SPRINGBANK OFF-STREAM RESERVOIR

The project

This reservoir 15 km west of Calgary will protect communities and surrounding areas from floods by diverting excess water from the Elbow River during peak events and temporarily storing it in a reservoir.

The solution

The project comprises a series of massive hydraulic structures and two bridges spanning the diversion channel (around 40,000 cu. metres of reinforced concrete in all). We built all the structures, which can handle up to 600 cu. metres per second of torrents, as well as the roadworks and the engineering structures on the adjacent roads.

The challenge

The main technical challenge on the project related to the earthen dam’s eclectic composition. It took five different classes of materials – all sourced from the excavation to build the intake – to make up the core (which makes the dam watertight) as well as the upstream and downstream facings.

We created a very closely knit network of boreholes to 3D-model the materials in the channel and design a complex earthmoving operation to ensure that all the materials were taken from the right location then reached the right position in the dam.

Human resources

In this cold part of the world, backfilling operations are only feasible six months a year. We therefore had to plan and prepare the sequences very precisely to complete the job during the summer. This involved working double shifts, day and night, seven days a week.

We shared 25% of the work with local companies from the First Nations, Canada’s indigenous peoples.