canadian consulting engineer june/july 2015

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For professional engineers in private practice JUNE/JULY 2015

DELAYSINFRASTRUCTURE

PROJECTS DRAG ON

ALGAE & WATER TREATMENT PLANTS

INUNDATEDAlberta’s new flood protection

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We provide support for tracking natural and man-made disasters by:

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June/July 2015 Canadian Consulting Engineer 3

contentscontentsJune/July 2015Volume 56, No. 4

Cover: Rehabilitated Cougar Creek in Canmore, one of the communities hardest hit by the 2013

Alberta floods. Photograph by Bill Corbett. See story p. 10.

departmentsComment 4

Up Front 6

Products 38

Advertiser Index 41

Next issue: Recreation and entertainment buildings; wood structures and fire protection; building controls; National Music Centre.

featuresEngulfed — Warding Off Floodwater in Alberta. After the 2013 floods, cities are spending millions on building dikes, dams, and other large structures.By Bill Corbett 10

Saving the River Thames. Upgrades to the Vauxhall Pollution Control Plant in London, Ontario increased its capacity 10 times.By Dillon Consulting 15

Changing the Model. The Wandering River Regional Pipeline carries drinking water over 80 kilometres to Northern Alberta.By Stephan Weninger, P.Eng., Stantec 18

Algae — Bane of Our Lakes. Techniques for dealing with the problem at water treatment plants.By Simon Breese, P.Eng., AECOM 20

Delays. Large construction projects are taking years longer than they’re supposed to — the public want to know why. By Bronwen Parsons 22

Trash to Treasure. A handful of industrial symbiosis networks are being established across Canada.By Sophie Kneisel 31

How Bad Can It Be? The amount that design consultants spend cumulatively in preparing Requests for Proposals is shocking.By Cal Harrison MBA, CMC 34

How Bad Can It Be?See story p. 34.

CONVERSATIONS Who’s Responsible? John Clague, P.Geo., president of APEGBC, discusses whether engineering companies as well as individual engineers need to be certified to practice. 42

on topicENGINEERS & THE LAW Blacklisting Bidders. Municipalities are shutting out firms involved in litigation.By Owen Pawson and Alizee Bilbey, Miller Thomson 37

LEADER IN INNOVATIVEGEOSPATIAL SOLUTIONSSince 1991

Order desk T + 1-514-495-6500 #3 T + 1-888-495-6501image@effi gis.com

4101 Molson Street, Suite 400, Montreal, QC, Canada H1Y 3L1www.effi gis.com

Bosnia-Herzegovina - PLEIADES © CNES 2014, Distribution Airbus DS / Spot Image

INFORMATION FOR EMERGENCY RESPONSEExtract valuable data to guide response measures on the ground.

We provide support for tracking natural and man-made disasters by:

. Emergency tasking of HR satellites to acquire images when disasters strike (fl oods, forest fi res, earthquakes, railway disasters, etc.)

. Extracting tactical information in quick turnaround times

. Using optical and/or radar images to cover even diffi cult meteorological conditions (heavy cloud cover)

AN EXCLUSIVE AGREEMENT FOR PLÉIADES IMAGES

Effi gis has exclusive rights to the sale and distribution of Pléiades data for Canada. This agreement is supported by a network of qualifi ed resellers.

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4 www.canadianconsultingengineer.com June/July 2015

comment

Project delays need a cure

If you want to hear a real horror story of a construction project gone wrong, check out the problems at Berlin’s Brandenburg airport. After writing “Delays” (p. 22), I

came across an article about the airport in the Toronto Star (“Germany’s failure to launch,” May 30). The massive new teminal is still not open three years after its due date. There are an astonishing 150,000 issues still to fix, and until they’re done the ticket halls and “ghost” hotel next door stand empty. The terminal won’t open for yet another three years, and the final cost is predicted to be $6 billion compared with $600 million when plans were conceived in 2006.

As the German media has pointed out, this is not a good example of the nation’s reputation for precision and efficiency. What’s worse, the terminal will already be outdated when it does open. It was planned for 22 million pas-sengers a year with no provision for expansion, but planners say it will need to handle 44 million.

Canada’s media is also rife with stories of big infrastructure construction projects running into problems and being chronically delayed. The Toronto York Spadina Subway Extension, the new parkway in Windsor, Walterdale Bridge in Edmonton, a bridge in Victoria, to name just a few. Even in Van-couver, which has built LRTs relatively quickly and on time, tunnelling for the Evergreen Line just ran into problems. Unexpected sinkholes have de-layed the schedule by several months so far. It’s not just transportation proj-ects. A few years ago the Niagara Hydro Tunnel project was thrown seriously off kilter when the tunnelling had to be redirected.

Delays exact a financial toll on taxpayers, businesses, not to mention the contractors and design teams themselves. Delays are bad news for all.

One solution might be to use more public-private partnerships. Loath to put its investments at risk, the private sector tends to devote more time to up-front engineering in order to anticipate potential problems. Another solution widely promoted is that clients should hire engineering firms based on their qualifications and expertise (the QBS process). This approach con-trasts with the more common one of hiring a firm based on who agrees to do the work for the lowest fee. The latter is just a recipe for disaster because it encourages bidders to underestimate the scope of work and the risks of what might go wrong in order to keep their fee competitive.

The fact is things will go wrong on big, complex projects no matter what the approach. Unforeseen site conditions, weather, worker injuries, are just a few of the wrenches thrown into the mix. Pre-engineering can only do so much. As one engineer pointed out, you will never have infinite resources to do infinite testing for every possible scenario.

Nonetheless, delays in construction are becoming a chronic and expen-sive problem. They show engineers, architects and contractors in a bad light. The construction industry as a whole needs to come together and figure out why the schedules and costs of so many large projects are being so badly underestimated. Bronwen Parsons

FOR PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS IN PRIVATE PRACTICE

EditorBronwen Parsons (416) 510-5119

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At Union Station passengers embark at a sleek new enclosed platform off the Skywalk. MMM was the engineer and Zeidler was architect of this component.

The journey takes 25 minutes, cur-rently on trains with diesel engines, al-though they can be converted to elec-tric propulsion in the future. Around 2.35 million passengers are expected to use the train by the year 2018 and in its first year alone it will replace 1.2 million car trips.

AWARDS

Quebec consulting engineers “change the world” The newly named Association of Con-sulting Engineering Firms – Quebec/Association des firmes de génie-con-seil – Québec (AFG) announced the winners of its annual awards, "the Leonards" on May 12.

Held at the Grande Bibliothèque in downtown Montreal with 300 people present, the awards were presented

TRANSPORTATION

Union Pearson Express runningToronto's long awaited Union Pearson Express train began operating in early June, connecting the country's two busiest transportation hubs. Pearson International is in Mississauga outside Toronto and is often difficult to reach along congested highways. It was one of few international airports with no train service.

From Union Station downtown the UP Express route follows an upgraded GO commuter track northwest for 22 kilometres, with two stops. It then branches north at Highway 427 on a new elevated track for three kilome-tres. This "spur" crosses several roads and Mimico Creek before it reaches Terminal 1. The spur stands 28 metres at its highest point, providing riders with grand vistas of the downtown.

CH2M was the prime consultant doing program management for the overall project for Metrolinx. CH2M's role included scheduling, system inte-gration and compliance monitoring.

AirLINX Transit Partners were con-tracted to design, build and finance the elevated spur and the airport sta-tion for a fixed price of $129 million. AECOM provided the detail design for these projects and was the engineer of record. MMM was technical advisor, Hatch Mott MacDonald was the inde-pendent certifier, and Adamson was the station architect.

up front

continued on page 8

TRANSPORTATION

Regina to be Bypassed

The Saskatchewan government has

awarded a P3 contract to Sask-

Link Global Transportation Partners

(SGTP) for the Regina Bypass.

The 40-kilometre twinned high-

way is the largest transportation

infrastructure project in Saskatch-

ewan’s history. It is also the prov-

ince’s second P3 project. The con-

sortium will design, build, finance,

operate and maintain the highway.

Starting to the northwest of the

city at Highway 11, the bypass

loops south and around to extend

east along Highway 1 to Balgone.

Several engineering companies

are part of SGTP: Parsons, McEl-

hanney, Urban Systems, Buckland

and Taylor, Exp, Clifton Associates

and Delcan.

Construction is anticipated to

begin this summer, with completion

by the fall of 2019.

GOVERNMENT

Ontario enacts long-term infrastructure planning

The Ontario government has joined

Quebec in legally committing to

adopt long-term strategic plans for

infrastructure. The two provinces

are the only ones in Canada to have

such rules. Ontario’s "Infrastruc-

ture for Jobs and Prosperity Act"

passed in June and requires the

province to table a long-term infra-

structure plan within three years,

then once every five years.

Union Pearson Express on the elevated track at Toronto Pearson International Airport..

Stinson Transportation Centre, St-Laurent, winner of an AFG Award.

Rick

Rad

ell

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under the theme: “Change the World.” Guests included Martin Coiteux, Que-bec’s Minister Responsible for Govern-ment and Chair of the Treasury Board.

The “Visionary Award” went to Maria Mingallón, P.Eng. of Arup Cana-da for ContemPLAY, an urban pavilion developed for McGill University.

Other awards were:Bouthillette Parizeau for the Stin-

son Transportation Centre in Saint-Laurent for the Montreal Transit Cor-poration. The 38,400 sq.m industrial building is certified LEED Gold (build-ings/mechanical-electrical category).

CIMA+ for the Westmount Recre-ation Centre. Among the challenges was the creation of an underground park and outdoor pool (buildings/structure).

Stantec for the Health and Social Services Centre (CSSS) on Point-de-l’Ile. This is a renovation of a building for 600 residents, adding geothermal and other energy-saving technologies (energy).

Golder Associates for Co-Compost-ing of Soils Affected by PAHs and Heavy Petroleum Hydrocarbons, a project in east Montreal for Dow Chemical and Pétromont (environment).

Stantec and the Cree Nation of Mistissini for a 160-m wooden bridge, designed as a series of semi-continuous arches (transportation).

WSP for the Quartier des spectacles. This urban design project of the City of Montreal creates a cultural space above and below-ground in a complex setting (urban infrastructure).

An award for Mentor of the Year was given to Roger Lagacé, P.Eng. of Bouthillette Parizeau.

In the Small and Medium-Sized Firm category Infrastructel won for de-veloping a new 360-degree photograph-ic method for manhole inspections.

Olivier Melhem, ing. of Bouthillette Parizeau won the Emerging Consulting Engineering Professional award.

INTERNATIONAL

McElhanney bridge in India survives earthquake Brook Robazza, EIT of McElhanney

up front continued from page 6

Consulting was at the site office of the firm’s Arrah-Chhapra Bridge project in northeast India when the earth-quake tremors hit northern Nepal on April 25 and May 12.

Thankfully Robazza — and the bridge survived.

The 4.3-kilometre bridge is being

erected over the Ganges River, about 300 km. south of Kathmandu where a 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck around noon on April 25. Then around the same time on May 12, a 7.3-magnitude quake struck the area.

