By Gord Johnston, Stantec
As we look to 2016, Canadian consultants can expect to see increased funding available for the delivery of key infrastructure projects. There are several key reasons for this:
- A significant backlog of deferred maintenance.
- The need to build capacity for future generations.
- A new federal government that has committed to significantly increasing infrastructure spending.
Therefore, the consulting community and their clients should anticipate the announcement of numerous new infrastructure projects.
Provinces like Alberta have also experienced a shift in the political landscape that has reinforced the prioritization of infrastructure investment. Increasingly, we are seeing alternative project delivery (APD) models such as design-build or public-private-partnerships (P3) selected by the client and funding agencies as the preferred option to procure these large infrastructure projects.
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Our clients, specifically municipalities, should be ready to move forward with infrastructure projects based on the newly announced funding sources. Projects that have never made it to the planning stage or have been postponed due to budget constraints will begin to resurface. We will be asked to help get these off the ground.
As consultants, we will have the opportunity to leverage our expertise and collaborate with our APD partners to produce cost-effective solutions to complex infrastructure issues. From initial planning to design, the consulting industry and our clients will benefit from these innovative approaches to project delivery.
Examples of recent APD projects that Stantec is involved with include the Regina Wastewater Treatment Plant where Stantec is the lead designer of the EPCOR Saskatchewan Water Partners team to provide enhanced capacity and treatment for the community. Another recently announced project is the Saint John Safe Clean Drinking Water Project in New Brunswick. It is a P3 project for the Port City Water Partners Consortium to design, build, finance, operate, and maintain a new water treatment plant on the City’s east side under a 33-year agreement. It also involves the design, build and finance of 26 km of pipeline to renew the City’s water transmission and distribution system.
Another project is the Surrey Organics Biofuel Processing Facility, which is the first solid waste management P3 in North America and the first facility of its kind in Western Canada. Located in Surrey’s Port Kells industrial area, this facility will receive 115,000 tonnes of organic waste from across the region every year and will turn it into renewable natural gas. The fuel produced will be used to power Surrey’s natural gas waste collection trucks, natural gas service fleet and new district energy system. It would have been a challenge to get this significant infrastructure project off the ground without the P3 model.
With the combination of increased infrastructure funding and a backlog of required projects waiting to move forward, the next several years look very positive. The increased interest in alternative project delivery models will continue to promote innovation and collaboration within the consulting engineering industry.
Gord Johnston is Executive Vice President, Infrastructure, Stantec. This article appears in ES&E’s November/December issue, as part of the Consultants’ Forum
