Stoney Trail Constructors

Paving the way to the future┬áStoney Trail Constructors is a joint venture formed to build the Northeast Stoney Trail outside Calgary. Keith Regan learns how the public-private partnership design-build-operate approach is reaping savings in both time and cost. Compared to their neighbors to the south in the United States, Canadian government agencies have become far more comfortable with the public-private partnership model of designing, funding, building, and operating highways, bridges and other┬á infrastructure under a single contract. ┬áThatÔÇÖs now the case in the province of Alberta, where the government has awarded a 30-year contract to the Stoney Trail Group, a consortium charged with designing, building, financing, and operating a 21-kilometer section of highway around the city of Calgary. The group will eventually turn over the $400 million roadway to the provincial government. Stoney Trail Group is led by Bilfinger Berger Project Investments, and the Stoney Trail ConstructorsÔÇöthe group doing the initial highway constructionÔÇöwhich is in turn a joint venture of Flatiron Corp., Graham, and Parsons. Key subcontractors for Stoney Trail Constructors include Carmacks (asphalt paving) and engineering consultants AECOM. The Northeast Stoney Trail project is part of a series of highway projects that will create a ring around the city of Calgary and help relieve traffic congestion on existing roadways in the province, especially the Deerfoot Trail. For the current phase, project manager Lorie Holte says the project team was able to demonstrate it could complete the work considerably faster and at lower cost than if the province used a more traditional project delivery and financing method. The agreement calls for the Alberta government to make $300 million worth of payments during construction, and $21 million annually for 30 years after the road opens to traffic. That gives the project a total future value of $650 million, compared to the ProvinceÔÇÖs estimated cost of $1 billion to $1.1 billion for the project had it been done through a traditional design-bid-build approach and with the Province performing maintenance on the roadway. The project includes both six-lane and four-lane sections as well as 23 bridge spans and several interchanges and intersections. Holte says the biggest challenge may be the scope of the project, which stretches over numerous geographical and jurisdictional boundaries. ÔÇ£The challenge on a $400 million job that takes up the geographic area this job does is getting everything coordinated with all the agencies, partners and interested parties.ÔÇØThe project is so extensive that it spans two geographical regions of AlbertaÔÇÖs job site safety oversight agency and involves stakeholders both inside and outside of Alberta. The ultimate owner of the project, the Province of Alberta Ministry of Transportation, is also involved in overseeing all phases of the work. A significant part of the work involved earth moving, with some 12 million cubic meters of earthworks to be undertaken over the course of the project, which was designed to be excavated and built in phases so that material removed in areas where the grade is being cut is reused where fill is needed, commonly referred to as an ÔÇ£earthworks balanceÔÇØ. Approximately 1.7 million metric tones of granular base will be used, and an estimated half-million metric tons of asphalt will be used to pave the project. Some 35,000 cubic meters of concrete will be poured and 4.7 million kilograms of steel used on the 23 bridge spans on the project. The joint venture has had to lend its own resources at times to keep the project moving forward in a timely manner. For instance, the project includes some 30 major stormwater management ponds, each of which was subject to design review. The province often farms out that work to the city of Calgary, which typically handles six such pond reviews annually. ÔÇ£This job was 30 of those ponds on its own, so we were looking at absorbing five years of their manpower on this project alone,ÔÇØ Holte notes. To help make the reviews possible, the joint venture funded the hiring of third-party consultants of the cityÔÇÖs choosing to review the drainage proposals. ÔÇ£We took a process that could have taken five years and condensed it down into three months worth of time.ÔÇØThose ponds are meant to work together as a series of wetlands meant to help clean and filter stormwater, part of a unique mitigation plan developed during the Environmental Impact Assessment process that looked at impacts of the project on rare plants, wetland vegetation, rare wildlife, historical resources and features such as groundwater, soils and surface water. The most significant environmental issue is the abundance of wetlands in the areaÔÇöseveral of which were large and permanent, and a few also supported a rare aquatic plant. The road design was shifted to avoid as many wetlands as possible. The Stoney Trail Group submitted a complete inventory of the wetlands to be impacted by the project, and calculation of mitigation was required for each one.The project remains on track to be delivered by November 2009, with work continuing through most of the winter of 2008ÔÇô09. At its busiest times, some 400 people may be working on the roadway from end to end. Holte feels the public-private partnership approach, referred to simply as P3 to those common with the contracting method, will gain more favor across North America as the technique is proven to be effective for delivering new capacity projects on a more aggressive schedule. And in times of tighter budgets, the ability to shift risk onto contractors for cost overruns or time delays may be even more appealing to provinces, states or local governments. At least one other phase of the four-phase Stoney Trail master plan is being contemplated as a P3 design-build project, and that project may be offered up for bidding in the coming months.ÔÇ£The beauty of this approach is that the joint venture controls the schedule,ÔÇØ says Holte. ÔÇ£That means taking on significant risk, but it also means that if there are opportunities for cost savings along the way, we have motivation to find those savings, because they help our bottom line in the end.ÔÇØ ÔÇô Editorial research by Steven Shah┬á