City of Powell River recently awarded the contract for construction of the new consolidated wastewater treatment plant (CWWTP) to Graham Infrastructure LP (Graham), now Graham and its industry partners are looking for tradespeople to work on the project.
“Graham appreciates this is an important capital project for Powell River,” says Jared Staves with Graham Infrastructure. “We’re looking forward to working with Powell River through early 2023, and doing our best to engage the local market and resources to deliver this critical infrastructure.”
While Graham is the general contractor, the company is working with Technical Workforce Inc. to hire tradespeople.
“We’ve started hearing from people who call Powell River home but work in other provinces,” says Dylan Cote, Graham Infrastructure. “They think it would be great to work on a project at home and we want to facilitate that for them, and also provide jobs for as many Powell River tradespeople as we can.”
The project is considered light-industrial, says Dylan, which means the work will be executed with a keen focus on safety and quality.
“We’re anticipating beginning our work in mid-2021 and running steady for about a year,” he adds. “We’ll have openings for carpenters, pipefitters, electricians, general labourers and equipment operators, and we want to start getting those people in place now.”
Graham Infrastructure sent representatives to Powell River early during the pursuit process to learn more about the city.
“As we start getting to know Powell River, we realize there’s a deep network of longtime residents with lots of contacts, and we want to connect with that network,” says Jared. “This project’s life cycle has lots of layers that residents can support in different ways. We want to encourage anyone to reach out to us if they think they can add value to the project, or know someone who can.”
Established by the city, a key objective through delivery of this project is engaging and incorporating five target groups during construction.
“The city wants us to provide opportunities for First Nations, apprentices, women in trades, youth and skilled tradespeople who are recent immigrants to Canada,” says Jared. “As a company, across our businesses we focus on these target groups.
Even during the bid process, Graham Infrastructure looked ahead to the impact they might have on the community.
“We came here early in order to figure out what was available in Powell River, both in terms of potential employees but also the supply chain,” says Dylan. “We want to integrate with Powell River businesses as much as possible, on everything from concrete to accommodations. We definitely want to be a positive contribution to the local economy.”
Jared agrees.
“For us, partnering with the community isn’t an obligation, it’s just the right thing to do,” he says.
Anyone interested in the project can contact either Dylan ([email protected], 604.340.5576) or Jared ([email protected], 236.334.3595), or go to technicalworkforce.com for more information.