Robazza recently earned his Ph.D in seismic engineering. During the first earthquake he was about 175 me-tres from the bridge. Even from a dis-tance he could see the piers and py-lons oscillating. Within five minutes he was on the move. “I ran over there pretty quickly and hopped on the foot-ings as soon as I was sure the thing wasn’t going to come down on me.”

The bridge is in its fifth year of con-struction. The substructure and piers are complete, but the piers are not yet connected. Despite its vulnerable sta-tus, the seismic modelling studies held up. Inspections found only negligible flexural cracking at the base joints.

The bridge is in Bihar, one of the poorest states in India. It is expected to improve the accessibility and prosperi-

ty of the region.Infinity Engineering, which was ac-

quired by Vancouver-based McElhan-ney in 2014, was the lead design firm for the conceptual and detailed design, and is doing construction supervision.

ASSOCIATIONS

Quebec association adopts new nameThe Association of Consulting Engi-neers of Quebec/Association des in-génieurs-conseil du Québec (AICQ) has changed its name. The new name is Association des firmes de génie-conseil – Québec. It will use the acro-nym “AFG.”

Claude Décary, former chair of the board, said the change indicates that the association has gone to a new level and that their intention is to focus on the positive contribution that consulting engineering firms make in Quebec.

(In recent years the reputation of the consulting engineering industry has been deeply affected by the fallout from the Charbonneau Commission of Inquiry and charges of corruption.)

Semantically the new name also puts the emphasis on the “firm” as op-posed to the individual consulting engineer. The change also ties the Quebec association more closely with the national association, ACEC/AFIC-Canada. Most other provincial con-sulting engineering associations have renamed themselves according to the ACEC format in the past few years, although Consulting Engineers of Ontario, and Consulting Engineers of Alberta have not made the change.

The Quebec association has also appointed a new president and chief

Brook Robazza of McElhanney (left) and Surya Prakash at the Arrah-Chhapra Bridge in north-ern India.

André Rainville, AFG president

McE

lhan

ney

Cons

ultin

g

executive officer. André Rainville was formerly chief execu-tive officer of the Ordre des Ingénieurs du Québec (OIQ). And on June 2, the as-sociation announced that the new chair for




up front

2015-2016 is Robert Landry of SNC-Laval-in. Landry joined SNC-Lavalin in 2013 and is senior vice-pres-ident of the compa-ny's infrastructure en-gineering – eastern Canada division.

The new website of

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Canada and the province have agreed to provide $500 million toward the new plant.

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Robert Landry of SNC-Laval-in, AFG chair.

Harbour, Victoria, B.C.

Tour

ism

Vic

toria

, Tyl

er A

hlgr

en

the association is www.afg.quebec

WASTEWATER

Victoria still seeks sewage treatment siteOn Vancouver Island a committee has developed a list of over 20 potential sites for a new wastewater treatment plant to serve the Capital Regional District (CRD).

Seven municipalities, including Vic-toria, Saanich, Esquimalt and Lang-ford, are part of the so-called “Seaterra Program” which has to implement secondary wastewater treatment in the Capital Regional District by 2020 to meet federal rules.

Urban Systems is working with the CRD’s Eastside Wastewater Treatment and Resource Recovery Select Committee to provide the public with “high level” technical information on the various sites. Charrettes were held at the end of May to allow members of the public to “dig into this new information, learn more and give input.”

Currently wastewater in the area receives only preliminary treatment prior to being discharged at outfalls in Clover Point and McLoughlin Point. This screened wastewater is discharged


http://www.afg.quebec

I n the spring of 2013, Wolf Keller, P.Eng., had just retired as Calgary’s director of water services. Flying home from a European vacation on June 22, he looked down and

was shocked to see a city “half underwater." Shortly after those floodwaters subsided, his phone rang, and he was asked to head an expert panel charged with finding ways to protect Calgary from such future devastation.

It was the flood of the century in southern Alberta and the most costly extreme weather event in Canadian history. The final toll was four lives lost, some 100,000 Albertans


By Bil l Corbettflood mitigation

Warding off floodwater in AlbertaENGULFED

After the 2013 flood of the century in southern Alberta, engineers are drawing up plans for dikes, dams and other large structures to save vulnerable communities from future disaster.

Bill

Corb

ett

evacuated, more than $6 billion in losses and recovery costs, 1,000 kilometres of roads destroyed and hundreds of bridg-es and culverts washed away.

“It woke up a lot of people across Canada to the poten-tial risk of geo-hazards,” says Eric Monteith, regional busi-ness leader in water for Stantec, one of dozens of consulting engineering firms that were involved in flood mitigation strategies following the 2013 event.

Substantial floods had hit Alberta previously, but most of them occurred long before development in many commu-

p10-14 JuneJuly15 AlbertaFloods.indd 10 2015-06-15 2:36 PM


nities had crept onto floodplains and alluvial fans. Certainly, towns and cities devastated by the 2013 flood were ill-pre-pared for its severity.

It started with the perfect storm. Conditions were already ripe — a substantial, melting Rocky Mountains snowpack, previous heavy rains and partially frozen ground all added up to precious little capacity for upstream watersheds to absorb more moisture. Then on June 19 a moist upper low pressure system from Colorado parked itself against the mountains and for three days unloaded torrential, tropical-style rains.

With little warning, streams and rivers overflowed their banks, submerging houses and other buildings. More than two dozen communities declared states of emergency. Three municipalities were particularly hard hit: Calgary, High River and Canmore.

In Calgary, 6,300 homes were flooded and nearly 80,000 residents displaced. The downtown headquarters of Canada’s oil industry was partly submerged and without power for several days. The Saddledome, home to the Calgary Flames, was flooded to the 10th row of seating.

In the mountain community of Canmore the down-town was also flooded and parts of the Trans-Canada High-way were washed away. Dozens of houses along Cougar Creek were badly damaged, some teetering on the brink of being swept downstream. In the prairie town of High River, south of Calgary, the rampaging Highwood River forced the evacuation of all 13,000 residents, many for a considerable period of time.

Calgary ponders dams, diversion tunnels, canalsOver the past two years, each of the flooded municipalities has worked with the Alberta government to assess their flood protection options and implement short-term mitiga-tion strategies. Now, they are embarking on major, long-term projects costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Not surprisingly, the lion’s share is destined for Calgary. It’s the only large city in Canada situated at the confluence of two mountain rivers, the Bow and Elbow. During the storm, more than 200 millimetres of rain fell on those two watersheds and quickly funneled into the city, with peak flows cresting at 2,400 cubic metres per second on the Bow.

To date, little attention has been paid to mitigation pro-posals on the Bow River, other than to negotiate with Trans-Alta to lower water levels in its upstream hydroelectric res-ervoirs during flood events.

Most of the focus has been on the Elbow River, with a provincial task force proposing three measures for handling a flood similar to 2013, a roughly one-in-200-year event.

One measure is a 4-kilometre diversion tunnel from the Elbow’s Glenmore Reservoir to the Bow River below the confluence of the two rivers. “While a tunnel has some en-gineering [and] geotechnical challenges, it’s relatively sim-ple — a hole in the ground with gates. And it’s reliable,” says Keller, chair of Calgary’s expert management panel on flood mitigation. But at an estimated cost of some $500 mil-lion for 1:200-year protection, it’s easily the least cost-effec-tive of the three options, according to a February 2015 re-port for the Alberta government by consultants IGI Group and Golder Associates.

A somewhat better benefit-cost solution, the report says, is a $344-million dry, earth-fill dam across the Elbow River at McLean Creek in the foothills west of Calgary. Traversing


flood mitigation

Above: rehabilitated Cougar Creek in Canmore; 90,000 cubic metres of debris was washed down from the mountains into the creek.

continued on page 12




flood mitigation

a river gorge, the project would include a concrete spillway for discharging normal and flood flows, and an earth-cut spillway to protect the dam from extreme flooding.

The hands-down economic winner, with an estimated benefit-cost ratio of 2.07 is the Springbank off-stream reser-voir, just upstream of Calgary. During a flood, a diversion weir on the Elbow would channel water along a 4.5-kilome-tre canal to the otherwise dry reservoir. A modified channel would later release water back to the river.

The Alberta government re-cently approved the Springbank option, an estimated $264-million project, with detailed design, engi-neering and environmental im-pact assessments being undertak-en by Stantec. Once land acquisi-tion negotiations are completed with affected landowners, construction is expected to start in 2016, with the reservoir operational by spring 2018.

Meanwhile, the McLean Creek option is still being stud-ied. However, the province says its construction would be more expensive and complex and its environmental im-pacts greater. The government also indicated the Spring-bank reservoir’s capacity of 67.6 million cubic metres would be sufficient to mitigate 2013-level flows on the Elbow River.

City officials are less sure. “For a system capable of han-dling that severity of event, we’d probably need two of these things [mitigation measures]. We were lucky that the peak

on the Elbow in 2013 only lasted one day,” says Keller.

Canmore controls mountain debrisThe mountain community of Canmore, 100 kilometres to the west of Calgary, faces much different post-flood chal-lenges. While the Bow River swelled in and around the town of 12,000 people in 2013, it was the discharge down steep tributary creeks of 250 millimetres of rain atop a melting snowpack that caused the greatest damage. For example,

the flood washed 90,000 cubic metres of debris down Cougar Creek, which is along one of the most heavily developed alluvial fans in Canada.

Without adequate mitigation measures, the town engineers realized, a repeat disaster could

occur within decades. The valley’s geological record indi-cates that the 2013 flood could have been much worse: a massive landslide creating a debris dam that, once rup-tured, could have claimed many lives and caused untold economic losses.

So the town decided to depart from the traditional Canadian practice of designing flood protection to with-stand a 100- or 200-year flood. This hazard-based ap-proach does not account for the severity of consequences to assets at risk in a worst-case scenario. By contrast, inter-national best practices have moved towards a risk-based

Tow

n of

Hig

h Ri

ver,

Engi

neer

ing

Above: map of flood mitigation measures in High River. The town has already built 7 kilometres of permanent dykes as future protection. WorleyParsons helped with the project.

Substantial floods had hit Alberta previously, but most of them

occurred long before communities had seen development creep onto

their floodplains.

continued from page 11

method that evaluates the total social and economic consequences of flooding. Hazard here refers to the type, frequency and mag-nitude of a flood, while risk calculates the conse-quences and severity of that hazard, expressed in economic and life loss.

“It [risk-based evalua-tion] is an approach used quite widely by the nucle-ar, chemical and transpor-tation industries. Only fairly recently has it been used to assess geo-hazards in Canada, and it’s a more responsible approach than arbitrarily chosen hazard levels,” says Matthias Jakob, a senior geoscien-tist with BGC, a Vancouver-based engineering firm that consulted for Can-




flood mitigation

more on its mitigation options.“Knowing what we know now, we probably

wouldn’t have allowed all that housing near Cougar Creek,” says town manager of engineer-ing Andy Esarte, P.Eng.. “But the economic and social costs of removing [the homes] now would be excessive. So we’ve come up with an engineering solution that’s the next best thing.”

