Started Out Small with Big Aspirations
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antrel is well known and respected for its dedication to excellence. How it earned its stripes is a colourful tale. At first blush, Alberta’s harsh economic reality check of the early 1980s seems a bleak backdrop for establishing a new business. The most successful companies, however, are often born in the most challenging times. And so it was with Bantrel. The company was founded in 1983 by Bechtel Canada, Banister Pipelines, Trimac, BAE Group and Scotia Energy. Armed with a strong set of core values, Bantrel set out with fewer than a dozen employees and a plan to pursue big projects. “From the beginning, Bantrel demonstrated an unwavering commitment Jeff McCaig to the health and safety of our employees, the quality of our product, client satisfaction and environmental stewardship,” says Jeff McCaig, Chairman of Bantrel’s Board of Directors. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, the company was awarded many large contracts, and eventually Bechtel and McCaig Investments consolidated ownership in the company. Bechtel is one of the world’s largest EPC firms. Bantrel’s first opportunity to cut its teeth on a major project came in the form of Husky’s Bi-provincial Upgrader in 1989. “It may not be the first project on the books, but it was significant because of its magnitude,” says long-time executive Roger Mapp. Bantrel’s scope included engineering and procurement on hydrotreaters and the utilities and offsites of the plant. Success on this project laid the foundation for further work with Husky, including new project awards in 2008.
A Bantrel designer works on a plastic model of the Husky Bi-Provincial Upgrader project in 1989.
By the turn of the millennium, Bantrel had worked with 90 different clients in nine Canadian provinces, nine American states and eight countries. Meanwhile, the number of employees had grown from five in 1983 to 1,275 in 2002. Today, the company has offices in Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto and employs 6,000 engineering, procurement and construction professionals and tradespeople. Bantrel boasts the largest non-manual EPC workforce in Canada. The company offers multi-office execution of project work and is able to tap into a wide range of human resources in Bantrel offices across Canada as well as Bechtel centres around the world. Employing more than 2,100 engineering personnel across multiple disciplines, Bantrel has the largest and most experienced workforce in the oilsands and refining sector. “Our comprehensive engineering resources provide customers with one-stop shopping — from concept to start-up,” Thompson says.
Delivering a Fair Return
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hen it comes to procurement, the combined buying power of Bantrel and Bechtel’s $15-billion annual volume enables buying leverage that is second to none. Bantrel provides a full range of procurement services including management, buying, materials management, shop inspection and expediting as well as logistics planning and management. “We’re the only company or one of the very few companies that can take a job, start very early in conceptual engineering, work with the client through the design, and then take the project all the way through to where it’s handed off,” says Gordon. In today’s challenging project execution environment, Bantrel’s integrated EPC delivery model substantially reduced
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interfaces with outside parties. This improves performance for clients, because the company can directly access and control the resources required for projects. Bantrel has the expertise and resources to execute and manage every major EPC activity. “This includes everything from specialized expertise, such as metallurgical analysis and engineering loss management, to the provision of equipment to our direct-hire construction company,” says Gordon. Projects of the size that Bantrel typically undertakes are, by nature, risky. And much of that risk is based in the planning and estimating stages — where good and bad decisions — can have a “lifelong” impact on the project’s success. Thompson says Project Management and Project Controls are