EllisDon, a joint venture with Westpro Constructors Ltd. Group, has been awarded the Broadway Tech Centre Building 1 contract in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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With the recent population and economic growth of the province of Alberta, EllisDon ’s Western Canada division has seen its annual revenues soar to $800 million. Although the company has had a footprint in Alberta since 1976, it has been a challenge to keep up with its current backlog of work, which has grown to $4 billion (Canadian) across its Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, and Vancouver, British Columbia, offices.

“We have expanded our departments, so we have more of a presence in support areas such as research and development, LEED, and quality and control,” says Vince Davoli, senior vice president and area manager for EllisDon’s Calgary office. “In the past, these departments were typically a corporate entity, but we’ve grown quite a bit out here in the last three years to the point where we required much more local presence in these areas.”

Vast Capabilities
The Western Canada division offers much the same capabilities as EllisDon’s headquarters in Ontario, which include construction management, design/build and design/build/finance delivery methods in sectors like institutional, commercial and retail. The Western Canada division employs 160 salaried people in its division headquarters office in Calgary, 30 in Vancouver and 50 in Edmonton, as well as 400 hourly employees across the three offices.

Cost Control
The Calgary office finds it a challenge to predict material pricing for its projects due to the construction boom in the province. “The market is overheated and it’s tremendously busy,” Davoli says. “And now it is expensive to build in Calgary, more expensive than any other major Canadian center.”

Convincing talented salaried personnel as potential employees from outside the province to relocate to the Calgary area has its challenges.

The cost of housing has had an impact in attracting qualified personnel. The average price of a single-family dwelling has jumped to about $500,000, whereas in other parts of Canada, the same home can be purchased $300,000, Davoli says.

This has forced EllisDon to be creative in its recruitment and employment offers. “We help people along with moving expenses and legal fees, etc.,” Davoli says. “If we have personnel we’d like to employ from another area of the country, we will also look at subsidizing that hire for a certain timeframe until a desirable, affordable home is available. We’ve moved entire families out here out west.”

It is all part of building relationships with employees, according to Davoli. He says the company has numerous employee programs in place, such as EOP plans, training, educational initiatives and relocation packages, to name a few.

Subcontractor Pool
Because of the glut of projects available, getting a good number of subcontractors to bid on the projects is another issue, according to Davoli.

For example, it was typical to receive five to eight drywall bidders for any given contract, but that number has dwindled to two or three. So, the division has resorted to seeking bidders from outside the province in the hope of soliciting additional competitive pricing.

“On several recent projects, we’ve gone to Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Montreal to find trades to do the work,” Davoli explains. “We even go down to the United States to solicit trades to come up, and we’ve had some success in doing that.”

However, the Western Canada division still has a pool of subcontractors that consistently bid on its projects because of the reputation the company has built over the years through good business practices and ethics.

“We treat them fair, we set the rules and guidelines up front, and we follow it and expect the subtrades to follow it,” Davoli says.
“We have a lot of personnel that have been here for a long time, 20 years and more, some of them.

“Many personnel and trusting relationships have been established over the years with clients and subtrades.

“With the trust that has been built, they know they can pick up the phone and call me or one of our senior personnel and get action, if action is required.”

South Health Campus
EllisDon is the construction manager for the South Health Campus, a new hospital campus facility in southeast Calgary. The project, which has a price tag of $1.25 billion (Canadian) includes a women’s clinic, mental health facility and outpatient services across 2 million square feet. The first phase broke ground in August 2007 and turnover of its first beds is planned for 2011.

“What will be a challenge is providing adequate labor for a big project like this,” Davoli says.

“As an example of [atypical features], as an added attraction and because of the project’s remote location in the outskirts of Calgary, we’re bringing food services to the site, sort of a camp thing,” he adds. 

“We’re looking at having foodservices on site so workers don’t have to leave. This is still in the planning stages and is planned to be in place when the projects labor force grows to about 250.”

The Calgary office has worked on numerous hospitals, but the South Health Campus, which will be operated by the Calgary Health Region, is the division’s largest hospital project.

Davoli says EllisDon plans to tender major portions of the work soon to subcontractors who will handle the labor requirements for their specific trades. EllisDon has also hired mechanical and electrical contractors and will bring on an envelope contractor as sub-construction managers to handle these portions of the work.         

This is a process EllisDon in Western Canada has used on several other projects, including the highly successful Alberta’s Children’s Hospital.