The current flood mitigation measures taken along Cougar Creek include bank chan-neling, culvert protection and the placement in the creek bed of articulated mats. Supplied by IECS, the mats are a series of concrete blocks linked with steel cable to prevent the banks eroding in a debris flood. The town also in-stalled a debris net, a flexible ring that blocks boulders, trees and the like from washing down the creek bed.

The proposed long-term solution is to replace the de-bris net with a $40-million debris flood retention struc-ture. Designed by Austrian engineering firm Alpinfra/Ca-

nadian Hydrotech, the 30-metre-high concrete dam would normally allow water through but retain it at critical times. It is designed for a landslide flood far more devastating

RECOGNIZING THOSE WHO KNOW HOW TO INNOVATE FOR THE FUTURE

The 2015 CSCE Excellence in Innovation in Civil Engineering Award was bestowed on the engineering firm Buckland & Taylor Ltd. for the Milton-Madison Bridge replacement project located between Madison, IN and Milton, KY. Canam is proud to sponsor this award since 2009 and encourage innovation in the field of civil engineering in Canada.

Visit www.csce.ca/innovation

INNOVATION I CREATIVITY I INGENUITY

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Above: conceptual drawing of the planned debris flood retention structure for Canmore. The 30-metre high concrete dam would allow water through under normal flow condi-tions. Rendering by ISL Engineering.


http://www.csce.ca/innovation



flood mitigation

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than the 2013 flood.“We were surprised in 2013,” says Esarte. “We don’t ex-

pect to be surprised again.”

Permanent dykes at High River High River, 35 kilometres south of Calgary, has a history of flooding. But when 345 millimetres of upstream rainfall shot down the Highwood River in 2013, the peak flows of 1,820 cubic metres per second were more than double any-thing the town had experienced in a century, overwhelming existing protection systems.

Since then the town has been busy. “We built seven kilo-metres of permanent dikes along the river before last flood season,” says Reiley McKerracher, P.Eng., the town’s man-ager of renewal operations. “We’re miles ahead of what anyone else has done so far.”

With design and construction management help from engineering firm WorleyParsons, the town has built per-manent dikes to guard against an upstream flow rate of 1,850 cubic metres per second, with an additional vertical metre of free-board protection. Interim dikes, offering


1,200 cubic metres per second of protection, have been added elsewhere in town until permanent ones can be built. The river’s flow capacity is also being increased by the removal of a rail bridge and the replacement of a ve-hicle bridge with one higher. Finally, the provincial gov-ernment is buying and removing houses in two badly flooded communities.

Collectively, these measures are intended to sufficiently protect the town of 13,000 people from future flooding so that more expensive measures may not be needed. These include a proposed diversion of floodwater down a canal into a dry dam, and a $250-million-plus project that Dutch consul-tant Deltares said could not be economically justified, given expected annual damages of less than $1 million.

“Coming up with the right solutions for any affected com-munity is challenging because of all the variables that have to be considered,” says Stantec’s Monteith. “In a lot of cases, the infrastructure itself is not overly complex. The challenge is balancing the risk versus the investment required.” CCE

Bill Corbett is a freelance writer based in Calgary.


http://www.iecs.com



wastewater treatment

Upgrades to the Vauxhall Pollution Control Plant in London, Ontario enable it to treat wet weather flows that are 10 times the plant's everyday capacity.

SAVING THE RIVER THAMES

By Dil lon Consulting

T he Vauxhall Pollution Control Plant in London, Ontario was one of three in the city that were being overwhelmed by the extra stormwater flows

during wet weather. Major flows from storms would dis-charge directly into the Thames River when it was too much for the plant to handle. The average and peak flow treatment capacity of the treatment plant is 20,900 cu.m/d and 34,640 cu.m/d, respectively.

Sending untreated sewage flows into the river was a major environmental concern, especially since the river was designated a Canadian Heritage River in 2000. Peri-odically wet weather overflows into the Thames had ex-ceeded 100,000 cubic metres per day.

Dillon Consulting was retained by the city to design the upgrades to the plant to resolve the situation. The key objective was to reduce the number of bypass events, and to improve the level of treatment of the effluent that was discharged into the river.

The engineers were able to upgrade the facility, some sections of which date back more than 80 years, into a state of the art operation. It is now one of the first Ontario mu-nicipal wastewater treatment plants to have a wet weather strategy that involves flow diversion, chemically enhanced

primary treatment, and chemically enhanced secondary clarification processes. Furthermore, the $5.6-million up-grades pulled together technologies already in use in the industry, but reimagined them in such a way that minimal new equipment was required, giving the city cost savings. The new peak plant flows are nearly 10 times the plant's average daily capacity.

The wet weather operating strategy is considered so innovative that it has been adopted in other Ontario plants, including Toronto's Ashbridge's Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant and the City of London's Greenway Pol-lution Control Centre.

At the Vauxhall plant, the new inlet works incorporating screens and grit removal are sized to handle maximum wet weather flows up to 200,000 m3/d. Under dry weather flow conditions the effluent from screening and grit removal is sent to the primary clarifiers before biological treatment. During wet weather flows, effluent from screening and grit removal is split between the biological treatment step and the chemically enhanced primary clarification stage.

During high wet weather flow conditions flows up to the maximum capacity of the biological treatment step are di-rected to this process step. The maximum peak wet weather treatment capacity of the biological process is 50,000 cu.m/d. The increased peak wet weather treatment capacity

Dillo

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Above: new headworks building with air-make-up unit with heat recovery and ozonation. In front of the building are the primary clarifier ponds and to the right are grit removal tanks.

p15-21 JuneJuly15 Vauxhall Wandering Algae.indd 15 2015-06-15 11:37 AM



wastewater treatment

is achieved by the flow proportional addition of a cationic polymer and iron salt to the mixed liquor ahead of the sec-ondary clarifiers. Chemical addition enhances the peak wet weather treatment capacity of the process by retaining the mixed liquor solids in the biological treatment step. The wet weather operating strategy involves the gradual increase of flows to the biological treatment to avoid "washing out" and losing the biomass inventory in the aeration tank. This strategy requires a sophisticated level of flow control as the wet weather flows increase. Effluent from the biological treatment process is discharged to the River Thames.

Flows in excess of the maximum wet weather treatment capacity of the biological process are diverted to the existing primary clarifiers. These were upgraded to facilitate chemi-cally enhanced primary clarification, which increases the re-moval of solids and associated contaminants. An anionic polymer and iron salt are added proportionally to the inflow to enhance the efficiency of the primary clarifiers, and the treated effluent is discharged to the river. The chemically enhanced primary clarification process has a maximum treat-ment capacity of 150,000 cu.m/d.

In summary, by using the chemically enhanced primary clarification for wet weather flows and chemically en-hanced secondary clarification to increase the treatment

capacity of the biological treatment process, the overall maximum wet weather treatment capacity of the plant is increased to approximately 200,000 cu.m/d. Of this flow 50,000 m3/d receives full biological treatment while the rest of the flow is treated to achieve high effluent quality for excess wet weather flows.

At the new inlet works an innovative but easy-to-oper-ate ozonation system was installed for odour control. It includes heat recovery, thus reducing the consumption of chemicals and energy.

The new inlet works building's main heating and ventila-tion unit includes an air-to-air heat recovery feature. The heat recovery system generally recaptures 40-45% of the energy for make-up air heating. To further enhance the energy effi-ciency of the heating system, dual ventilation rates are used along with occupancy sensors and gas detectors. CCE

Owner: City of London

Prime consultant/design, permits, construction administra-

tion, commissioning: Dillon Consulting (Louis Tasfi, Ph.D.,

P.Eng., Tihamer Csiba, P.Eng., Jeff Williams)

Contractor: Baseline

Above: aerial photo of the plant in the eastern section of London, southwest Ontario. Aeration tanks (large grids) are flanked by the primary clarifiers (rectangles) and inlet building (square). Towards bottom of photo near the river are the secondary clarifiers (circular).

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Eliminate the need for fusing with the new Refuse-to-Fuse™ Victaulic® Style 905 coupling for 2 – 6" HDPE pipe.

Speed• Up to 10 times faster than traditional fusing• Installs without the need to disassemble the coupling

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water supply By Stephan Weninger, P.Eng., Stantec

Changing the Model

Stan

tec

A design-build team completed the Wandering River Regional Pipeline across 88 kilometres of Northern Alberta, taking just over a year.

A complex and unique project, the Wandering River Regional Pipeline is the first regional water project in Alberta completed using a design-build delivery

model. Completed by Graham Design Builders with Stantec as the prime consultant, the project is a textbook example of how cooperation, teamwork and communication be-tween different stakeholders can have positive results. The 88-kilometre system was designed, constructed and put into operation in only 13 months.

The project won a 2014 Award of Excellence from Con-sulting Engineers of Alberta and won the 2013 Project of the Year from the Alberta Public Works Association.

Located in Athabasca County along Highway 63 to the oil sands in northern Alberta, the pipeline brings treated water north from the Aspen Regional Water system. The pipe extends from Boyle to Wandering River via Grassland. The project also involved building a new 550-cu.m potable water reservoir at Wandering River and modifications to a reservoir at Grassland.

Wandering River’s existing water treatment plant lay in the way of construction for twinning Highway 63, so the plant was scheduled for demolition in December 2012. With the new pipeline project awarded in July 2011, time-lines were a concern. Without the pipeline the community would be left without potable water.

In anticipation of possible delays, the team sought regu-latory approval concurrently for the 300+ crossings — utili-ties, highways and environmental features — along the line. Construction proceeded in locations where approvals were in place, even if approvals were still outstanding in nearby areas. This process meant that the alignment had to be moved several times during the early months of construc-tion while approvals with long lead times trickled in.

Horizontal directional drillingUsing horizontal directional drilling (HDD) to install nearly the entire 88-km length of the system greatly reduced the project's potential environmental impacts. Installing using the HDD method also allowed the project to be ex-empt from the requirement to obtain an approval under the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act, which reduced the overall timeline by approximately six months. Also known as "trenchless" drilling, the HDD method allows pipe to be installed at a wide variety of depths with minimal disturbance to the surface. Excava-tions only occur at either end of a drilled section of pipe, often 300-500 metres apart. Once the desired depth of pipe is reached, a steering apparatus allows the drill head to ma-noeuvre horizontally through the ground before surfacing. Due to the depth of the frost line in Alberta, the pipe on

Above: the trenchless installation method greatly reduced the environmental impacts.



