Breaking New Ground—Stories from Defence Construction Breaking_new_ground | Page 87

The Long Range Radar (LRR) installation
at Saglek, Newfoundland and Labrador,
was one of three LRR facilities completed
in 1988. The other two were located at
Cartwright in Labrador and at Brevoort on
Baffin Island, Nunavut.
say ‘sorry, you’re not going to get anything.’ The costs R&D on the go…
that were involved were really very high, so we went
Brevoort Island, 1980s—Wally Enders
through them and jumped through an awful lot of hoops At Brevoort, the site was maybe 800 feet up above a
and managed to settle it without going to court. We
fjord—when you looked down the damned thing, it
brought in experts, the contractor was very cooperative,
almost looked vertical. The contractor had to create a
and we sat together and worked like intelligent people.
track to drag these containers up there and it was
This is the sort of thing that—apart from the physical
tough, tough, tough. With the new cladding systems—
engineering aspect of it and the construction aspect of
these big panels were 36 feet long and three feet wide
it, which were interesting in themselves—was so
and one foot thick—it was almost R&D on the go,
rewarding. The success of many a venture is strictly
solving problems with the fastening and the caulking.
based on this, on relationships with people.
It’s fine to do it in a lab, but then you pray like hell that
it’s going to work in the cold.
The long range radar facilities at Cartwright, Saglek
and Brevoort Island were finished within budget and
As tenders turned into construction and facilities were
on schedule in the fall of 1988, as work began on the
completed on time (and even ahead of schedule), DCC
36 short range radar sites to be built in the Arctic. By
personnel from across the country accepted temporary
the following spring, DCC had awarded contracts for
assignments with the program, and significant contracts
engineering and construction services worth more than
were let for consultant services. By 1992–93, the project
$400 million. A challenge then—one that continues
was drawing to a close. The final SRR installations were
today—is to provide business and employment oppor-
completed, and by the middle of 1994, the four FOLs
tunities for local Inuit communities and their people.
could support operations.
BREAKING NEW GROUND
DEFENCE CONSTRUCTION CANADA
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