to support your project’s unique needs and to ensure you meet your construction goals.