Stan

tec

Owner-client: Athabasca County

Prime consultant: Stantec Consulting (Todd Simenson,

P.Eng., Stephan Weninger, P.Eng., Scott Sanderson, C. Tech,

Amber Mitchell, EIT, Don Munro, CET, Liang Liu, M.Eng.,

P.Eng., Andria Klatt, P.Eng., Qiguo Wang, P.Eng., Fathi Salma,

P.Eng., Tony Clarke, CET)

Design-build contractor: Graham Design Builders, Pidherney’s

Other key players: Associated Engineering (owner's engi-

neer), ParklandGEO (geotechnical), Shendel (mechanical),

Vector (electrical), Landwest (land agent)

this project was installed at a minimal depth of 2.7 metres with a depth of up to 6 metres in some areas.

The system consists primarily of fusible polyvinyl chloride pipe (FPVC) and represents the largest project by length of FPVC installed to date in North America. The FPVC allows the HDD contractors to fuse sections of the pipe together, enabling them to install greater lengths at one time. The FPVC pipe also gave cost savings since its larger internal di-ameter allowed the use of 150-mm diameter pipe. The HDPE pipe which is more commonly used for this application has thicker walls and would have required the use of 200-mm diameter pipe.

Muskeg and other difficult terrainThroughout the construction teams encountered different terrains, which posed a threat to the timeline. Although much of the alignment paralleled roads, there were several stretches of private land, streams and a river to cross, as well as a 12-km section of undeveloped land. This land sat in mus-keg, which meant that the installation had to be scheduled to proceed during frozen conditions otherwise the equipment would sink into the soils.

In some areas, unexpected gravel and boulders delayed the teams. On several occasions the drill was deflected below large boulders, but when the pipe was pulled back, the rock would settle and crush the pipe. Finding the off-set rocks became a trial and error exercise of exposing the buried pipe. In areas where rocks and boulders were prevalent, the contractor shortened the drill lengths from 500 to 150 metres to minimize the production losses.

The most challenging crossing was under the Wander-ing River a few kilometres south of the community. The sandy soils required a conductor barrel to be installed to below the depth of the sand so that drilling mud pressure could be maintained.

The project was completed on budget and ahead of schedule and provides long term reliable clean and safe drinking water for the two communities and 70+ residences that lie along the pipeline. Despite Wandering River and Grassland being small communities, their relative remote-

ness along Highway 63 makes them of strategic importance to the 11,000 vehicles that travel to and from the Alberta oilsands region daily. The new waterline and reservoir pro-vide the communities with the resources they need as they grow as service centres along this energy corridor. CCE

Above: the pipe was installed at a minimum depth of 2.7 metres, and up to 6 metres in some areas, due to the depth of the frost line in Alberta.


water supply

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http://www.ail.ca/CCE


water treatment By Simon Breese, P.Eng.AECOM

Algae blooms are spoiling our lakes and clogging our water treatment plants. Here are a range of techniques to deal with the problem.

Algae — Bane of Our Lakes

A lgae have always posed a chal-lenge to water treatment plants, either through their

tendency to clog filters, or due to is-sues such as taste and odour which can be challenging to address.

But the frequency and magnitude of algae blooms appears to be on the rise. This tendency is driven in part by global warming, and by more intensive land use around our watersheds, which increases their nutrient loading.

Of particular concern is the appar-ent global rise in harmful algae blooms caused by some species of algae, nota-bly cyanobacteria, which can be toxic to humans and aquatic life.

This article presents an overview of a wide variety of techniques that are presently employed in the water sup-ply and treatment industry to address algae, either by managing algae growth at the source, or by removing algae or its metabolites at the water treatment plant.

As a general rule, given that the compounds that cause taste and odour (T&O) and toxins are initially formed as metabolic by-products with-in the algae cell, but become an issue primarily when released into the water, either by being excreted by the cell or through the death of the cell, it is almost always preferable to avoid

techniques that kill live algae cells, as this can exacerbate the issue.

The problems posed for a water treatment plant by algae can there-fore also change seasonally. For ex-ample, early in the algae season, fil-ter clogging due to live algae cells may be the primary concern, where-as later in the season the decline of the algae bloom and the resulting death of large populations of algae can result in taste and odour or tox-icity issues.

Managing algae growth at the sourceWhile it is always preferable to under-©

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water treatment

take strategies preventing algae growth at the source, this is often difficult to achieve in a complex lake ecosystem where the water purveyor such as a municipality may not have com-plete control over the watershed.

A wide variety of techniques have been used, including:• selecting an alternative intake location: use of an intake de-signed to allow withdrawal of water at different depths, to allow the best quality water to be drawn;• reducing nutrient input from point and non-point sources;• precipitation of nutrients within the water body by the addition of chemicals;• dredging of lake sediments to physi-cally remove nutrients;• de-stratification of the water body using artificial circulation;• aeration of deeper waters in strati-fied lakes to allow the use of these deep waters as a source instead of wa-ters nearer to the surface prone to algae growth; • use of algaecides such as copper sulphate to prevent the onset of algae blooms;• bio-manipulation: seeding of the water body with species of fish or other aquatic life that feed upon the prob-lem algae species;• sonication: use of ultrasonic irradi-ation to disrupt algae and retard their proliferation.

Given the complexity of lake ecosys-tems and the enormous variety in the number of species of algae, it is diffi-

cult to point to any one of these tech-niques as universally successful. When considering any of them, care is need-

ed to ensure that they do not give rise to unintended consequences. Careful liaison with all relevant regulatory au-thorities is also essential.

Managing algae and its metabolites at the plantIf algae cannot be managed within the source itself, a variety of techniques can be employed, either to deal with the removal of live algae, or to deal directly with their metabolites.

Conventional water treatment plants are capable of 90% or higher physical removal of live algae cells, given that algae generally become captured with-in coagulant floc. For source waters prone to algae, it is preferable to rely upon clarification processes such as sedimentation or dissolved air flotation (considered the best available technol-ogy for algae removal) to remove the majority of the algae. Although filtra-tion also is very effective, it will typically come at the price of significant reduc-tions in the plant's productivity due to filter clogging.

Treatment techniques for address-ing algal metabolites generally use either oxidative or sorptive tech-niques. Where oxidation is used, care must be taken to remove live algae as far as possible before apply-ing the oxidant to avoid killing them. Commonly employed oxidation tech-niques include:• Chlorination, which can be effective against many T&O-causing compounds and some algal toxins, but can result in disinfection by-product formation;• Potassium permanganate;• Ozone, which is highly effective against most algae related T&O, as

well as algal toxins;• Advanced oxidation, which typically employs a combination of ultraviolet

irradiation of hydrogen peroxide or chlorine, or ozone oxidation of hydrogen peroxide, to form hy-droxyl radicals extremely effective in the destruction of T&O or algal toxins;

Sorptive techniques that are commonly used include:• powdered activated carbon (PAC), which is highly effective for the removal of both T&O and algal toxins if applied in sufficient dosages. PAC can become cost prohibitive unless the algae season is comparatively short in duration;• granular activated carbon (GAC), where coarse activated carbon is placed as a sorptive medium as part of a filter bed. GAC is also highly effective as long as the GAC retains sorptive capacity. The effective life of the GAC can vary from a few months to several years, de-pending upon source water quality;• Biological filtration, whereby the growth of biomass on a porous filter media such as GAC is actively encour-aged, commonly through the use of ozone upstream of the filter. This pro-cess cleaves long chain organic mole-cules into short chain assimilable or-ganic carbon, which is useable as a food source by the biomass. A combination of ozone with biological filtration pro-vides a dual barrier against T&O and algal toxins, although the removal effi-ciency in typical Canadian plants can vary seasonally, as biological activity slows dramatically in cold waters.

In summary, addressing algae re-lated issues in a water treatment plant is a highly complex issue and the ap-propriate solution not only is highly case specific, but also can vary season-ally. Given this complexity, pilot test-ing is almost always recommended to ensure the long term sustainability of any approaches. CCE

Simon Breese, M.A.Sc., P.Eng. is technical director of water treatment with AECOM in Kitchener, Ontario.

It is almost always preferable to avoid techniques that kill live algae cells, as this can

exacerbate the issue.

Above: dissolved air flotation, or DAF, is gener-ally considered the best available technology for physically removing live algae cells. The algae are gently floated to the surface using micro-bubbles.

AECO

M



public affairs

DELAYS

p22-30 JuneJuly15 Delays.indd 22 2015-06-15 11:37 AM



By Bronwen Parsons public affairs

Large construction projects are taking years longer than they're supposed to — and the public want to know why.

A lmost every day across Canada news breaks that a major construction project is delayed. A subway or LRT line, a park-

way, an airport, even a public square — it doesn't matter — chances are that long after the project was due to open the site is still a dusty mess, yellow hardhats and heavy equipment are about, and bar-

riers are still up. The photo op and grand ribbon cutting have retreated to a far distant horizon.

In its March 31 edition the Toronto Star listed nine major transportation projects in the Greater Toronto

Area that were up to seven years late, millions over budget, and sometimes both. Among the most notorious is the To-


ronto York Spadina Subway Extension, a line tunnelling 8.5-kilometres northwest of the city. In March it was $150 million over its $2.6-billion budget and heading for being four years late. The Toronto Transit Commission fired two top engineering staff over this and other construction fiascos.

The TTC is not alone in its troubles. By late April workers were still fixing deficiencies at the $145-million PanAm stadium in Hamilton. It was supposed to be open 10 months earlier.

In downtown Toronto the endless renovations to Nathan Philip Square at City Hall are legend. "What in heaven's name?" asked Mayor John Tory in April when he looked out his window and saw new construction fences being erected

©Getty Images/iStockphoto/badmanproduction/ Catalin Vicol

DELAYSDELAYS



public affairs


on the plaza, reported the National Post. Changes to the plaza were supposed to have been finished in 2012. "I just was so aggravated because I really want to declare this proj-ect over, to declare it as an unfortunate chapter in terms of the expenditure and move on, learning lessons from the thing as to how we can stop this from happening," the mayor said. The budget has risen 50 per cent from $40 mil-lion to $60 million. Work has dragged on for so long that crews are now having to repair fountains that were installed three years ago as part of the renovations.

In Windsor the consortium building the Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway to a future U.S. border crossing is reported to be paying $100,000 a day in fines because the 11-kilome-tre expressway is not open on time.

Western Canada does not escape. An expansion to Calgary Airport is running a year late, while Edmonton has three overdue projects: the Walterdale Bridge (a year late), the Metro LRT line (opening this spring, a year late), and the 102nd Street-Groat Road Crossing (work halted for weeks in April). According to the Edmonton Journal on April 8, so many projects have problems, Ed-monton city councillors are questioning their procure-ment process. Councillor Michael Oshry said: "It might be a string of bad luck, but when you have three big projects late by this much, there might be something wrong with the selection."

In Victoria, B.C., the unique Johnson Street Bridge ran into material supply problems and construction was at a standstill for 15 months. The budget has risen by the same steep curve we see in Toronto, from an origi-nal $63 million to $97 million.

It's not just the complex, high-profile projects that are running past time. The Saskatchewan Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure released a report this spring that found more than half the province's highway construction projects were late during the 2013-2014 fiscal year. It's a recent trend: in 2008 only 29% of the highway contracts were de-layed. Shantel Lipp, president of the Saskatchewan Heavy Construction Association, told the Journal of Commerce: "When I heard 51 per cent, that seemed high to us. We were shocked it had gotten to that point."

