LEADING THE OILFIELD CONSTRUCTION AND SERVICES INDUSTRY
DEVELOPING A FLOURISHING FIRST NATION COMMUNITY
Driven by a purpose to preserve and propel the Fort McKay First Nation and better the lives of Indigenous peoples, Fort McKay Group of Companies is an industry leader in oil sands. We learn more about the company’s history, services, and prosperous future
Writer: Lauren Kania | Project Manager: Scarlett Burke
Beginning in 1986 with only six employees and a single janitorial contract, Fort McKay Group of Companies (FMGOC) has progressed leaps and bounds over the course of the past 40 years, evolving into a leading, multi-milliondollar entity in oilfield construction and services.
With now more than 2,000 employees under its reins, FMGOC has offices in Fort McKay, Fort McMurray, and Edmonton, Canada. Despite its growth, the company still maintains its core purpose
of preserving and propelling the Fort McKay First Nation (FMFN) community and bettering the lives of Indigenous peoples throughout the country.
100 percent owned by the FMFN, FMGOC generates revenue by bringing opportunity, resources, and capacity to the community. Specifically, the company offers its clients strategic and mechanical services, logistics, joint ventures (JVs), and high-quality products to meet their needs in a competitive and crucial sector.
With years of experience in the oil sands industry, FMGOC is backed by its priority focus on quality, cost, and safety.
The company is also adamant that diversity is the key to growth and values the relationships it builds with clients, partners, and the community as a foundation for successful collaboration.
FMGOC channels its profits directly back into the FMFN people to support local employment, infrastructure, health benefits, recreation, and community centers to meet the needs of its growing population.
As such, the company’s continued success has been made possible through its collaborative partnerships, core values, and a strong leadership team.
A LOCAL LEADER IN OIL SANDS FMGOC’s strategic services is a specific division of the company
that offers a diverse range of solutions, providing reliable and costcompetitive advantages to its clients in the oil sands sector. The company’s expertise includes earthworks, site services, heavy equipment, fuel and lube services, clientembedded equipment operators, and reclamation support services.
For FMGOC’s logistics services, the company offers an integrated supply chain to all businesses, regardless of size. It collects materials and equipment from suppliers and manages them through the supply chain process to the end user.
Although primarily focused on North America, the company can manage materials from anywhere in the world via truck, rail, marine, and air solutions. FMGOC works directly with its customers to adjust its service levels and meet their needs and expectations every time.
Fort McKay Mechanical Services
(FMMS) is a new division owned and operated by FMGOC, providing code-regulated, specialty mechanical, and heat-treating services. It was established to deliver high-value, leading technologies to its customers, alongside increasing the number of skilled tradespeople on the team.
FMMS aims to deliver an ethical and comprehensive service, emphasizing high quality, precise execution, effective scheduling, and a focus on Indigenous employment. As an Alberta Boilers Safety Association (ABSA)-certified company, it combines a leadership team with over 130 years of combined expertise across the oil and gas, power, mining, forestry, and petrochemical sectors.
FMGOC has a proud history of forming JVs with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous local entities, whereby the company holds the majority stake and oversees operations through Board involvement.
These various JVs provide opportunities for the economic diversification of FMGOC’s business portfolio while enhancing its partnerships with local organizations. Specifically, the company has established JV partnerships with Birch Mountain Enterprises, an industry leader in fluid hauling, pressure and vacuum, and waste management, and FMP Group, a company with a proven record in large-scale project delivery, from bidding through to construction.
SUPPORTING AND DEVELOPING THE COMMUNITY
Having proudly worked for nearly four decades to support and develop the FMFN, FMGOC ensures that the community has the financial independence to make its own decisions, as well as providing for itself and its members.
The FMFN consists of approximately 800 Dene, Cree, and Métis community members and is located 65 kilometers (km) north of Fort McMurray along the banks of
FMGOC CORE VALUES
LOYAL – Dedicated to the company’s purpose.
EMPATHETIC – Upholding care for each other, dignity for others, a rational approach, and a high degree of understanding for others’ emotions.
