RC115 NovDec 2024 - Magazine - Page 29
BUILDING LEAN
AND GREEN
How Lloydminster used IPD
to construct a world-class
wastewater treatment plant
by Mark Douglas Wessel
S A FOUNDING MEMBER of Lean Design Construction
Canada (LDCC), and recently retired director of
engineering with ISL Engineering, Deon Wilner (P.
Eng) doesn’t mince words.
“I sometimes get so frustrated with how infrastructure projects are delivered within Canada
and the cost overruns and the lack of responsibility or
liability on a project,” he shared in a recent interview with
Renew Canada. And he’s quick to reference his experience
with the design build process over the course of his 32year career as a major source of this frustration.
“Years ago, I was asked to head up a design build
division. And I said no thank you, I am not interested in
design build. I think that it’s broken. I think that design
build, at the end of the construction process, is mired in
court cases and legal issues. So, I wrote a memo to the
board of directors saying [ISL] should look at integrated project delivery. Which wasn’t even in Canada at the
time.”
That was in the spring of 2010 and just a few months
later, Wilner joined ISL’s board of directors—proceeding to
spearhead Lean Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) expertise on behalf of the company.
A
The dollars and sense of using IPD
Years later, in order to comply with new Canadian environmental wastewater and e昀툀uent requirements, the City
of Lloydminster—straddling the border of Alberta and
Saskatchewan—began planning construction of a new
wastewater treatment which would be the largest, most
capital-intensive infrastructure project in the city’s history.
It would also become North America’s 昀椀rst wastewater
treatment constructed using IPD.
Mark Douglas Wessel
is an urban journalist
and communications
consultant. He writes a
regular column called
Green Living
for Postmedia.
CHANDOS CONSTRUCTION
RENEWCANADA.NET
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2024– RENEW CANADA 29