It's small comfort to know that Canada is not alone in this. KPMB International issued its "2015 Global Construc-tion Project Owner's Survey: Climbing the Curve" in mid-May. The report is based on 109 face-to-face interviews

with the heads of companies and other organizations around the world that carry out large construction proj-ects. The respondents were from across the Americas (38%), Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. A quarter of them represented government agencies. Their capital budgets ranged from US $410 million to more than US $5 billion. These people told KPMB that fewer than one-third of their projects in the last three years were com-pleted on time and on budget. Only 25% of their projects came within 10% of their original deadlines, and only 31% came within 10% of their budgets.

Clearly there is a problem.

Finding faultDelays inevitably mean spending more money, whether it's the developer forced to pay financial penalties and spend more on labour, or the general economic toll paid by soci-ety and businesses for the inconvenience of ongoing con-struction and the traffic snarls that result.

Construction projects are highly complex so there are myriad reasons why things can go wrong. There is weather.An extremely harsh winter last year wreaked havoc on schedules, for example. And often there are unforeseen conditions, such as coming across an old sewer line that is in the way of new infrastructure. There are freak incidents, like the steel beams that bent several inches for unknown reasons when they were being installed on Edmonton's 102nd Street overpass during a windstorm in April.

In the media, blame for the delays is cast around like seeds in a farmer's field. The reasons are laid at the feet of contractors (for cutting corners and shoddy work that has to be redone); suppliers (sending inferior equipment); and designers (creating extravagant architecture and un-realistic green designs that demand more time). Some-times the owners and politicians are held to account for managing things poorly, as in the case of the TTC subway.

And yes, consulting engineers are implicated. The Saskatchewan Ministry of Highways report, which was independently prepared by McNair Business Develop-ment, finds many reasons for delays, including contrac-tors "stockpiling" projects to save work for the next season. But it also notes that problems have become worse since the Ministry began outsourcing more work to consulting engineers. The sheer volume of projects



© 2015 Simpson Strong-Tie Company Inc. FX70TEST15E

At Simpson Strong-Tie, we believe tested products are proven products. Our engineering and R&D team developed and performed a test protocol for the FX-70® Structural Repair and Strengthening System – one of our many products in our new line of Repair, Protection and Strengthening Systems for wood, concrete and masonry. This test is the industry’s first full-scale, cyclic test of a repaired wood pile. The test results not only offer real-world data to help designers evaluate the FX-70 system as a potential solution for structural repair applications, but validate that the system performs as expected.

Call us about your next project at (800) 999-5099 and watch the FX-70® Pile Repair Cyclic Testing video at strongtie.com/videolibrary.

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© 2015 Simpson Strong-Tie Company Inc. FX70TEST15E

At Simpson Strong-Tie, we believe tested products are proven products. Our engineering and R&D team developed and performed a test protocol for the FX-70® Structural Repair and Strengthening System – one of our many products in our new line of Repair, Protection and Strengthening Systems for wood, concrete and masonry. This test is the industry’s first full-scale, cyclic test of a repaired wood pile. The test results not only offer real-world data to help designers evaluate the FX-70 system as a potential solution for structural repair applications, but validate that the system performs as expected.

Call us about your next project at (800) 999-5099 and watch the FX-70® Pile Repair Cyclic Testing video at strongtie.com/videolibrary.

TESTEDBeyond Limits

SSTM_FX70TEST15-E_8_1-8x10_7-8.indd 1 5/21/15 3:05 PMp22-30 JuneJuly15 Delays.indd 25 2015-06-15 11:37 AM

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in the province meant that too many small and inexpe-rienced contractors and engineering companies that don't have the capacity to do the work were being hired. Another problem was that engineering firms weren't being given enough authority by the Ministry to make decisions, which led to hold-ups on site.

to be badly delayed unless it ends up in litigation. There each poor decision and mistake is ferreted out in labori-ous — and expensive — detail. By that time, at least in public projects, the damage has likely been done and the taxpayers are on the hook for the cost overruns.



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Chris Newcomb, P.Eng., chair of McElhanney Consulting in Vancou-ver, recalls that problems come about through traditional scheduling prac-tices. Municipalities often don't ap-prove their budgets for the design of projects until spring. "The artificial imposition of the financial year-end means that construction is jammed into the late summer and fall." As a result he says, "Construction bids are higher and the contractors have a compressed construction schedule. If winter comes early some projects don't get finished until the following spring, the environmental impacts are aggravated due to rain washing mud into creeks, and engineers' esti-mates are often overrun because of the uncertainty of it all."

From a project management point of view there are plenty of theories of why projects go wrong. R.S. Means, the cost consultants, have cited misaligned schedules, late-stage changes in project scope, and unrealistic designs.

A shortage of experienced staff is also causing problems, both in the private and the public sectors. And regulatory approvals can be a huge stumbling block on any project, but particularly when First Nations are in-volved where there can be a lack of structure, with no clear process, au-thority or deadlines.

In many cases the reason given for delays and poor projects is the all-too-common practice of hiring consultants and contractors accord-ing to who submits the lowest bid to do the work. "You get what you pay for" is not an axiom that owners who embark on construction projects seem to believe in.

No-one really gets to the bottom of what caused a particular project

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Soldiering forth and QBSDr. George F. Jergeas, professor of project management at the Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, gave a presentation in March on construction activity in the oil sands. As reported on March 24 by the Journal of Com-merce, Jergeas believes what is needed to keep mega-projects on track is more attention at the "front end, the owner side of the business and the engineering side." "The more engi-neering is involved, the more complete and better quality the design," he said.

In Edmonton, Paul Ruffell, P.Eng., president of infra-structure for Tetra Tech EBA in Canada, says the same: "We're not often allowed to put enough engineering into projects at the start. If you were to have infinite money and infinite time, you could do a design that allows the project to be completed in a straightforward manner. But of course you never do have infinite resources, so you do the best design you can and then soldier forth and deal with the situations that arise and impact the schedule.

Ruffell believes that using a qualifications-based-selection (QBS) process to hire an engineer can help. In this method engineers are pre-qualified for a job based on their expertise,

so they can then sit down with the owner before the project's scope of work is established and first share with the client all the things that can possibly go wrong.

In contrast, where price is the deciding factor for hiring a consultant or selecting their proposed design, the com-petitors are almost bound to downplay potential problems. "Pessimists don't win bids," says Ruffell. "You have to take the sunny view and say that things are going to align and everything will go swimmingly."

John Gamble, P.Eng., president and chief executive of-ficer of the Association of Consulting Engineering Compa-nies-Canada in Ottawa, agrees. "The greatest source of disputes in any project is a matter of misaligned expecta-tions. That is because most procurement systems are ad-versarial to begin with. Most procurement systems empha-size price. Some overtly, some subtly. What that effectively does is it encourages engineers, architects and contractors to minimally interpret the scope of work. It actually dis-courages them from identifying potential complexities."

In contrast, he says, the consultants selected through a qualifications-based process can focus on the client's needs. "Studies in the U.S. where they have had QBS in


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place for over four decades have dem-onstrated that both cost creep and schedule creep are dramatically re-duced when QBS is used to select en-gineering and architectural consul-tants."

Gamble adds: "In the case of a P3 or design-build project, using QBS is an especially effective approach because the private consortia are taking a huge leap of faith. So it's more important than ever to have the right team."

Public-private partnerships fare betterIn fact, public-private-partnerships (P3s) are turning out to be a better solution for bringing large infrastruc-ture projects in on time.

TD Economics published a special report on March 31 responding to a previous one issued by Ontario's Audi-tor General about the cost of P3s, also known as "alternative financing and procurement (AFP)" projects.

The TD economists pointed out that an independent review of 37 pub-lic-private-partnership projects com-pleted in 2014 had shown that 73% of them had been finished on time or




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within a month of their scheduled completion date. The primary purpose of the TD report was to show that

even though P3 projects had cost more to finance than they would have using public funds, there was good reason. Be-fore construction began on P3s the private consortia had accounted for potential risks and delays and built them into the price. In contrast, traditional projects frequently run into problems after construction, which causes budgets to escalate and deadlines to be delayed. "On the surface, P3s appear to have a higher price tag on the tangible aspects of the project than in a traditional procurement project," says the TD report. "However, that ignores the fact that the tan-gible costs in an AFP are a more complete pricing of all of the risks of the project."

The TD report also notes that one of the reasons that P3 projects come in closer to their deadlines is that a great deal of the engineering is done before shovels hit the ground. So it lists "time savings" as one of the primary benefits of the P3 model. It notes: "Although the tendering and contracting phase of a P3 may take longer due to the complexity of projects and contract arrangements, the construction phase is often accelerated. This minimizes public inconvenience and construction-time costs relative to traditional procure-ment. If a project is delayed, in most cases the private con-tractor would bear the cost."

In other words, the reason P3 projects are successful is because the private owners realistically assess the true risks before they start. So Ruffell is right: if owners put more time and effort into the engineering up front, then the chances of a project bumping into unforeseen difficulties and being thrown off schedule become less likely.

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On a positive note, many projects do manage to be completed on time, and even ahead of time. Good news is no news, however, and the successes slip under the media radar. Recent examples are repairs to the Gardin-er Expressway in Toronto (two months ahead of sched-ule), most of the Toronto PanAm Games venues includ-ing the complex Athletes' Village, and a new $278-million stadium in Regina, which in March was reported to be on track for opening in 2017.

But doesn't the public have the right to expect that all construction projects should be completed at least reason-ably close to the promised due date? Is there really a valid excuse for so many chronic delays?

"It's about setting up expectations," says Ruffell. He sug-gests it would be better to be honest at the beginning of a project and warn the public that construction often meets unanticipated snags. It's a brave city manager who will stand up in council and admit it," he says, but if we are honest, "stuff does happen."

Another way forward is to have owners, engineers and contractors work together towards a solution. In Nanaimo on Vancouver Island a group of 140 people met all day on May 13 at the first annual Capital Projects Forum. Hosted by the Construction Council of Vancouver Island, the Royal Bank of Canada and Herold Engineering, the forum was to promote "constructive dialogue between owners, consul-tants and contractors." It was to "focus on pursuing better collaborative work between owners and the construction community, to communicate effectively, demolish silos and generate better project delivery outcomes."

Let's hope it works. CCE


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environment

A handful of "industrial symbiosis" networks are starting to take hold in Canada. The idea behind them is that the output of one industrial plant becomes feedstock for another.

Trash to Treasure

One man's trash is another man's treasure" has always been a fact of nature and is

equally true today in our high-tech constructs. In its basic form, industrial symbiosis is a "trash to treasure" equa-tion. But somewhere in a tangle of ac-ronyms, public funding, environmen-tal organizations and well-intentioned efforts, this essentially simple idea often seems to get buried.

