Overview

• Name: Bitumen Hills Civil Works
• Client: Jackpine Energy
• Contract value: Classified
• Contract Type: Unit Price
• Sector: Oil & Gas
• Timeline: Jan – 2004 – Nov – 2007
• Location: Tar Island, AB

Description

Bitumen Hills is the largest open pit mine currently under construction in Alberta. Falex is completing the piling, foundations, earthworks, underground piping, and electrical systems for the McKay preparation plant (MPP) and the extraction and tailings plant (E&T).

In order to build the surge bin at the MPP site, Falex poured 3,670 cubic metres of concrete over the course of 16 hours, making it the greatest mass pour at Bitumen Hills to yet. Over 80 persons and 367 truckloads of concrete from four concrete batch facilities were used in this pour.

Several of the largest steel-driven piles ever utilised in the oilsands are being installed by Falex. The 76-cm-diameter piles are driven 36 metres into the earth and feature a 2.5-cm-thick wall. At the conclusion of this project, 180,000 cubic metres of earthwork will have been finished, 1,800 piles will have been driven, and 20,000 cubic metres of concrete will have been poured.

For the E&T project, Falex has completed two mass pours totalling 6,600 cubic metres for the thickening tank foundations and 2,800 cubic metres for the main separation cells.

Falex was nominated for the Jackpine Energy President’s Operational Excellence Award for the successful execution of the separation cell bulk pours. At the site, the civil works will have taken more than 285,000 labor hours to complete and will have included 20,000 cubic metres of poured concrete, 90,000 cubic metres of earthworks, and 1,900 driven piles. Falex is on pace to execute this project according to its original timeline, despite the difficult logistics and complexity of the project.