SMA Receives Three Awards at the 2025 CEA Showcase Gala
SMA Consulting Ltd. is honoured to have walked the stage at the 2025 CEA Showcase Gala three times, twice as part of the award-winning Valley Line Southeast LRT team, and once for the 99 Avenue Sanitary Trunk Bypass Project. We are proud of the work that we and our partners accomplished on these projects and grateful to have this celebrated by the industry.
The Valley Line Southeast LRT is a 13.1 km low floor light rail transit system that entered service commencement in 2023. It is the City of Edmonton’s largest infrastructure project completed to date and the first implementation of its new vision of mass transit. The transit line is integrated into existing communities, offering connectivity from Downtown to Mill Woods and with existing LRT lines. It includes 11 street-level stops, an elevated station, one bridge, two elevated guideways, one tunnel and an operations and maintenance facility. As the Owner’s Engineer, connectEd Transit Partnership managed the program from concept design in 2011, through preliminary design, procurement, and design and construction. SMA has played a key role from the project’s earliest days and has forged deep connections with the other team members, including the Prime Consultant, AECOM, DIALOG, Hatch, ISL Engineering and Land Services Ltd., Mott MacDonald Canada Limited, Thurber Engineering Ltd., and many more. The project won the Award of Excellence in Project Management and Award of Merit for Transportation Infrastructure – Roads, Interchanges, Airports, Mass Transit.
Edmonton’s 99 Avenue sanitary trunk, built in 1975, is 30 m below ground, tall enough to walk in, and serves 117,000+ customers – more than the population of Red Deer. To allow rehabilitation and increase capacity, EPCOR and the project team constructed a new 1.6-km bypass sewer. An innovative microtunnelling approach minimized surface impact and the first use of specialized pre-lined concrete pipe in Edmonton withstood large boulders and jacking forces of up to 1000 tonnes. The final connection to the trunk was made under live flow conditions during the dead of night. Rehabilitation is now under way. The project team was made up of companies with an extensive history of collaborating effectively with one another on previous drainage projects, ensuring familiarity with the owner’s requirements, protocols, and processes, to be able to work seamlessly together and meet any challenges effectively and efficiently. EPCOR, the project owner, retained Stantec as owner’s engineer and Thurber for geotechnical services. On the contractor side, Shanghai Construction Group of Canada was responsible for microtunneling, Associated Engineering furnished the design, and SMA provided project management. CKB was responsible for the excavation of the working shaft at site 2, while Doublestar Drilling designed and constructed secant shafts at sites 1 and 3. Solid Earth Geotechnical provided settlement monitoring during the project. This project won the Award of Excellence in Small Firm- Big Impact.
Congratulations to all of the other winners and nominees!