Defined as “the establishment of mutually beneficial relationships be-tween organizations to more effectively and efficiently manage resources,” in-dustrial symbiosis was originally intend-ed to create waste-to-feedstock linkages, thus moving industry to a circular econ-omy. Collaborations have since been expanded to include energy, water and even services like transportation.

Just how complicated can it be to find a way to use byproducts (any-thing from plastics to energy) to cre-ate other products, rather than gen-erating costly waste? It seems the an-swer is very different, depending on whom you ask.

Synergie QuébecThe Centre de transfert technologique en ecologie industrielle (CTTEI) is a college centre of excellence that pro-motes industrial ecology under the name “Synergie Québec, in part by co-ordinating industrial, inorganic and mixed waste reclamation initiatives.

One of the Synergie-Québec indus-trial regions is the Brome-Missisquoi Centre local de developpement (CLD) in Cowansville. Oriana Familiar, the centre's sustainable development advi-sor, says they have managed to invento-ry 145 items from 15 participating com-panies. More than 20 potential ex-changes were identified, along with 40 more possible “synergies” with busi-nesses outside the region.

There are many potential syner-gies involving organic waste from factory cafeterias or the agricultural sector, Familiar says. Packaging and chemical products are another area with lots of potential.

Implementing the 20 exchanges identified in this first phase involves working on the technical, legal and

logistical aspects. “We would like to achieve at least half of the 20 this year,” Familiar says. “We will be calculating the impact of the exchanges as they are implemented.”

Funding for the second (implemen-tation) phase is dependent on a posi-tive response from the participating municipal governments, businesses and the CLD, and has yet to be secured.

Second CycleIn Quebec City, a company headed by Frédéric Bouchard, ing. is one of Syn-ergie Québec's main competitors. A major difference is their funding. “Sec-ond Cycle has a business model that doesn't require public dollars,” Bouchard says, although he acknowl-edges that the company started up using a government grant.

He describes Second Cycle as a mixture of consulting and brokerage, with a huge network in Quebec. It fa-cilitates waste exchange by offering a website and counselling services, lab analyses and logistics. “We provide the

Above: surplus bamboo from the Toronto Zoo panda exhibit is repurposed for different uses, including controlling soil erosion.

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environment

technology, they [clients] use the web site to facilitate exchanges.”

One such exchange is the re-use of scrap plastic for new plastic products. Second Cycle sends samples to the plastic plant that is looking for raw material; if the scrap (which would otherwise be waste material) can be used, Second Cycle arranges for pick-up and transfer to the factory.

“Many brokers try to sell scrap in Asia and China. We try to close the loop locally: we need to find our own way to re-use, not to ship [waste] some-where the legislation is more lax.”

Bouchard believes there is a com-mon misconception that an industrial zone can be a closed loop in itself, but says this is actually very difficult to achieve. “Waste generators and receiv-ers don't match up [because the pool is too small].” Province-wide networks function well, and while region-wide can also work, he says “the volume is very small – a pallet versus a truckload.”

Partners in Project Green: A Pearson Eco-Business ZoneSecond Cycle's reach now extends to Ontario, where the company works with Partners in Project Green: A Pear-son Eco-Business Zone. Partners in Project Green was originally created to service the 12,000 hectares of industri-al lands at Pearson International in

Mississauga, but the network now ex-tends into municipalities beyond. It works with leading companies to pro-mote the adoption of sustainable busi-ness practices, with its major focus on four areas: energy, water, waste and engagement.

Formerly part of the Synergie Qué-bec project, Project Green is now using Second Cycle's ex-change platform which, according to Bouchard, offers a network that is 20 times larger.

Synergies under-way include shipping leftover bamboo (pandas at the Metro Toronto Zoo eat only 20 per cent or less of what they're fed) to a farm where it is used to control soil ero-sion. Another pro-gram involves retro-fitting and distribut-ing Coca-Cola's con-centrated beverage drums as rain barrels to promote urban community rainwa-ter recovery.

Project Green is in the process of launch-

ing Second Cycle's online exchange for companies to post information about their waste products. “[Use of] the platform is free, and our staff will facilitate the exchanges,” says Malaz Sebai, Project Green's project manag-er for waste management.

Partners in Project Green is funded by the Toronto Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) and the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA). When it started in 2008, the organiza-tion had one full-time and one half-time TRCA employee; it now has a staff of 12 and a growing mandate. “We're incorporating minimal program fees to meet a goal of being 20 per cent self-sustaining,” Sebai says.

National Industrial Symbiosis ProgramThe gold standard for industrial sym-biosis has to be Industrial Synergies’ National Industrial Symbiosis Pro-gram. Peter Laybourn, a British con-sultant, created NISP in 2002.

“Industrial symbiosis is a systems ap-

Top: repurposing dead ash trees into lumber at a Bentall Kennedy business park in Toronto. Above: Coca-Cola repurposes its syrup containers into rain barrels for community gardens.

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THE END OF YOURCAREERWITH THE WRONG WATERPROOFING?

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proach to a more sustainable and inte-grated industrial economy that identi-fies business opportunities to improve resource utilization: materials, energy, water, capacity, expertise, assets etc.,” Laybourn explained in a videotaped seminar in Vancouver in 2012. “[It in-volves] innovation and culture changes, but it's achieved through profitable business enterprises. A 'synergy' is in a way just a business transaction, but typi-cally it benefits more than one party and the environment as well.”

As opposed to a six-month process resulting in 20 to 60 potential syner-gies, NISP puts 50 people in a room for a half-day session and nets 300 po-tential synergies (a record was set in Mexico, where a session resulted in 600 synergies).

The proprietary platform has been adapted for use in 20 other countries. NISP-Canada was launched last March at GLOBE 2014, and is now seeking funding for its Metro Vancouver pilot program.

“We are pulling together the invest-ments to launch NISP-Canada,” says Tracy Casavant, P.Eng., executive direc-tor of Light House Sustainable Building Centre Society, the Vancouver-based non-profit leading the NISP program in Canada. “Our goal is to secure a mix of government and private investment, with the majority of funding from the various levels of government. We have applied to Western Economic Diversifi-cation for approximately 40 per cent of the funding, and are seeking other funding commitments.”

The figures indicating NISP’s suc-cess are, if anything, under-repre-sented, Laybourn says in the video. “It’s interesting what happens when you do a value for money, because if we achieved that (39 million tonnes of CO2 reductions, 10,000 jobs creat-ed, 1.2 billion Euros in cost savings, over five years), but spent a fortune in getting there, it’s not so good. But we’re spending cents (73 Euro cents) on reducing carbon by a tonne. So it’s a very cost-efficient way of reduc-

ing things like landfill and carbon … and it’s got a benefit:cost ratio that’s basically off the scale for a govern-ment-type investment.”

Given these numbers, here’s an-other common phrase to apply to the

state of industrial symbiosis in Canada: “What’s the hold-up?” CCE

Sophie Kneisel is a freelance writer based in Baltimore, Ontario, and a former editor of Canadian Consulting Engineer.

environment


http://www.kryton.com


business By Cal Harrison MBA, CMC

The amount of money that engineers and architects spend cumulatively in preparing Requests for Proposals to compete for projects comes under analysis — with disturbing results.

How Bad Can It Be?

S everal years ago I was in Victoria, B.C. doing a presen-tation to the local chapter of

the Canadian Association of Man-agement Consultants about sell-ing professional services. As usual, part of my discussion in-cluded bashing the costs, ethical is-sues and inaccuracy of the Request for Proposal (RFP) process.

As we were wrapping up, one of the attendees raised his hand and said, “Cal, I would bet money that if you added up the cost of all the time spent writing proposals by all the propo-nents to an RFP, then those costs would be greater than the fees avail-able in that RFP!”

That thought hit me like a Dustin Byfuglien slap shot and tormented me for years because I knew he was right. But how could I take this idea to the world?

Finally one day I had the answer.I designed a simple experiment to

try and benchmark for professional services firms how frequently the total costs of writing a proposal exceed the fees for the winner.

For example, if 10 firms spend $5,000 each writing

proposals in response to an RFP, the total proposal writing

cost is $50,000. If the fees available to the winner of that RFP are $40,000, then the proposal writing cost (what I call the “industry response cost”) is greater than the fees to the winner. I consider that to be an indicator of a very low-efficiency process. What I wanted to see was just how frequently this inefficiency happens.

So I analyzed the RFPs in three professional services categories avail-able on MERX (the electronic tender-ing service for those bidding on Cana-dian government contracts) on one single day. I analyzed for three types of service: Professional, Administrative and Management Support Services (PAMSS); Information Processing and Related Telecommunications Services (IT & Telecom); and Architect and Engineering Services (A&E).

I reviewed hundreds of RFPs and did an estimate of the hours I believed it would take to respond to each RFP. I multiplied that by a standard hourly

rate to come up with the cost of writing a typical proposal for each specific RFP. I then multiplied that cost by 50% of the total number of individuals that downloaded the RFP. In other words, I assumed that only half of the compa-nies that downloaded the RFP would actually submit a proposal) which gave me the industry response cost for that RFP.

With that I was able to compare the industry response cost to the fees that the winning firm would receive based on a budget stated in the RFP. If no budget was stated then I did not use that RFP.

The results were very interesting, as shown below.

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FREQUENCY THAT REQUESTS FOR PROPOSALS COST MORE THAN THE PROJECT

Professional, Administrative and Management Support Services (PAMSS) 17%

Information Processing and Related Telecommunications Services (IT & Telecom) 33%

Architect and Engineering Services (A&E) 67%




business

Outside the obvious observation — that the frequency indicated in the table above is way too high in all categories (67% for A&E!) — there exists another interesting question: Why are the numbers so different? To that I do not have a good answer but I do have two thoughts.

First, the numbers seem to in-crease as the complexity of the profes-sional services increases.

While architecture and engineer-ing consulting can be a very complex process, when you layer on technology variables (hardware, legacy systems, software, networks, security, etc.) or design and construction variables (ma-terials, location, weather, building codes, legislation, etc.), it’s easy to see how the proposal writing process could take much longer for A&E firms compared to the companies in the other two categories. (As well, I am sorry but I must say that architects are notorious for giving away too much thinking up front, especially in things like design competitions, which other sectors like advertising have somewhat successfully tried to outlaw for years.)

Second, IT and A&E projects are often bigger budget projects, so it makes sense that their proposals would need bigger budget as well. As scale increases, and variables increase, so too might proposal writing cost volatil-

ity (possibly increasing exponentially instead of in a linear fashion when complexity increases).

The real purpose of these numbers, however, is not to nail down what the cost actually is, but simply to accelerate the discussion about how we can re-duce the industry's response cost for professional services projects and ulti-mately increase the quality, integrity and value to the end user (which is often the taxpayer).

I am not suggesting we just award projects without some sort of process, but I am suggesting that we make the process better.

And I believe that a qualifications-based selection (QBS) process, with a budget disclosed to the vendors, and a price negotiated with only the most qualified vendor, will be a significant improvement compared to the current use of a priced-based RFP in the pro-fessional services buying process.

