June 25, 2007

Fabrication

"We're the envy of the other regions right now"

Jean Sorensen

correspondent

Vancouver

The Western regions of B.C., Alberta and Central Canada of the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction are surpassing other parts of Canada, says Peter Timler, the CISC’s Western regional executive director. “We are the envy of the other regions right now,” he says, of the association’s six Canadian regions.

“There has been growth in every aspect,” he says. “Our shops in the Alberta region in 2004 were only at 45 per cent capacity and today we are at over 100 per cent capacity. They are working double and triple shifts and there are planned expansions. Some fabricators are backlogged to over a year – there is such high demand for their services.”

The high-volume demands had challenged fabricators to find ways of streamlining operations to meet the demand. One solution has been the Alberta Steel Alliance, which was born out of a need to ensure that the Alberta sector of the industry had the capacity to meet large-scale project demands a few years ago. “A lot of the major resource sector customers were shifting out of the country or out of the continent because there was a lack of understanding of the Alberta industry. We went on a mission to correct that misconception,” says Timler.

The Alliance has fabricators working together to secure major contracts rather than competing against one another exclusively. The plan has worked so well that “we have now gone beyond Alberta and into B.C., Saskatchewan and Manitoba” to ensure there are enough fabricators to handle projects.

If one successful group of companies in the alliance wins a contract and cannot handle the volume, it can be sublet to another CISC firm and “the work is spread around”.

The Alliance prevents large work from going out of the country and allows smaller firms to become part of large-project ventures, such as those occurring in the Northern Alberta oil sands.

"Some fabricators are backlogged to over a year."

Peter Timler

Executive Director, CISC, Western Region

There is not a global shortage of steel, despite the insatiable appetite of China for construction materials.

There is one caveat, says Timler and that one European steel mill has announced it will be closing during the summer to allow for upgrades. However, says Timler, steel suppliers are aware of the construction boom happening in many parts of the world and are sensitive to creating supply shortages, so the European mill has made the announcement well in advance of the shutdown in order to allow other mills to satisfy any displaced customers.

One change that is occurring in Western Canada with steel, he says, is the inclusion of steel in multi-family, multi-storey residential construction.

Several demonstration projects are expected to come on stream in both Alberta and B.C. in 2007 as they are now on the drawing boards. These are structures where the components are not pre-engineered but pre-fabricated.

The demand is being driven by the need to speed erection time and be less dependent on labour shortages. “It makes economic sense over four storeys and the higher you go the greater the benefits for the project,” says Timler.

That the steel industry can enter into the multi-storey residential or complex structures is much attributed to new computer design technology.

“We are an industry that has benefited by leaps and bounds by the technology used today such as electronic data interchange, virtual design and building information modeling – all buzzwords that allow complex projects to be not only designed but checked for any clashes between disciplines in projects and then allow the fabrication of our structural elements through automated equipment,” says Timler.

The fact the industry has the means now to work in an electronic medium that can take two-dimensional drawings from engineers or architects and turn it into a three-dimensional image has “made our industry a leader for some time in this area,” he says.

“We can mitigate errors by bringing the drawing upstream when working with the design team.” Such programs in the industry have brought improved quality assurance and better product into the marketplace.

At one time, says Timler, the industry was promoting it to other disciplines, but now they are aware of it and “we are being invited to the table” when projects are being conceived.

Anyone with questions relating to the technology the industry offers can contact Peter Timler at ptimler@cisc-icca.ca

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