Thinking About Street Lights, Freeway Signs and Electricity So You Never Have To
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By Mark Kandborg
magine you’re gliding along one of Edmonton’s freeways late at night. What are some things you would have a hard time living without? Street lights and road signs would definitely make the list. What about at home? Electricity, certainly. Yet street lights, road signs and electricity are probably things you rarely think about, if ever. Why is that? Because JATEC thinks about them for you, then gets the job done. Now that you’re thinking about lights, road signs and electricity, here are some numbers for you to consider. When JATEC recently completed work on a 21 kilometre section of the Anthony Henday, they had moved over a quarter million kilograms of steel, poured nearly 3,000 square metres of concrete, drilled 114 piles more than 1,200 metres into the earth, erected 76 structures and well over 3,000 square metres of signage (enough to cover an NHL hockey rink twice) and brought the whole thing in on time and on budget. After racking up 27,408 man
hours, JATEC’s number of lost time incidents on the project was exactly zero. The completion of huge projects on time with no time lost to injury or property damage is more than just impressive. It’s JATEC’s signature and a testimony to the company’s commitment to safety in all aspects of the job. “Safety is a huge concern for us,” says JATEC owner Jim Allen, “so we put a lot of our energy into training and teaching to ensure it. The way we see it, safety equals efficiency.” As with all equations, this one works equally well in either direction. Not only does working safely make you more efficient, working efficiently keeps you safer. Over the years, the name JATEC has become synonymous with efficiency. One very important key to JATEC’s achieving such a high level of efficiency on these big projects has been their ever-increasing ability to ‘self perform’. “It can be difficult to get sub-contractors with the right equipment to the job site when you want them,” Al-
Jatec • 30 Years