Why? For three simple reasons.(1) Lower cost and better quality

decision-making. It takes a lot of time and money to try and predict the price of a project, and research by the Amer-

ican Public Works Association (APWA) and American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC-US) has clearly in-

dicated that price is a poor selection criterion. So by re-moving price as an evaluation criterion we remove a lot of the proposal writing cost while also improving the qual-ity of the selection outcome.

(2) Better fraud protection. Price is easy to manipulate, whereas expertise is easily and objectively evaluated (with a trained eye) and also difficult to fake. So selecting based upon qualifications and not price, provides much better protection against procurement fraud — protecting the buyers from allega-tions of impropriety and the end user (again, often the taxpayer) from the misuse of their funds.

(3) Easy to implement. Changing to QBS is almost a “costless change” as it requires no new people, no new tech-nology, no new legislation, and no new policy writing. Just a decision to change, some support from management (and maybe politicians), and a bit of training on how to shift from a Request for Pro-posal, to a Request for Qualifications using a QBS-based scoring rubric.

So what are we waiting for? CCE

Cal Harrison, MBA, CMC, is the president of Beyond Referrals, a Winnipeg based consulting firm. [email protected]

"I am not suggesting we just award projects without some sort of process, but I am suggesting that we make the

process better."



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Located on the eastern borders of Vancouver, the City of Coquitlam

offers extensive sporting, cultural and recreational amenities to residents and visitors alike. In efforts to continue pro-viding exceptional public facilities while minimizing environmental impacts, the municipality commissioned the City Centre District Energy Project to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The proj-ect, which includes the City Centre Aquatic Complex, Coquitlam City Hall, an RCMP Public Safety Building and the Evergreen Cultural Centre, uses thermal energy to heat and cool buildings with minimal waste.

TC Thermenex Inc. designed and installed the innovative system, which captures and transfers thermal energy among the buildings through water circulation. This technol-ogy makes it possible for the chillers and heating system to operate at their most efficient point, while ensuring an optimal indoor environment. "Cheap systems are no longer the focus of most clients,” said Ian Hall, Principal of Thermenex. “They want value and energy efficiency; we give them both."

Three heat exchangers and thirty-four Grundfos pumps consisting of ten VSM close-coupled verti-cal space miser pumps, seven UPS 3-speed wet rotor circulators, and seventeen MAGNA3 all-purpose variable speed circulators were utilized in the Thermenex system. The combination of pumps was selected for their efficient operation, compact size and simple installation, which were essential for this retrofit application. The MAGNA3 in particular was selected for the following reasons:

• MAGNA3 is the obvious choice having the lowest power consumption in the North American market, with the fastest return on investment. It can achieve energy savings up to 75%, and as much as 85% with its unique AUTOADAPT control.

• MAGNA3 offers an extended range with maximum heads of 60 feet and maximum flows of 550 GPM; therefore it is much easier to right-size the MAGNA3 for any duty point, cutting both energy and purchase costs.

• It is a highly intelligent all-in-one solution. With an extensive range of features including a built-in heat energy meter, flow limiting function, differential pressure and temperature sensor, and wireless com-munication between pumps, MAGNA3 provides complete control, optimizing systems like never before.

• MAGNA3 is easy to install and start up, saving time and effort. “Everywhere we turn, this pump is saving time, which is money,” said Darcy Hart, Director of

Operations for Thermenex. “We are really finding that Grundfos products are great all the way through the line, with great documentation and great support. This retrofit has really stepped up our game a lot."

The City Centre District Energy System is expected to be operational in spring 2015. The infrastruc-ture is anticipated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 480 tons during its first year of operation.

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MAGNA3 Pumps Aid in Optimization of a Multi-Building Retrofit Project in Coquitlam

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engineers & the lawBy Owen Pawson and Alizee Bilbey, Mil ler Thomson

In a disturbing trend, a B.C. municipality is refusing to work with contractors and consultants who have been involved in recent litigation brought against it.

Blacklisting Bidders

A contractor, J. Cote & Son Excavating, is suing the City of Burnaby in B.C. because of a new provision in its tender documents. J. Cote calls it a “reprisal clause."

The clause states that Burnaby will not accept tenders from any party that is, or has been within the last two years, involved in legal proceedings initiated against Burnaby arising out of a contract for works or services. The clause effectively forces consultants or con-tractors who are currently working for Burnaby who may have a dispute with the city to choose between pur-suing their legitimate legal rights and bidding on Burnaby contracts for the next two years.

In its notice of civil claim J. Cote argues that the clause financially punishes contractors for exercising their legal rights. Burnaby has responded that the clause was incorporated and implemented on bona fide pol-icy reasons based on financial, economic, social or political factors or constraints. Burnaby denies the allegation that the clause infringes the rule of law or the right of reasonable ac-cess to the courts, because the clause does not preclude any-one from commencing legal proceedings against the city.

J. Cote is precluded from being considered for any ten-ders issued by Burnaby because of an action the contractor initiated in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in De-cember 2013. That action arose out of a previous contract with Burnaby for the construction of sewers, the installation of service connections and paving. J.Cote has performed contracts for the city totalling $14.8 million since 2005, so being prohibited from tendering is significant for them. But the loss of the opportunity to bid on future public contracts with Burnaby also seriously impacts any firm that routinely performs contract work for the city.

Similar issues have been raised in the past. In Sound Con-tracting Ltd v City of Nanaimo the B.C. Court of Appeal found that Nanaimo could, based on the "privilege clause" in-cluded in its request for tenders, exercise its discretion and bypass the lowest bidder for a project. The Court stated that the previous dealings between the parties provided addi-tional criteria that Nanaimo could consider and that such criteria were “probably the best indicator of how a proposed relationship will come to work out in practice." However, the Court did state that this discretion should not be exer-

cised to punish or “get even” for past differences.Hancon Holdings Ltd v Nanaimo (City) is similar to the J.

Cote case. At issue was the provision in Nanaimo’s tender documents giving Nanaimo the absolute discretion to reject a tender if the tenderer had been engaged in legal action against Nanaimo in the previous five years. The Court ac-cepted Nanaimo’s evidence that it adopted the provision for

valid business reasons, including the rationale of avoiding high legal costs that would be incurred by taxpayers to defend against subsequent legal actions if the contract was awarded to the tenderer.

But these cases can be distin-guished from the lawsuit between J.

Cote and Burnaby. In both Sound Contracting and Hancon, Nanaimo had the discretion to decide whether to accept or bypass the tender. In the J. Cote case, the clause prohibits, without discretion, any tender from a tenderer who has been involved in legal proceedings against Burnaby in the last two years. The automatic disentitlement distinguishes this case from the others and may cause the clause to fall into the category of “punishment” for past differences — something which the Court in Sound Contracting specifi-cally rejected. It may prove difficult for Burnaby to demon-strate that past legal proceedings, no matter how reason-able, warrant automatic disqualification.

The Association of Consulting Engineering Companies-Canada (ACEC) has released a member advisory opposing the practice by any municipality or public agency of prohib-iting a firm from participating in the procurement process because the firm has past or current litigation with that municipality. In the advisory, ACEC stated that such a sanc-tion effectively discourages firms or contractors from pursu-ing their legitimate legal rights, based on a threat of being barred from future participation in projects.

If J. Cote is unsuccessful and the clause remains in Burna-by’s tender documents, consultants and contractors who are currently working for Burnaby will be obliged to choose be-tween pursuing legitimate legal claims arising from their contract with the municipality and obtaining future con-tracts. For any firm reliant on public sector projects, the economic consequence of such a choice could be significant.

"ACEC stated that such a sanction effectively discourages firms or

contractors from pursuing their legitimate legal rights..."

contined on page 38



products


engineers & the law professional directory

HVAC

LG Electronics has launched the first air-cooled VRF (variable refrigerant flow) unit with match-ing voltage for the Canadian market. The LG VRF 575V is the first product designed specifi-cally for one region "and a perfect example of our commitment to the Canadian market," said Thomas Yoon, president and CEO of LG Electronics Canada. By removing the need for a step-down transformer and heavier gauge cables, installation costs are reduced. The units can be eas-ily used in retrofits and new buildings.

Lennox has expanded its light gas and electric commercial Raider rooftop unit with 6-ton units and new 14 SEER units available in 3-5 tons. www.lennox.com

Navien now provides Revit with Building Information Modelling (BIM) drawings for its NPE, NCB, and NHB series models of condensing

tankless gas water heaters and condensing combi boilers. Navien also

provides application drawings at the same link. http://us.navien.com/Engineers_Architects/Page1/Specifications

905-826-4546 [email protected] www.hgcengineering.com

E x p e r t s i n M e a s u r e m e n t , A n a l y s i s & C o n t r o l

For information on placing an advertisement in the Canadian Consulting Engineer

Professional Directory, contact Maureen Levy, Senior Publisher, 416-510-5111, email: [email protected], or

Vince Naccarato, Sales Manager, 416-510-5118, email: [email protected]

Daikin has added a new floor mount indoor unit to its ductless product line of air conditioners. The new FVXS is for use with the multi-zone MXS comfort systems, and is available now in 9, 12 and 18 MBH capacities. www.daikin.com

The Vitocrossal 300 CU3A gas-condensing boiler from Viessmann is a compact, floor-standing unit

from 19 to 199 MBH. With 95% AFUE efficiency and op-

eration of up to 90° C, it incorpo-rates the Inox-Crossal SA240 316Ti stainless steel heat exchanger. Multi-boiler installations are pos-sible, with eight boilers up to 1,592 MBH. www.viessmann.ca

Emerson Climate Technologies has joined the EnOcean Alliance which focuses on wireless technology that harvests energy. In the first instance Emerson will use the technol-ogy in sensors for its food quality monitoring system for retailers. The Alliance is dedicated to creating interopera-bility. Nearly 400 companies currently belong. www.emer-sonclimate.com

Nanaimo continues to include a "litigation clause" in its request for tenders that specifies that Nanaimo may, at its ab-solute discretion, reject a bid submitted by a company if it has been involved in a legal action against Nanaimo in the previ-ous five years. Even if the Court in J. Cote recognizes the dis-tinction between Nanaimo’s discretionary litigation clause and Burnaby’s automatic disqualification clause, and J. Cote is successful in its case, Burnaby may simply add a discretionary element to its clause.