RESPECTFUL – Actively listening, demonstrating patience, and seeking understanding.
RESULTS-ORIENTED – Driven, moving the needle, and committed to learning.
TENACIOUS – Staying the course, taking initiative, and being selfmotivated and managed.
the Athabasca River in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. The First Nation roots run deep through Fort McKay, extending back to 1820 with the establishment of the Hudson Bay Company trading post in the area.
Earthworks services
Fuel and lube services
Your Construction Solutions Partner
Stemming from humble beginnings, Graham’s story is one of growth, vision, commitment, inspiration, and innovation. With deep roots, unparalleled standards, and timeless dedication, the company is a proud leader in the construction industry
Commitment, integrity, and reliability—these are the values and culture that have been deeply embedded in Graham since it was founded nearly a century ago. Its concrete business ethics strengthen the company’s ability to deliver value to clients in the ever-crucial construction sector.
As a time-tested and fully integrated construction solutions partner with over nine decades of experience and offices throughout North America, Graham prides itself on delivering excellence through projects that enable people and communities to live, work, move, and grow in this rapidly changing world. Throughout North America, Graham provides services including general contracting, construction management, design-build, integrated project delivery, digital construction and delivery, and maintenance & turnaround services across the buildings, industrial, infrastructure, water, and development sectors.
Additionally, it has been a 100 percent employeeowned company for the past 40 years, with employeeowners coming from all levels of the company—
not just the executive or senior management teams. This model further bolsters Graham’s entrepreneurial spirit and environment, creating a workplace where people are accountable for themselves and their colleagues and have a genuine vested interest in the success of every project.
This environment of mutual dedication and commitment allows the company to ensure every project is meticulously built to meet the specified parameters of performance, quality, durability, safety, and long-term value.
Graham’s industry-leading innovation and longstanding promise to excellence at every level are exemplified across the complete spectrum of projects, industrial facilities, public infrastructure, and community development.
With quality being both an inspiration and an aspiration, the company’s industry-leading systems—driven from the top down—infuse quality into all aspects of key decision-making.
EXCELLENCE WORKS HERE
Crucial to Graham’s success and foundation as a company are its various partnerships with Indigenous communities across North America.
These partnerships are built on commitment, integrity, and reliability—the very same core values that define the company’s culture, govern its actions, and produce extraordinary outcomes for every client’s projects.
Graham builds bridges with its Indigenous partners not with steel or concrete, but with trust, respect, and its commitment to forging mutually beneficial working relationships which reflect its values of respect for the proud traditions and culture of Indigenous peoples and communities. These open and ongoing collaborations build truly robust alliances that result in self-sufficient partnerships that are accountable and proudly Indigenous-led.
Through these partnerships, the company generates positive impacts through training, employment, and the development of increased economic capacity, ensuring Indigenous communities, families, and peoples thrive.
Equally, through Graham’s joint ventures, business relationships, and strategic alliances, it plans and builds for long-term success for each party, creating an environment that generates positive effects for Indigenous peoples through training, employment, and the development of sustainable economic capacity within their communities.
The company measures its relationships with Indigenous partners and communities by the actions
it takes, the invested efforts, respect shown, and the integrity of its teams. Graham also has different certifications and memberships, including the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business (CCIB), Partnership Accreditation in Indigenous Relations (PAIR), and Northeastern Alberta Aboriginal Business Accreditation (NAABA).
LEADING CONSTRUCTION SOLUTIONS IN EVERY SECTOR
At Graham, work is its calling.
The company strives to deliver unprecedented construction solutions because its purpose is to build a better world. To accomplish this, it builds to the very highest standards of innovation, service, safety, and quality. It is only then that Graham’s communities flourish and its purpose is fulfilled.
GRAHAM’S INDIGENOUS STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES
• Trust
• Respect
• Transparency
• Commitment
• Community engagement
• Integrity
• Indigenous liaison
• Financial considerations
These are the cornerstones of Graham’s approach to Indigenous community engagement. As the first general contractor in Canada to have such a statement, the company continues to lead the way in the industry.
