SMA Wins Award of Excellence for Small Firm, Big Impact at the 2022 Consulting Engineers of Alberta Showcase Awards
SMA received the Award of Excellence for the Small Firm, Big Impact category for work on the Groat Road Storm Trunk Rehabilitation project (Phase 2) at the 25th Annual Consulting Engineers of Alberta Showcase Awards Gala held this April.
Containing nearly 4 kilometres of 2-metre pipe, with several curves along the alignment, this is one of the largest sliplining projects undertaken in Western Canada. The project had to balance the need to rehabilitate deteriorating 60-year-old pipe with minimizing disruption to the busy arterial road intersection located above it. The trunk was rehabilitated under live flow conditions during one of the wettest summers in 40 years, while unforeseen complications, including voids, cave-ins, a pipe condition that was worse than anticipated, and problems with grout, all added to the complexity. Furthermore, the advent of the COVID pandemic at the start of 2020 disrupted the supply chain and affected project staffing, further threatening to push the project over budget.
Key to the project’s ultimate success in the face of all these difficulties was the combination of skills and expertise cemented by solid team member partnerships. By applying creative best practices and tools such as Monte Carlo analysis of the schedule, the team was able to save construction time and costs in the order of $1 million, without compromising effectiveness. EPCOR Drainage worked with SMA, Shanghai Construction Group Canada, Stantec, Associated Engineering, and Thurber to overcome both the known and the unexpected obstacles, drawing upon decades of experience and a collaborative approach, to deliver the project within budget and without loss of service, ensuring this crucial infrastructure was ready to collect the city’s stormwater for another half a century.
We would like to offer our sincere congratulations to our project team members, along with all other award winners and nominees, and to thank the CEA for its ongoing support of the engineering industry.
