The company’s environmental assessments have led its team of archaeologists and other specialists to some wild discoveries
Hayley Bond , an archaeologist from British Columbia, was in Vancouver Island surveying a plot of land that had been slated for a residential development. The developer had hired Stantec —the international design and engineering firm, where Bond is a principal—to investigate the property. Her job was to find out what treasures might be buried beneath the topsoil.
They excavated the property by hand, whereupon they found additional patches of dark earth, rounded and tapered—the likely residue of stakes that had been driven into the ground, perhaps to support tents, longhouses or salmon-drying racks. Nearby, they found what Bond calls a “migrating hearth,” a fire pit that had been disassembled and then reassembled on higher ground, suggesting people had returned to the site at different moments in time.
Stantec is celebrating its 70th birthday this year, and while it’s tens of thousands of times larger than it was at inception, it’s still small relative to what its leaders hope it will be. When its founder, Don Russell Stanley, an Ice Hockey World Champion, graduated from Harvard in 1953 with a doctorate in environmental engineering, he faced a choice: stay in Boston and play for the Bruins or return to Edmonton and put his expertise to use.
Since adopting the name Stantec in 1998, the company has been on an acquisition spree, buying up over 120 entities in the 21st century alone, and it has participated in the grandest, priciest, gnarliest developments on the planet. It worked on the new lock system for the Panama Canal. And the $2-billion expansion of the Long Island Expressway. And the 13-kilometre Confederation Bridge connecting PEI to the mainland.
If the damage is limited, the cheapest option might be to jack up the most vulnerable homes and fortify them with deeper piles; if it’s extensive, the town may have to relocate to higher ground. Either way, its residents are facing a knotty logistical challenge that previous generations of builders could never have imagined. But knotty logistical challenges are Stantec’s speciality. “I’m not saying climate change is a good thing,” says El-Dana. “But it is a thing. We’re living it.
And so land owners must ask questions they didn’t ask before: What ecological damage has already happened on my property? What might happen if I develop it further? What can I do to reduce liabilities? And how can I clean things up today so that I don’t have a bigger mess on my hands tomorrow? Answering those questions is Stantec’s business.
To solve it, the station owner leased out a nearby parking lot, where the team dug a trench adjacent to the apartment building. From there, they inserted slotted pipes—called horizontal wells—that ran beneath the foundations, enabling engineers to pump a concoction of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium into the ground, stimulating microbial growth. The microbes ate the hydrocarbons, cleaning up the mess.
Edmonton-based global engineering giant Stantec turns 70 this year, but in many ways, it’s just getting going. There’s a world of complex new projects and remediation efforts to tackle—not to mention archeological relics and bats to discover.
Aud-Url Yesapplenews Stantec Climate Change Environmental Assessments Site Bond Team Company Developer Property Ground Development Long Island Expressway
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