Breaking New Ground—Stories from Defence Construction Breaking_new_ground | Page 59

Germany, the design and contract administration is
carried out by the German Public Construction Agency
contracting with individual trade contractors. These
contractors perform work according to very detailed
specifications with unit prices applicable to the indi-
vidual types of work. Every component of work has to
be accurately described in the specifications and, upon
completion of the work, accurately measured for
payment.
Not only that, but the very method of construction was
different, as George Moennich recalled:
We were used to wood construction… over there,
everything was masonry. It was built to last 300 years,
but we weren’t going to be there for 300 years. It was a
completely different mindset, a different concept. We
got along very well, but it was a learning process for
both sides.
We also had to adapt the airfield to the Starfighters, so
we had to build a large apron at either end of the runway.
The water table in the Rhine Valley is very high and the
soil is very sandy. If you’re going to put pavement over
that, it has to withstand the weight of aircraft, so there’s
quite a bit of engineering that has to be done there, with
30- to 40-centimetre thick “floating” slabs of concrete.
It was quite a challenge, but—the same as everything
else—you work at it a bit at a time and you get it
done. These were fascinating times, not just for us but
for the Germans.
The local German construction industry was very
accommodating. The sawmills cut their lumber to our
specifications (lumber yards with stores of stock sizes as
we know them here were non-existent). The carpenters
adopted (in part) our framing techniques. Airfield
pavement repair contractors worked at night and
weekends to satisfy operational needs. The operations
people restructured their activities to certain areas of the
BREAKING NEW GROUND
DEFENCE CONSTRUCTION CANADA
airfield and worked under makeshift conditions to allow
us to get on with the construction work. It was one, big,
coordinated effort—and we succeeded!
In 1969, Canadian Forces numbers in Europe were
cut and relocated, the airfield at Zweibrucken was
closed and personnel were consolidated in Lahr and
Baden. The same year, DCL opened a field office at the
Baden-Soellingen airfield.
Project: Canadian Forces
Supplementary Radio System
(CFSRS)
The CFSRS was intended to support signals intelligence
activities, and involved projects for DCL at Naval Radio
Station Bermuda and at Masset, Gander and Leitrim
(near Ottawa).
In Bermuda, which had become operational in 1963,
the Bermuda Crown Lands Corporation acted as
DCL’s agent in 1966–67 for a contract awarded to a
Bermudian construction company for improvements to
the station, with design and supervision carried out by
a Bermuda-based consultant under contract to DCL.
This arrangement was superseded in 1969, when a
Memorandum of Agreement was entered into with the
Government of Bermuda’s Department of Public Works.
In Canada, work on the CFSRS provided some of the
largest contracts awarded by DCL in the late 1960s.
At Masset, these included a $601,000 land clearing
contract; a $1.8 million operations building contract; a
$175,000 contract for the preparation of a town site;
and an $8.75 million contract for the construction of a
domestic complex and 170 housing units. In Gander,
there was a