“They are in early with us doing the planning, value-engineering and identifying long lead times ahead of time,” Davoli says. “What this will do is give value to the owners in terms of quality, an enhanced schedule and reduced life cycle costs. This all adds up to savings in project costs to the benefit of the owner.”    

Davoli says EllisDon’s prior relationship with Foothills Medical Center came into play when it was time for the owners to decide on a construction manager. “They know how we work and we know how they work,” Davoli says. “Our numbers still have to be there, and it makes it easier for them if our numbers are there, but there is no learning process between the respective parties.

“They know and understand our systems. They know how we build and they understand the way we work daily because we communicate with them on a daily basis.”

Jamieson Place
The Calgary office has also been brought on as construction manager for Bentall Real Estate’s Jamieson Place, which is a complex that has a four-level underground parking structure under a 38-floor office tower. The total building area is in excess of for 1.1 million square feet, and the construction cost of the project is $235 million.

Despite the boom in Calgary’s construction industry, Jamieson Place has gone off without a hitch with regards to labor requirements.

“I think the labor market is quite different than a year ago,” Davoli says. “It is a tighter labor market, thus it has been more difficult to attract tradespeople and we’ve gone out of the province to get certain trades. But, we’ve got everything we’ve needed so far.”

Even though the scope of the work seems daunting – especially with 64,000 yards of concrete being poured and 6,000 tons of rebar steel required – Davoli says the project has run smoothly since ground broke in June 2007.

“Usually on a project downtown, we’ll encounter something when we go underground,” Davoli says. “But luckily there was no rock to speak of or abnormal water conditions.”

One factor that has helped the construction process along is that EllisDon and the owner, Bentall Real Estate, are very familiar with each other.

“We’re in the early phases of the project and we are always looking at ways to accelerate the project schedule without sacrificing quality and budget to ensure timely delivery so that tenant work can proceed prior to or on planned turnover,” Davoli says. “Bentall is quite receptive to ways to enhance schedule or save costs. We know Bentall, we know how they operate, and they know how we operate. This helps us both achieve our goals”

‘Monumental Moment’
EllisDon earned two projects in Fort McMurray, Alberta, within the last six months under the guidance of Allen Atefi, vice president and area manager of the Edmonton office. Atefi says it was a “monumental moment” for EllisDon to get involved in oil sands projects.

“I see our Edmonton operation is going to be the strength of the organization in the next five to 10 years,” Atefi says. “With the amount of untapped work due to demand for oil, the number and size of the projects is going to take the Edmonton operations to the forefront within EllisDon.”

Echoing Davoli’s statements about the importance of people, Atefi says the staff in his Edmonton office was the difference in earning these contracts to build temporary housing for the employees of oil companies processing the oil sands and a new administration complex.

“Our business is all about people and relationships,” Atefi says. “We invest in people who want to make a difference and can create value. If we trust in our employees and invest in their strengths and give them full accountability to do the job, we find we are very successful. We’re always going after incredible projects, and that attracts people. So then we target the right potential employees, hire them and invest in building their careers, and in turn they invest in us.”

Remote Experience
Because the construction boom in the Fort McMurray continues, it has been a challenge to find experienced personnel. “To get the project up and running needs a different strategy when everyone is a transient,” Atefi says. “Very few people within the industry have a permanent residence in Fort McMurray.

“They fly in at the beginning of their shift cycle and fly out at the end,” he says. So, the company has gone through a major recruitment process to find qualified candidates. “We targeted people with Fort McMurray or ‘remote’ experience who understand that kind of a market,” Atefi says. “We recruit based on some of the better opportunities we can provide and the name brand of EllisDon, which means ‘success.’

“There is a huge human shortage out there, but we’ve never had too much trouble recruiting for the initiatives we’ve undertaken. It is challenging but not impossible because of the approach we take.”

Similar to the rest of the province, the Edmonton office struggles to find an acceptable number of subcontractors to bid on its jobs in Fort McMurray and Edmonton. The office has had to tap into EllisDon’s nationwide relationships with subcontractors to draw them to far-away Fort McMurray, and many subs are excited to be part of the growth in the Alberta oil sands.

“We’re finding that subs are stretched to their limits, so we’re tapping into our vast relationships instead of relying on subtrades that we don’t know and can’t handle the work,” Atefi says.

“So, we contact our subtrades across Canada and we encourage them to come up there with us.

“And they are starting to line up to be part of the projects,” he adds. “We haven’t awarded a lot of things yet. But we’re inviting subtrades that have a relationship with us and that we can depend on and know can execute.”

