Thursday, March 28, 2024
  • Dentec - Leaderboard - 2023 - Updated
  • Premier Leaderboard - updated Nov 19
  • CWRE 2024 - Leaderboard
  • Procore - Leaderboard - Jan 2022
  • Keith Walking Floor - Leaderboard - Sept 2021
  • IAPMO R&T Lab - Leaderboard
  • Revizto - Leaderboard - March and April
Building cost-effective, timely and sustainable infrastructure
October 9, 2020

Building cost-effective, timely and sustainable infrastructure

by Ian L. Edwards, president and CEO of SNC-Lavalin

As Canada enters the second COVID-19 wave, the focus for many is on how to keep the economy above water and generate jobs and investments that not only keep people employed in the short term, but ideally contribute to a stronger country and better quality of life in the long term.

Investment in much-needed infrastructure is considered the gold standard for stimulus spending during economic uncertainty, and we have seen a number of recent announcements from the provinces, as well as plans by the Canada Infrastructure Bank to spend $10-billion on public transit, clean power and agriculture infrastructure to create 60,000 jobs and combat climate change.

As the CEO of SNC-Lavalin, a company with a 100-year-old track record building infrastructure projects around the world, from master planning cities, to developing smart highways and energy megaprojects, through to light-rail transit such as the Dubai metro and Vancouver’s SkyTrain, and the Samuel de Champlain bridge in Montreal, I can attest to the impact modern infrastructure has on economic productivity, local employment and quality of life.

I can also tell you that for society to reap the full benefits of infrastructure investment, it is important that we consider all the factors that define a successful investment. Based on my experience, and what we are hearing matters to Canadians, there are four broad metrics of success: cost-effectiveness, speed to market, environmental and social sustainability, and impact.

It’s a tall order, and one as a society we have often failed to deliver on. The 2008 financial crisis is a case in point. A lot of infrastructure investments were not even approved until after the crisis was over, missing a valuable window of opportunity to stimulate a struggling economy when it was most needed.

This is partly due to the complex nature of large infrastructure projects. However, it is also because of the extremely fragmented and piecemeal way that projects are designed, planned, approved and constructed.

This time around we can’t afford to miss the window, nor should we have to.

Keep reading this Opinion article in The Globe and Mail