After trying out the LPS robotic total station system in the summer of 2021, All Roads purchased two stations for their port project. All photos courtesy of All Roads
TIGHT TIMELINE, TIGHTER TOLERANCES ON PORT PROJECT
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BY SARAH REDOHL
The United States isn’t the only country experiencing supply chain issues. Our neighbor to the north is facing challenges of its own. “Shortages have been a topic of conversation across Canada,” said Denis Labelle, operations manager for All Roads Construction Ltd., Surrey, British Columbia. “A lot of goods at the port just aren't moving because trucks aren’t available to offload it.” Labelle attributes a large amount of the backlog to the major flooding the Vancouver area experienced before Christmas. The 2021 Pacific Northwest Floods, particularly in southern British Columbia, resulted in severe disruption of the transportation corridor linking Canada’s largest port, in Vancouver, to the rest of Canada. “We had kilometers of highway under water and washed away, bridges collapsing as water undermined the piles,” Labelle recalled. Stranded people were getting picked up by helicopters. There was a $30 limit on the purchase of gas. One of All Roads’ recent projects in
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the city of Abbotsford saw nearly two weeks of work washed away. “It was nuts.” Despite the hectic events, All Roads crews continued to do their part to shore up Canada’s supply chain for the future. All Roads is subcontracted by CXP, the design build team awarded this work, to perform all milling, grading, concrete work and asphalt paving on the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s $400 million CAD project, which expands and improves its Centerm terminal. Along with improving traffic flow in and around the port, the project first and foremost aims to increase capacity at the port to support Canada’s growing trade demand for goods shipped in containers. Construction began in 2019 and is expected to wrap up by the end of 2022. “It’s a very high profile project with a tight schedule,” Labelle said. In total, the project calls for 120,000 tons of asphalt to rehabilitate the terminal’s existing pavement, expand the terminal by 15 percent, pave a new overpass on Centennial Road, and reconfigure Waterfront Road to create a continuous port road from Canada Place to Highway 1.
