What’s Next?
“The only constant in life is change” —Heraclitus
By Kevin Kohut, BC Director
It has been just over 15 years since I moved back to my home province of BC. At the time, my excitement levels were further heightened by the opportunity to participate in an upcoming megaproject: the building of the new Port Mann Bridge, along with 35 kilometres of highway and several overpasses. The project would employ over a thousand members.
The old Port Mann Bridge was one that I had known all my life. It was what I saw when I looked out my living room window, and it was where I had spent many hours in gridlocked traffic jams.
The thought of a new skyline, new bridge, and 10 lanes was exciting, not to mention that the market had crashed and construction was hitting a lull at the time. This project gave a feeling of hope because it would provide years of work, and CLAC members were going to build it!
A few years later, as the project neared completion, I remember feeling some stress over the question: What’s next?
It’s now been almost a dozen years since the new Port Mann Bridge has opened up, and in some ways it seems like it’s always been there. The stressful question of what’s next has long since been answered, though it would have been hard to see at the time.
What was next over the ensuing years was hundreds of kilometres of pipeline work along with large compressor stations, pump stations, the massive Site C Dam project and some smaller run-of-river projects, a giant grain terminal, several waste-water treatment plants, and bridges along with work on many large institutional projects, mines, hospitals, airports, seismic upgrades, towers too numerous to mention . . . the list goes on!
Hindsight is a funny thing. It seems almost silly to have worried about what’s next.
Currently, members in BC have either completed, or are nearing completion, work on four megaprojects that were once uncertain answers to the big, worrisome question of years ago. And now, I look forward and contemplate that same question, but with less worry than anticipation as to what’s next. I find myself becoming energized as I see the future unfolding.
• A hundred marine division construction members are building the base for a “floatel,” a former cruise ship that will serve as a camp to 600 workers at a time in Squamish.
• Members are well into the civil work for the upcoming Woodfibre LNG project.
• Over 450 electricians and instrumentation craft members are working on LNG Canada in Kitimat.
• In Kelowna, members are building a large recreation centre in their hometown.
• In Metro Vancouver, members are working on the massive North Shore Waste Water Treatment Plant project.
• In Abbotsford, members are doing a significant upgrade of the Vitalus Milk Processing Plant, which will expand the plant’s milk-processing capabilities from 130 million litres to 565 million litres per year!
• Members are doing the structural reinforcement to the Ruskin Dam on the Stave River.
• In Mission, members are working on the Dewdney Bridge.
• In central BC, members are building the Blackwater gold project, which has 10-plus million ounces of gold in resources.
What’s next for members in BC is a ton of work opportunities across the province.