Toronto, Ontario – April 7, 2009: Aecon Group Inc. (TSX: ARE) today announced that a joint venture in which its Infrastructure division is participating has been awarded a project with Metro Vancouver for completion of the twin tunnels component of the Seymour Capilano Filtration Project.
Under the contract, the Seymour-Cap Partnership, in which Aecon is a 30% partner, will complete the final 3 km section of a total 7.1 km twin tunnel from the Capilano Pumping Station to the Seymour-Capilano Filtration Plant in Greater Vancouver, British Columbia. Work on the project, which also includes excavation of two 270 metre deep shafts and interconnection of pipes from nearby watermains, will begin immediately. Completion is expected at the end of 2012 or early in 2013.
Aecon’s partners in the Seymour-Cap Partnership are Frontier-Kemper Constructors and J.F. Shea Construction. The Seymour-Cap Partnership will complete the tunnels, following the cessation of work in January 2008 by a previous contractor, and will proceed using the original engineering design and the two tunnel boring machines currently in place.
The contract forms part of the Seymour Capilano Filtration Project, which will provide filtration and ultra-violet disinfection of drinking water from two of Metro Vancouver’s three source water supplies, and includes construction of a pumping station, filtration plant and energy recovery facility in addition to the tunnel project.
“This project award is an important step toward our stated objective of expanding our successful heavy civil construction business in Central Canada back into Western Canada,” said Teri McKibbon, CEO of Aecon’s Infrastructure division. “For this expansion into British Columbia to begin with a project as important as the Seymour Capilano Filtration Project, and to be delivering it with partners of the proven experience and quality of Frontier-Kemper and J. F. Shea makes this an important milestone for Aecon Infrastructure.”
Aecon Group Inc. is Canada’s largest publicly traded construction and infrastructure development company. Aecon and its subsidiaries provide services to private and public sector clients throughout Canada and on a selected basis internationally. Aecon is pleased to be recognized as one of the 10 Best Employers in Canada as published by Report on Business Magazine, as well as one of the Top 100 Employers in Canada as published in Maclean’s Magazine.