Breaking New Ground—Stories from Defence Construction Breaking_new_ground | Page 135

In January 2010, DCC established a joint project
management office with the Director General Military
Engineering (DGME) in Ottawa. The joint DND-DCC
office, along with associated personnel across the
country, manages the full construction program across
Canada for projects over $5 million. The team continually
measures its performance against the best private
sector standards and has developed new management
practices that are now common across the industry. In
this way, DCC has moved from simply responding to the
Government of Canada’s needs to leading the industry
in best practices.
At CFB Petawawa, DCC has contracted to build the
infrastructure required for the new CH-147 Chinook
medium-heavy lift helicopter (MHLH) program—a
need highlighted by the CF’s operations in Afghanistan,
where the helicopters improved the safety of soldiers
by helping them avoid roads potentially threatened by
improvised explosive devices. The project’s sophisticated,
multipurpose facility set a new record for the largest
single conventional construction contract award—
$138 million—in DCC history in May 2010. Part of
the project also involves the decommissioning of old
ranges. During this process, munitions more than a
hundred years old have been unearthed.
BREAKING NEW GROUND
DEFENCE CONSTRUCTION CANADA
Returning to the North
As we look to the future, Canada’s North is becoming
increasingly important to the Canadian government,
which has recognized the area as a fundamental part of
Canada’s heritage, current identity and future. Indeed, a
comprehensive Northern Strategy is now taking action in
four areas: exercising our Arctic sovereignty; protecting
our environmental heritage; promoting social and
economic development; and improving and devolving
northern governance.
In keeping with this strategy, DND is anticipating
playing a greater role in the North—a welcome
development for DCC, as this return to the North
hearkens back to the Corporation’s roots. In the early
days, DCC forged groundbreaking construction and
transportation techniques to overcome the challenges of
climate and terrain in Canada’s Arctic, as we managed
the construction of early warning radar stations across
the country. In more recent years, DCC has returned
with a comprehensive program of environmental clean
up to reflect DND’s mandate to ensure the legacy of
those stations is an environmentally responsible one.
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