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

At the OPP site, Bird performed the largest mass pour at Fort Hills to date, placing 3,670 cubic metres of concrete for the surge bin over 16 hours. This pour involved over 80 people and 367 truck loads from four concrete batch plants. Bird is also installing some of the largest steel-driven piles used in the oilsands. The 76-cm diameter piles have a 2.5-cm wall thickness and are driven 36-metres into the ground. At the end of this project, over the course of 445,000 labour hours, 20,000 cubic metres of concrete will be poured, 180,000 cubic metres of earthworks completed, and 1,800 piles driven.

For the E&T project, Bird has successfully completed two mass pours for the foundations to support the thickener tanks, totalling 6,600 cubic metres, and two mass pours for the primary separation cells, totalling 2,800 cubic metres. Recognized by Suncor, Bird’s safe execution of the separation cell mass pours were nominated for Suncor’s President’s Operational Excellence Award. Upon completion at the site, civil works will include 20,000 cubic metres of poured concrete, 90,000 cubic metres of earthworks, and 1,900 driven piles — all completed with over 325,000 labour hours. Despite the challenging logistics and complexity of this project, Bird is on track to complete this project according to its original schedule.