As a North American industry leader, Graham builds to the highest standards of safety, quality, and excellence. It is through the company’s collaborative culture and entrepreneurial approach that it derives innovative solutions able to deliver long-term, tangible value for clients, partners, and communities.
The company is here to get to work—together. Graham’s reputation for quality has been well-earned throughout the decades due to its operational excellence at every step, engaging visionary leadership, and relentless dedication to improvement. Championed by its executive management team, Graham’s proprietary ISO9001-based quality management system is a key tenet of every project it engages in.
This system defines the baseline processes and requirements from a project’s pursuit to completion and handover. Such processes are consistently measured, analyzed, and evaluated to make improvements or add resources. With this uncompromising approach to quality management, Graham can confidently deliver exceptional value to its clients.
The company is constantly thinking ahead. Looking to the future and recognizing that what it does today shapes and impacts tomorrow means it works to build and create lasting tangible value. This sets standards and improves lives in the communities where it builds and the environment everyone shares. Working safely, responsibly, and collaboratively with all stakeholders and partners is Graham’s highest priority, because futures—and the future—depend on it.
It was named in 1912 after Dr. William Morrison MacKay – the first resident doctor of Alberta and President of the Alberta Medical Association.
This deeply embedded historical background to the land and culture remains prominent today. Also crucial to FMGOC and its current standing as an industry leader is its commitment to safety.
The company believes that safety is everyone’s responsibility and can only be achieved through the active participation of the entire organization. Ultimately, FMGOC is dedicated to ensuring no harm comes to its most valuable asset – its people.
BEAVER CREEK WOOD BISON RANCH
Initiated in 1993, the Beaver Creek Wood Bison Ranch (Beaver Creek) began with a herd of 30 pure wood bison in Syncrude’s Mildred Lake site, near Edmonton.
Those bison have grown to a herd of 300, now living on more than 300 hectares of reclaimed grassland 50km north of Fort McMurray. The ranch has been run in a JV between Syncrude Canada and the FMFN, on behalf of FMGOC’s strategic services division, for over 25 years.
The team at the ranch works with researchers to find valuable and pertinent information that benefits the bison industry, as the herd is an important part of the genetic preservation effort of the wood bison species. Beaver Creek continues to provide a safe and healthy environment for the future, nurturing the growth and development of this once-threatened species.
The bison is significant because it symbolizes strength and has cultural importance to First Nation and Métis communities, for whom the animal provided food, shelter, and tools for millennia. Nursing this once-depleted population back to health represents a rekindling of Indigenous culture in Canada, as the relationship between Syncrude Canada and the FMFN strengthened when the bison returned to their ancestral land.
The ranch also demonstrates that the reclaimed land could support the same plants and animals that existed long before the extraction of oil in Alberta.
To balance safety, production, and client demands, the company employs eCompliance – a cuttingedge environment, health, and safety (EHS) management system that promotes transparency and worker engagement, and provides leadership
with real-time safety performance data. Equally, to support FMGOC’s continuous improvement, it maintains strong relationships with industry safety partners, associations, and service providers.
TAKING AN ACTIVE ROLE IN THE FUTURE
With Indigenous prosperity, growth, and community development such a crucial part of FMGOC’s origins and vision for the future, the company continuously supports causes that bring prosperity and equity to First Nations peoples living in Canada.
FMGOC aids local initiatives and provides economic opportunities for FMFN through its contributions to health and wellness in the area.
Specifically, in June 2021, the company assisted in the development of Fort Edmonton Park and had a bison statue named in honor of its work in preserving Indigenous culture.
Equally as important to FMGOC are its efforts toward an environmentally sustainable future. The protection of the environment is an integral element of the company’s business, and it actively works to ensure adverse
effects are minimized through careful planning, implementation of effective protection measures, and monitoring of operational activities.
Notably, the company’s rules and procedures for environmental protection comply with government regulations and standards and are consistent with industry codes and guidelines.
Looking ahead, the team continually seeks opportunities for new ventures, growth, and prosperity, enabling FMGOC to remain an industry leader while supporting both the community and its customers. This will be the ongoing focus as the company steps into a bright, prosperous, and supportive future.