Doubling Staff
With the growth spurt the company has experienced in western Canada, the Edmonton office has doubled the size of its salaried staff in the last year and quadrupled its number of employees since it returned to the area four years ago. EllisDon operated an office in Edmonton from the late 1970s to the mid-’90s.

EllisDon’s recruiting efforts in Edmonton have included traditional methods like advertising, recruiting agencies and networking within the company’s divisions. But Atefi believes the best recruiting technique has been the word of mouth from current employees who share their good experiences with people they know are looking for a true career.

No matter how a candidate lands an interview for a job with the Edmonton office, Atefi says a positive, “can-do” attitude will be the final determining factor as to whether or not EllisDon hires them. “We look for a person with the right attitude because once we find that person, we can train in anything,” Atefi says. “I’ve worked in the industry for 20 years and have been at a senior level for 10 years, and the right recruiting strategies can make or break a company. Most people focus on education, references and interviewing, but the hiring decision here comes down to primarily attitude.

“A lot of people are intrigued by our company philosophy where we don’t create barriers to advancement. Our staff’s limitation to growth is their own ability.”

Community Involvement
With the lack of local skilled laborers comes a lack of involvement and ownership with the Fort McMurray community. Atefi believes there is a connection between good work and direct community involvement.

“There is a part of our belief system to be a helping hand in the communities we operate in,” Atefi explains. “Having roots in that community really makes a difference.”

EllisDon has plans for helping some of the outreach programs that can benefit from volunteers from within the company to help a community that, according to Atefi, has problems with drug and alcohol abuse.

“Our policy is to give back to the community we are take from,” Atefi adds. “But this is a little bit more difficult that where we operate regularly but we are committed.”

Nothing has been finalized at this point, but Atefi says EllisDon has approached a few organizations in the area, such as rehab programs, shelters and drug and alcohol intervention programs.

Healthcare Capabilities
The Edmonton office handles more than non-industrial work in Fort McMurray. In fact, it is currently the construction manager for the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute for Capital Health, which is the health authority in Edmonton.

The $120 million hospital has used state-of-the-art technology and construction techniques, according to Atefi.

The project is expected to be completed in May 2008 after a four-and-a-half year schedule.

Mazankowski Alberta is divided into two main components. The first is the low-rise section, which contains five stories and five interstitial levels that incorporate all mechanical and electrical services.

The high-rise portion is made up of eight stories and eight interstitial floors. In total, the building is 600,000 square feet, with 300,000 square feet devoted to new clinical space.

The project also has a Helipad and a Megavator, which, EllisDon says, vertically transfers patients from the Helipad to the existing Emergency Center on the first floor.

The institute will open with 132 beds, five adult operating rooms, one pediatric operating room, two adult cardiac catheterization labs, one pediatric cardiac catheterization lab, and three electrophysiology labs designed for pediatric and adult clients.

The institute is also aiming to achieve LEED Silver certification.

‘Extraordinary’ Team
Atefi says the team EllisDon assembled for the project is “extraordinary” because of its mix of senior- and junior-level employees. Approximately 80 percent of the team is working on its first assignment for EllisDon and being mentored by top senior employees in teamwork, managing schedule, budgets and quality control. “This team has been able to pull it off with some good senior mentorship,” Atefi says. “And a ton of new recruits were able to deliver successfully.”

This seems even more impressive considering the number of changes Capital Health made to the original scope on the project.

Atefi says the owner wanted to implement the latest technological advances that became available during the course of construction.

“A lot of those changes were owner-induced due to the technological advances they wanted implemented” he adds. “Something that was state of the art six months ago may not be today.”

Staffing Challenges
Like most projects in Alberta, securing qualified laborers was a challenge. But because of the prominence of the project and the reputation of EllisDon, Atefi says the company was able to satisfy its work force needs.

“Qualified hourly tradesmen in general have been in hard supply,” Atefi adds. “Given that success attracts success, the project has been able to attract not only the best staff and management, but also because of its popularity we’ve been able to attract good tradesmen.”

Capital Health held a public prequalification and tender process for qualified bidders before accepting proposals from potential construction managers.

Since lowest fee was not the only determining factor, Atefi says EllisDon was chose for three reasons:

• The strength of its proposed team
• Depth, experience and financial sustainability of the company
• Its competitive fee structure 

Those three factors secured the project for us,” he adds. “What we’ve found is that our employees do shape our future. Having the right people in place, nurturing them, providing guidance and mentorship and staying with them and not letting them feel abandoned leads to success.

”It reinforces that it comes down to people yet again, and having the right people in place with the right attitude from the get-go.”