This joint venture project consisted of the complete installation of two new operating facilities at Suncor's Fort McMurray oilsands operation as well as an extension of an existing Williams Energy (formerly TransCanada Midstream) Plant at Redwater. Williams Energy was building several plants and associated facilities, collectively referred to as the Hydrocarbon Liquids Conservation Project. The project consists of a liquids recovery plant at the Suncor Oil Sand Facility in Fort McMurray and integration of an olefins fractionation train with the existing Redwater Fractionation and Storage Facility near Redwater. Liquids from the Fort McMurray plants are transported to its Redwater facility for further processing into products such as propane, butane, condensate and the olefins of propylene, and butylene.

PCL’s scope of work included construction of the two Fort McMurray facilities, the foundation and underground piping installation at Redwater, and the supply of shop fabricated piping for both locations. The majority of construction was performed on a direct-hire basis and included foundations, structural steel, equipment, piping, electrical, instrumentation, pipe fabrication and module assembly. The pipe fabrication and module assembly scopes were completed at PCL’s pipe fabrication and module assembly yard located in Nisku, Alberta and shipped as complete units to site.

The schedule was tight and resulted in significant overlap between engineering and construction activities. This means that PCL teams had to be extremely flexible, as construction plans changed often and required constant communication between teams. To reduce costs as much as possible and move hours away form site, PCL completed extensive planning to find which portions of work could be modularized and completed at our module assembly facility. While this is an extensively used construction practice today, in 2000 when the project started this was a fairly new method of work. The client’s expectation for budget and schedule where both met which was essential for PCL as it secured a foothold on industrial work in Fort McMurray at a critical period of growth. These early facilities also signaled a new era of petrochemical development in Alberta. To this day we maintain great relationships with Suncor and Williams Energy’s successor, Inter Pipeline, as we continue to work on new and exciting projects.