Urban Residential Distribution, in collaboration with SaskTel’s Infinet fiber network construction, was at its peak during the 2020-21 program year. It was the second-largest Distribution Asset Management & Planning program, valued at $18.3 M. Careful stakeholder management yielded $7.6 M savings as reported in the 2020-21 CIC Crown Collaboration Report. The scope involved designing and installing 113 km of HDPE conduit across Regina, Meadow Lake, Kindersley, and Rosetown.

Due to a series of staff changes, I took on multiple roles, sometimes concurrently, as Project Manager, Program Manager, and Design Lead. Successfully managing a large capital program at peak production required addressing several challenges:

• Unprecedented Staffing Requirements: Early in the project, we identified a capacity issue. To mitigate this, we reduced design time by streamlining mapping handoffs from initiation to closeout. Additionally, I developed scalable design techniques that cut design and construction management time by approximately 50%. The knowledge documentation created in the previous year allowed us to efficiently onboard and QAQC new staff and contractors.
• Technical Complexity: The project involved multiple rail crossings, unreliable “spaghetti bowl” URD loops, and congested rights-of-way. These conditions required senior technical design expertise, far beyond a simple like-for-like replacement.
• COVID-19 and Lack of Site Visits: With site visits prohibited due to lockdowns, all design work relied on photos, Google Street View, and expert GIS knowledge. Despite everyone’s best efforts to navigate these challenges, some issues still required field fixes.
• Bad Data Leads to Bad Decisions: Over $1 million of URD and transformers installed in previous projects were not as-built. This problem was identified during the initiation phase but still diverted considerable engineering and field resources to rectify.
• Ethical Commitment to Doing It Right: Timeline pressures made it tempting to cut corners and simply replace URD like-for-like. While this would not have violated the employee code of conduct, I felt it was unethical to leave latent hazards unaddressed. This was likely SaskPower’s only chance in the next 50 years to improve system reliability. Therefore, I made the ethical decision to correct any issues that reduced reliability or posed safety hazards.

Special thanks to everyone who made this project successful. Due to a series of family tragedies I took a 4 month leave of absence. When I returned I overjoyed to see the project carried on the momentum that we built as a team.