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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
About 100 bureaucrats and industry participants crowded into a Giant Mine Remediation Project information session last week to learn more about roughly half-a-billion dollars in contracts to be tendered over the 10-year clean-up.

The Giant Mine Remediation Project Industry Day information session last week included a tour of the contaminated site. About 100 people attended. - NNSL file photo

It was the first Industry Day held by the Giant Mine project team since 2010. A number of major contracts are slated to be tendered in the coming weeks.

"There are a lot of contracts coming out between now and Christmas," Giant Mine Project director Henry Westermann told industry representatives, including consultants and representatives from small and large businesses from across the country, the environmental sector, engineering, mining, construction and aboriginal organizations.

"We want you to be aware."

Heather Stewart, president of BBE Ltd., represented one of a few Northern companies present at Giant Mine Industry Day - drawn by the logistics opportunities, including materials management and on-site storage and inventory programs.

"I think there's a lot of opportunity," Stewart said.

"Positive opportunities for local businesses to get involved and I think people should be aware of what's coming out and what's being tendered. I think it's a matter of participating and actively looking for the opportunities."

Due to the scope, scale and complexity of the project, organizers encouraged businesses present to think not only in terms of just their own company, but in terms of partnerships.

"I think that's what the big driver will be, is partnerships for something like this," Stewart said, noting Industry Day was a good networking opportunity.

"We're looking at who's here and just interested in general to see what the activity is going to be."

The clean-up of more than 50 years of gold mining and ore processing at Giant Mine, which is host to approximately 237,000 tonnes of underground arsenic trioxide, also has some personal importance for Stewart, who was born and raised in Yellowknife.

"I think it matters to the city," she said. "Everybody who lives here should make sure it gets cleaned up properly. There's just a lot of nasty stuff spilled over there."

As the second largest federally-administered contaminated site in Canada, the Canadian government has allotted upwards of $500 million for the cleanup of Giant Mine alone, although the final value of the contracts will not be known until the tenders have been returned.

"It is a huge project the Government of Canada is undertaking here in Yellowknife to remediate the former Giant Mine gold mine," said Adrian Paradis, acting project manager for the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada contaminated sites program. "It's very large, it's very contaminated, and it's in very poor repair."

As the remediation project makes its way through the environmental assessment process, Public Works and Government Services Canada - the department in charge of the procurement strategy - is hoping to have the work contracts in place in 2013, in anticipation of licensing approvals to start the 10-year cleanup in 2014.

"Once we get the green light, we want to have the contracts in place and be ready to work," Westermann said on behalf of Public Works.

The main projects contractors will have a chance to bid on in the coming months include the demolition of the roaster complex - a series of buildings where the ore was originally milled; underground stabilization; mining engineering design; mining engineering support services; operation of hazardous materials storage areas; waste and arsenic disposal; investigative drilling; and long-term water treatment and water management, which will continue for many years, possibly forever.

The tender for demolition of the roaster complex is slated to go out later this month, and a construction management tender is to be released in September.

The multi-million dollar, multi-year care and maintenance contract, which has been awarded three times to a Det'on Cho-NUNA joint venture, will go to tender again in September.

Contractors who include aboriginal participation in bids gain extra points in the process.

Financial security may be asked for in contracts on a case-by-case basis.

The remediation team is also seeking company profiles to gauge industry interest and capacity in terms of local contractor and aboriginal capabilities, resources, skills, and training programs.

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