Bird Construction
Bird Construction is a nation-wide general contracting company that has been providing construction services to new and established clients since 1920. Bird recently acquired Stuart Olson and now has over 5000 employees coast-to-coast and offices in 13 locations across Canada. Bird is active in all market sectors include industrial, power, buildings, oil and gas, mining, transportation, industrial maintenance, renewable energy and environmental.
Bird is able to self-perform all work with their extensive in-house expertise, which allows them to quickly and efficiently respond to clients’ demands. Their qualifications cover mechanical, shop fabrication, electrical, instrumentation and SCADA scopes of work across multiple facets of environmental construction. Bird has worked with both municipal and private developers leading projects from $3M to over $400M in value.
The company has broad-reaching capabilities for environmental projects such as organic waste processing and wastewater treatment. What sets Bird apart from other general contracting companies is their vast internal expertise, effective experience on alternate delivery, and familiarity with anaerobic digestion, biogas and biosolids projects.
Bird has over 25 years of demonstrated knowledge in environmental construction and has completed more than 100 water and wastewater projects in the last decade, including City of Hamilton Biosolids Management Facility, Lloydminster New Mechanical Wastewater Treatment Facility, and CRD Residuals Treatment Facility. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) - Business Development Manager and Taylor Green-Technical Director– Major Environmental Projects share how Bird has applied their expertise to the biogas sector “Construction for biogas projects is very similar to wastewater treatment and biosolids handling,” said Green. It was a natural evolution into the marketplace and a good fit for our skill set.”
As a general contracting company, Bird has familiarity with AD projects and understands what is being built. Van Vree notes “It makes a difference working with a contracting company that understands what is being built, which saves time because we don’t need to be educated on the technology.” Bird was part of the Joint Venture behind the Calgary Composting Facility and is currently working on multiple AD & biogas projects in different stages of development.
For the outlook of the biogas industry, van Vree and Green see continued momentum to build more projects. “There are more political drivers right now, such as food waste regulations, that are creating more of a push to develop AD facilities as part of the circular economy,” said van Vree.
Amongst other alternate delivery models Bird has a very strong profile on Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) which leads to improved productivity, reduced cost, and faster and more effective responses to challenges. IPD is a highly cooperative, outcome-focused project delivery model that has emerged as an alternative to traditional tendered environmental projects and has proven successful for unique and complex projects. IPD brings together the owner, design partners, and build partners as an integrated team that co-locates and works openly together starting from an early stage. This one-team collective approach, incorporating full transparency, lean construction methods, and strong technology systems, increases project productivity and aligns itself more to the reduction of Greenhouse Gas emissions and overall decarbonization policies. Collaborative contracting as i.e. IPD is providing is fundamental to Bird’s development approach.
Bird became member of the CBA in September 2020. Bird is focused on business development in the biogas sector and they joined as members for the networking, knowledge sharing, and ability to be informed on the latest in what is happening in the industry.