Municipalities and cities should carefully consider the im-plications of such clauses, discretionary or not. The reputation of a contracting authority is very important given the small, well connected design professionals and construction contrac-tors who bid on such projects. When the economy is robust, bidders may decline to participate in tenders with onerous clauses. This is especially true of good firms that are most likely to have other opportunities that do not require them to give up their legitimate legal recourses. CCE

Owen Pawson is a partner with Miller Thomson, LLP in Vancouver. Alizee Bilbey is an articled student with the firm. E-mail [email protected]

contined from page 37

contined on page 40


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Specifier’s Literature

ReviewTHE CANADIAN COUNCIL OF INDEPENDENT LABORATORIES CCIL represents the independent, private-sec-tor testing industry in Canada. The more than 330 member facilities across the country play a vital role in ensuring the quality and safety of roads, buildings, manufactured goods, crops, food, air, water, soil and more. Because CCIL members are independent, they are able to conduct investigations and render reports objectively and without bias. This indepen-dence is fundamental to ensuring the highest level of confidence in the results. Find a CCIL-member laboratory near you. Go to www.ccil.com or call us at 613-746-3919.SUPPLIER: CCIL

IECS PROVIDES THE WORLD'S MOST ADVANCED FORM OF HARD ARMOURED EROSION PROTECTIONResolving or preventing environmental ero-sion issues - Cable Concrete® is the first choice of engineers, planners, conservation authori-ties, communities, municipalities and general contractors. IECS is seen as the leader in pro-viding successful, sustainable erosion solutions to protect the environment and by extension, likely protect physical, human, livestock and wild life assets. 1-800-821-7462 | www.iecs.comSUPPLIER: IECS

KRYSTOL TECHNOLOGY: THE DURABLE WATERPROOFING SOLUTIONKryton International Inc. is the inventor of the crystalline waterproofing admixture and has been waterproofing concrete structures with its proprietary Krystol technology since 1973. Kryton’s innovative technology leads the way for the construction of more durable, resilient and sustainable concrete structures. Kryton manufactures and exports its products to more than 50 countries globally. To learn more, visit www.kryton.com or call 800.267.8280SUPPLIER: KRYTON INTERNATIONAL INC.

PREVENT ASPHALT CRACKINGIf you were planning to rout and seal your asphalt joints after they fail, think about the added costs of repairing what you’ve already done. Denso Re-instatement Tape is a poly-mer modified bituminous strip that is cold applied and designed to seal the joints between asphalt, concrete and steel, the first time. Re-instatement Tape seals around catch basins, manholes, utility cuts and next to concrete curbs prior to paving. Do it right the first time with Denso Road Products. For more information contact: Blair Slessor at 416-291-3435, email: [email protected], or visit our website at www.densona.comSUPPLIER: DENSO NORTH AMERICA INC.

INTRODUCING ACO STORMBRIXXACO Stormbrixx is a unique and patented plastic geocellular stormwater management system. Designed for surface water infiltra-tion and storage, its versatility allows it to be used in applications as a standalone solution or as part of an integrated sustainable urban drainage scheme. Its ingenious brickbonding and crossbonding feature delivers greater structural integrity – increasing reliability.Visit: http://www.acostormbrixx.us/Contact: 1-877-226-4255.SUPPLIER: ACO SYSTEMS LTD.

LG MULTI V IV 575V: COMMITTED TO THE CANADIAN MARKET.

Once again, LG raises the bar for the HVAC industry with the introduction of Canada’s first 575V Air-Cooled VRF and low ambient solutions. With the elimination of transform-ers and smaller wiring, stakeholders can expect easier installation and considerable initial and operational cost savings. For more information, please visit www.LGVRF.ca or call 1-888-824-6211. SUPPLIER: LG ELECTRONICS CANADA

KEEP UP WITH CANAM SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES The Canam InfoTech Express bulletin, aimed at the consulting engineering community, is intended to keep decision-makers informed about the various products Canam fabri-cates. By consulting Canam InfoTech Express, designers will learn how to make optimum use of Canam products for the benefit of their customers. Registration is free of charge at www.canam.ws/engi-neers. For more information, contact us at www.canam-construction.com SUPPLIER: CANAM


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WEG E-CATALOG MOBILE APPThis application will allow WEG Electric Motor customers in NEMA markets to search an electronic catalog for motors and produce data sheets and technical drawings. The appli-cation will also allow the user to download or email PDF data sheets and drawings. The app is available for iOS, Blackberry, Android. Go to www.pamensky.com/downloadsSUPPLIER: V.J. PAMENSKY

products

ELIMINATE FUSING WITH THE NEW VICTAULIC COUPLING FOR HDPEThe new Refuse-to-Fuse™ Victaulic Style 905 coupling is specifically designed to quickly join 2"- 6" high density - polyethylene (HDPE) pipe ranging from SRD 7-17 and eliminates the need for fusing. 10 times faster than traditional fusing, the Style 905 can be used on buried services. The coupling meets or exceeds the rating of the pipe. Exceeds bend capabilities specified in PPI (Plastic Pipe Institute) by a factor of 2X.To learn more, visit Victaulic.com and down-load PB-905: http://static.victaulic.com/assets/uploads/literature/PB-905.pdf or contact [email protected] with any questions.SUPPLIER: VICTAULIC

MACH-PROAIR™: ENERGY CONSCIOUS, VERSATILE VAVEngineered to exceed the specifications for a wide variety of Variable Air Volume (VAV) appli-cations, the Reliable Controls® MACH-ProAir™ is a fully programmable BACnet Building Con-troller (B-BC) with numerous downloadable standard codes and flexible I/O options, all priced to meet a modest budget, as it continues the Reliable Controls® tradition of intrinsic simplicity, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. www.reliablecontrols.com/products/ controllers/MPA SUPPLIER: RELIABLE CONTROLS CORPORATION

PUMPS

New space-saving vertical mount pumps for in-dustrial applications such as washing or degreasing systems are available from KSB. The Etanorm V pumps are designed to be installed in tanks with the pump components submerged and the motor in a dry location above. "Wet" models have silicon-carbide shaft bearings lubricated by the pumped medium. "Dry" models are for where the product does not have good lubricating properties and have sealed ball bearings to sup-port the drive shaft. The pumps are available for heads up to 100 m and capacities up to 740 cu.m per hour. www.ksb.ca

ELECTRICAL

GE Industrial Solutions' two-high SecoGear air-insulated MV switchgear is expected to be available later this year. The ANSI/IEEE-rated medium-voltage portfolio is intend-ed for mission-critical and commercial construction appli-cations. www.ge.com

HYDRONICS

Victaulic has a new Compact Pressure Independent Bal-ancing and Control Valve. The (Compact-P) TA Series 7CP from IMI TA advances hydronic balancing with increased diagnostics. Designed as a cost-effective option for tight fan coil cabinets, the series has a high flow capacity and low pressure drop for decreased energy consumption. www.victaulic.com

The Plastics Pipe institute's Project of the Year was awarded to REHAU for its radiant slab heating and cooling system in On-tario's LEED-Silver certified École Secondaire Jeunes sans Fron-tiers in Brampton, On-tario. The 91,000-sq.ft. school's hydronic sys-tem uses RAUPEX 5/8-in. O2 Barrier pipe and 42 PRO-BALANCE manifolds. www.na.rehau.com

contined from page 38


SIMPSON STRONG-TIE OFFERS IN-PLACE REPAIR SOLUTIONThe Simpson Strong-Tie® FX-70® Structural Repair and Protection System is an innova-tive solution for severe structural damage of concrete, steel and wood piles commonly found in marine environments. This system makes in-place repair of damaged piles pos-sible and practical. By eliminating the need to dewater the repair site or take the struc-ture out of service, FX-70 dramatically reduces the overall cost of restoring the damaged structure. For more information, visit http://www.strongtie.com/rpsSUPPLIER: SIMPSON STRONG-TIE


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It's not just big companies. We have had buy-in from firms with one to two employees as well. So this success has allowed us to achieve our objective, which is to en-sure that companies are abiding by the highest standards of quality management in engineering. And we've done this with the enthusiastic cooperation of companies.

Q. Is the goal to provide the public with more assurance?Yes, that's the intent. Before this program, I often felt

that we are only regulators in part. We are regulating in-dividuals, but companies have a huge role. You see that when we have disasters — for example, the Mount Polley tailings pond breach. There were individuals involved in that, but companies were involved as well.

Who is responsible when you have a disaster like that? Or when you have a situation as in Ontario with the Elliot Lake Mall collapse? Individuals? Companies? Or both? If you are going to be a strong regulator you need to have some control over companies as well as individuals. At present we're making some progress with OQM and we're getting good feedback from companies. They feel this is a very valuable program. CCE

conversations

John Clague of APEGBC weighs the question of whether engineering companies as well as individual engineers should be certified to practice.


Interview

Who's Responsible?

John Clague, Ph.D., P.Geo., has been a geoscientist for 24 years. An author, con-sultant, and media spokesperson, he

teaches at the Department of Earth Sciences at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He is also the 2014-2015 President of the Asso-ciation of Professional Engineers and Geo-scientists of British Columbia (APEGBC). CCE spoke to him in May just after he re-turned from a trip to Chile.

Q. In APEGBC's Innovation magazine you said that one of your priorities for your term of office at the association is to explore the possible benefits of regulating companies as well as individual en-gineers. In Ontario and Saskatchewan consulting engineering firms already have to register for Certificates of Authorization in order to practice. Is that not the case with APEGBC?

Certificates of Authorization were intro-duced into our province's Engineers and Geoscientists Act about 12 years ago, but for some strange reason we don't have a provision that would make it illegal for companies to practise without that certificate. I don't understand why that provision was not included when the Act change was approved. We've looked at the question periodically and know that there might be resistance from some of the companies. It’s a very complex issue, espe-cially since our level of authority is unclear without that provision. So at present we're only able to regulate indi-viduals. We can't regulate companies.

Instead, APEGBC has approached the issue through our OQM — Organizational Quality Management — pro-gram. We introduced it three years ago as a voluntary program targeted at companies.

The OQM program is intended to help companies use structured standards of practice or quality management programs. We provide certification to the companies and organizations on a cost recovery basis. Much to our plea-sure the program has been a tremendous success. Right now over 300 organizations are participating, including — with one exception — the 25 largest employers in en-gineering and goescience in B.C.

Andr

ea S

unde

rland

, APE

GBC

"We are regulating individuals, but companies have a huge role. You see that when we have disasters ..."

Subject to additional terms and conditions found at saveonenergy.ca. Subject to change without notice.OMOfficial Mark adopted and used by the Independent Electricity System Operator.

Her decision to cut energy costs by 70% with LED lighting was a great idea. And a great start.Once your clients start seeing the benefits of our incentives

for LED lighting, they will want to look into making other

areas of their facility like HVAC, pump systems and building

automation more efficient too. When they do, they’ll be joining

thousands of organizations across Ontario who are already

enjoying the energy savings that our programs deliver.

Take a look at their stories and our incentives at saveonenergy.ca/business



Subject to additional terms and conditions found at saveonenergy.ca. Subject to change without notice.OMOfficial Mark adopted and used by the Independent Electricity System Operator.

Her decision to cut energy costs by 70% with LED lighting was a great idea. And a great start.Once your clients start seeing the benefits of our incentives

for LED lighting, they will want to look into making other

areas of their facility like HVAC, pump systems and building

automation more efficient too. When they do, they’ll be joining

thousands of organizations across Ontario who are already

enjoying the energy savings that our programs deliver.

Take a look at their stories and our incentives at saveonenergy.ca/business


http://www.saveonenergy.ca/business


http://www.gibraltarus.com

canadian consulting engineer june/july 2015

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