The Defence Construction Powerhouse

BY JAMES CARELESS

Toronto’s Rogers Centre. The Halifax Central Library. The Alberta Children’s Hospital. These are just three of the many construction projects completed by EllisDon. Launched by brothers Don and David Ellis Smith as a local London, Ontario contractor in 1951, EllisDon is now an international construction services company headquartered in Mississauga with annual revenues just over $6 billion and 4,500 people on staff. Its core business areas are construction, capital/project finance, and facilities maintenance services.

Here’s the surprise: EllisDon is a big player in the Defence Construction market. “We entered this sector in the early 1990s, when we built training and maintenance facilities for the Department of National Defence (DND) in Calgary,” said Kieran Hawe, EllisDon’s CEO. “Since then, we have built some major defence projects for Canada — even though most people don’t know it.”

FOUR HISTORIC DEFENCE BUILDS

The best way to grasp EllisDon’s powerhouse position in Canadian defence construction is to learn about the following four DND projects.

EllisDon was the Design-Builder for the Medium-to-Heavy Lift Helicopters (MHLH) Training Centre at CFB Petawawa. “This was a world-class 50,000 square metre hangar with maintenance bays and storage for CH-147 Chinook Helicopters,” Hawe told CDR. “This was a phased project delivery that required specialty aircraft maintenance labs and secret clearance.”

EllisDon was also part of a Joint-Venture contract as the Construction Manager on the final and most important phase of the Fleet Maintenance Facility Shop Consolidation Project at CFB Esquimalt.  This substantial project saw a huge variety of work that reorganized the Naval Dockyard’s ship maintenance facilities.  New Shop areas were erected, as well as pre-existing newer areas fitted-up with industrial equipment.  There was renovation work, deconstruction of old buildings and extensive environmental decontamination and site work had to be done within CFB Esquimalt’s Dock yard site. The Navy’s overall existing Fleet Maintenance Facility complex had to remain operational throughout the construction, so a detailed construction implementation strategy was developed by EllisDon, to ensure that there was minimal disruption to Base operations.

“We were the Design-Builder on the Tactical Armoured Patrol Vehicle (TAPV) project in Edmonton, and the building was complete and operational in 2018,” said Hawe. “This was a key project for DND, with construction of storage and maintenance facilities to house DND’s newly purchased Armoured Patrol Vehicles and Armoured Engineer Vehicles. Completing the project on time was crucial to avoid the logistics of the storage of the new vehicles, and our team was able to accomplish that.”

Then there was the former Nortel campus project in Ottawa’s west-end. Purchased by DND in 2010, the renamed ‘Carling Campus Project’ was a multi-phase retrofit that EllisDon completed as Construction Manager in 2020. “8,500 Department of National Defence employees were relocated into the new space, making it one of the largest office moves ever completed in Canada,” said Hawe. “The project included the demolition of multiple labs, along with the retrofitting of 11 interconnected buildings.”

CURRENT DEFENCE BUILDS

Today, EllisDon continues to serve as a key DND construction partner. To put it mildly, the defence projects it is spearheading are central to our national security.

“The infrastructure projects most heavily featured in the media that we are working on are located in Cold Lake, Alberta and Bagotville, Quebec under DND’s Future Fighter Capability Project,” said Hawe. “These two projects will provide infrastructure facilities to support the  operations and maintenance of the new F-35 fighter aircraft being procured for the Royal Canadian Air Force.”

The Modified Design Build projects will see Fighter Squadron Facilities constructed, which will provide space for operations, maintenance, administration, mission planning, and simulator training. It will also house operational and support training squadrons and their training facilities. Construction will also include nearby airfield pavement and aprons.

“It’s an honour for EllisDon to be working on such iconic projects, essential to the defence of Canada,” Hawe said. “Design is currently ongoing on this secret level project, and construction enabling works are underway on both bases.”

Approximately 40 km south of Ottawa, EllisDon is also working on the Eastern Ontario Campus project, which is an overhaul of the Joint Task Force 2 (JTF-2) base. JTF2 is a special operations arm of the Canadian Armed Forces. This major construction management project consists of new construction and recapitalization of existing buildings to accommodate DND operations and personnel. Under the project, 89 buildings and temporary structures will be replaced with 23 new facilities with a combined total floor space of over 98,000 square metres. Seven existing buildings will also be renovated.

STANDING OUT FROM THE COMPETITION

A willingness to embrace digitalization explains why EllisDon stands out from its construction competition. A prime example is this company’s adoption of digital project delivery to build better buildings sooner and more accurately. This is because digital project delivery is a modern collaborative method for managing and executing construction projects using digital technologies. It uses software tools and collaborative platforms to streamline project workflows, increase efficiency, and improve communication and collaboration among project teams.

“Digital project delivery encompasses everything from 3D modeling and virtual reality simulations to BIM [Building Information Modeling] and cloud-based project management tools,” said Hawe. “By utilizing these technologies and capturing accurate and automated data, construction projects can be completed faster, with fewer errors, and at a lower cost.”

To be specific, using a disciplined digital project delivery framework allows EllisDon to visualize all of the different stages of construction, from excavation to completion, and helps its designers resolve conflicts in the design before a project begins. The digital models also provide a new way to manage assets. They serve as complete digital duplicates that facility managers can refer to, to check equipment locations and project specifications, while compiling a full construction history that can be sourced for future facility rehabilitation and redevelopment. Utilizing these tools to capture accurate and automated data helps to reduce costs and increase project efficiencies.

“Meanwhile, our Digital and Data Engineering group brings together the teams who enable EllisDon to leverage technology in every aspect of our business,” Hawe told CDR. “We utilize Building Information Modelling to coordinate the design, as well as provide 4D simulation of the construction project showing how it will be progressed over time. We also use BIM for accurate Quantity Take-off and planning logistics of a construction project. We use laser scanning on construction sites to capture accurate detailed data for every area of a construction site, both for new and renovation projects. We also use drones increasingly in our construction projects to improve productivity, safety and accuracy on our job sites. Their onboard cameras, sensors and other technology allows them to capture images and data from the air, which our people can use to complete site surveying, inspections and monitoring.”

LOOKING AHEAD

Add to these advantages the fact that EllisDon handles construction project management in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) region, has its own digital engineering, financial analysis, and equipment divisions, operates facilities on behalf of its clients, and is expert in P3 (public-private partnership) projects and one can see why this company has become a construction powerhouse. As for the future? “We want to continue working on the nation’s most complex defence projects and programs,” replied Hawe. “And we don’t want to just do a great job on them all — we want to knock it out of the park. At the end of the day, we have to deliver for our clients, and we will never forget that.”

James Careless is CDR’s Ottawa Bureau Chief