PLCA Canada Holds 56th Annual Convention In Newfoundland

Roughly 280 delegates braved the weather and travel to attend the 56th annual meeting held at the Sheraton in St. John’s Newfoundland. There were representatives present from 16 regular and 46 associate member firms, plus the pipeline craft unions and various guests including several past presidents. At the end of 2009 the association had 34 regular members and 66 associates.

One of the convention highlights was the golf tournament which was played in near tropical storm conditions. Many participants shamefully left after the first few holes, but a significant number of brave souls battled the wind and drenching rain to finish.

Presiding over this years meeting was association president, Terrance McKibbon of Aecon Infrastructure Group. In his remarks he noted that the association added five new Associate Members, including: Beard Oil Pipeline Petroleum of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan; CNH Construction Equipment of Racine, Wisconsin; Korpan Tractor and Parts of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; McLaughlin Group Inc. of Greenville, South Carolina; and Volvo Construction Equipment of Asheville, North Carolina.

McKibbon went to to remark that “two years ago at our convention in Hawaii, our president that year, Mike Prior, told the assembled delegates that he felt that we would have a busy couple of years ahead, and that there would be some interesting challenges for both us and our clients. His forecast was right on the mark.”

“Our gas distribution contractor members have been enjoying levels of work that have not been seen before, not only in the traditional market area of southern Ontario, but also in Alberta. The volume of work on mainline construction in Canada had not been seen for over thirty years.”

“In 2009 PLCAC Members reported a total of 6.7 million man-hours worked on mainline and distribution pipeline projects in Canada. This was down a bit from the 7.1 million worked in 2008. The members installing gas distribution systems worked 1.73 million man-hours during 2009, also very slightly lower than 2008. On the mainline construction side, we worked just under 5 million man-hours. Last year we reported that the 5.2 million hours worked in 2008 was the second highest recorded number of man-hours ever worked in the history of our Association, so you can see we came close to matching that in 2009.”

“For the PLCAC contractors, during this heavy work load, safety has remained paramount. As you will see tomorrow, when we give out the awards for safety performance, 2009 was an excellent example of contractors working safely. Our clients are determined to provide a safe working environment for all of the workers employed by all contractors on their work, and we have responded well to this requirement.”

One of the challenges we faced over the past two years was the manpower shortage. We managed to overcome this, but it took a lot of training by the Local Union training schools and with on the job training by contractors. For the past two years we, together with the four unions held a very successful training school at the Operating Engineers Local 955 site north of Edmonton at which a full mainline pipeline spread was simulated, which offered a very realistic setting for the students.”