INDUSTRY NEWS
Edmonton picks construction team to tackle $2.6B Valley Line West LRT project building Edmonton has picked a preferred proponent to take on the second half of its new Valley Line light rail transit project. Discounting any possible issues that may arise during final contract negotiations, the city announced Oct. 30 it has selected the Marigold Infrastructure Partners consortium to design, build and partially finance the 14-kilometre Valley Line West. The team is made up of Colas Canada, Parsons Corp., Standard General Inc., Francl Architecture, Fast & Epp and Stantec Inc. “We’d like to thank each of our proponent teams for participating in our procurement,” Brad Smid, director for the Valley Line, said in a release. “We’re confident our rigorous competitive process has culminated in the selection of a strong
PHOTO: CITY OF EDMONTON
INDUSTRY>NEWS
The 14-kilometre rail line will run predominantly with traffic at street level.
team to deliver the Valley Line West LRT at good value for Edmontonians.” The 14-kilometre transit project is expected to cost $2.6 billion, with construction starting next year and continuing until 2026 or 2027. Running predominantly with traffic, the line includes 14 street-level stops, as well as two elevated stations and connections to Jasper Place, West Edmonton Mall and Lewis Farms. Among other engineering obstacles, the project will require two new bridges, one built over Groat Road and the other crossing Anthony Henday Drive. The second component of the wider 27-kilometre Valley Line, the “West” segment will connect to the “Southeast” portion, which has been under construction since 2016. The TransEd build team,
consisting of Bechtel Corp., EllisDon Corp., Bombardier, Inc. and Fengate Capital Management Ltd., is heading that project. Naming Marigold as the preferred proponent ends a fairly rocky procurement period for the western portion of the project. Three teams were shortlisted for the LRT line in June 2019, but two subsequently withdrew from the process, forcing the city to re-evaluate its approach. It paused the project “to fully understand the changing market conditions and evaluate its options” and relaunched the tender process in November 2019. The city and Marigold teams are expected to finalize the contract by the end of 2020, ahead of the start of construction next year.
Construction on $3.7B Turcot interchange in Montreal draws to close after six years
Construction on the main components of the complex stack interchange are now complete.
PHOTO: QUEBEC MINISTÈRE DES TRANSPORTS
The reconstruction of a complex stack interchange that has been among the largest infrastructure jobs in Quebec over the past several years has entered its final stretch. In mid-October, the Quebec Ministère des Transports announced the final major
component of the $3.67 billion Turcot interchange project opened to traffic after approximately six years of construction. The interchange is a key highway junction on the south end of the Island of Montreal, where highways 15, 20 and 720 converge. Just north of the Lachine Canal, the interchange was initially built in the 1960s and required replacement. Major work got underway in 2015, with the KPH Turcot consortium – made up of Kiewit Corp., Parsons Canada Ltd., CRH Canada Group Inc. and WSP Canada Inc. – taking on the bulk of the work under a designbuild contract. At peak, more than 1,000 workers took part in the complex demolition and reconstruction project, which has also been a significant source of frustration for
the 300,000 or so Montreal commuters and other drivers who travel through the interchange each day. The nearly six years of rebuilding is designed to keep traffic running smoothly through the three-stack interchange for decades. Construction covered 56 separate structures, 145 kilometres of roadway and 21 kilometres of rail. In all, the Ministère des Transports noted, the project required 45 million cubic metres of fill, 4,567 separate steel beams and millions of cubic metres of asphalt and concrete. The opening of Pullman Boulevard Oct. 19 puts construction crews near the finish line. Several final elements, such as landscaping, remain to be capped off until next spring. on-sitemag.com / 7
