Transportation infrastructure is one of the most critically important physical networks in the facilitation of movement and of connection for people, place, trade, and ideas. It can exist quietly in the backdrop to modern life—the functional support of supply chains and the mode of travel to places for food, recreation, and work—or inspire as defining sculptural feature to city skyline and regional gateway that residents identify with and visitors recognize. From highway corridors and airfield rehabilitation to naval shipyards and water infrastructure, it is a typology that empowers, rebuilds, and facilitates, particularly when deeply rooted in the communities in which it is intended to serve.
For Stantec, a global leader in sustainable engineering, architecture, and environmental consulting, design is about redefining what’s possible, working at the intersection of community, creativity, and client relationships to meet some of the world’s greatest challenges. It is a space of innovation and reflection, collaboration and sustainability, to deliver transformative transportation projects that create meaningful, lasting change for people, place, and landscape.
“It’s a bold statement, but the idea is to take innovation and to drive community, creativity, and client needs. When we connect those to create a solution for our clients, not only does that result in the best decision during the design phase, but it drives what’s best for the client and community overall. It’s not just about getting the project completed, but how we get this project to a place where we’ve designed something that is going to be a long-term, sustainable solution, in a scenario where we save taxpayers money,” said Mike Perry, Vice President of Transportation and Regional Business Leader for Transportation in the Southeast and North Central at Stantec. “We don’t just look at projects in a traditional scope. We look at how if you invest a little more in an innovative solution, that bridge [or infrastructure project] might last 20 years longer. That is the shift we’ve taken in the industry, really trying to look at a broader perspective.”
Headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta with over 450 locations across six continents, Stantec recognizes that community in today’s world often transcends geographic borders, and diverse perspectives motivate the team to reimagine the way people interact with the world. It is a firm that focuses on resilient, sustainable solutions that respect both the community and local environment, while providing innovative, cost-effective mobility options that have considered a whole host of potential challenges that might arise in the future, around issues like equity, safety, wildlife, congestion, climate, energy transition, and population changes.
“Our firm is very broadly focused on design, so we support projects from an energy and resources perspective, design water infrastructure, design environmental services infrastructure, and provide building design and services,” Perry said. “While my focus is transportation, we have a broad, big-picture perspective around how transportation infrastructure interacts with other sectors. I think this is where resiliency and the ability to minimally impact the environment as much as possible comes in, which is something we really pride ourselves in as an important part of our design approach and philosophy.”
Over the years, Stantec has been recognized for its award-winning work and global initiatives, and in the transportation sector alone, has taken on projects across airports, ports and marine terminals, freight and high-speed rail, roadways, zero emission buses and bus rapid transit, and climate solutions. It was selected by the City of Toronto for Owner’s Engineer/Technical Advisory Services for a $24 million contract to provide engineering consulting on the Gardiner Expressway Rehabilitation Project Section 4, and has been involved in the Red and Purple Line Modernization Program in Chicago, which is the largest capital improvement project in Chicago Transit Authority history, collaborating with EXP, Walsh-Fluor Design-Build Team, and CTA. The $2.1 billion project seeks to replace, reconstruct, and modernize 11 miles of elevated track, and support and replace four stations along the city’s transit corridor. Perry said anytime the firm takes on a project, there are multiple factors that get incorporated, but they really start with identifying the infrastructure’s use at the onset.
“What is this infrastructure going to be used for? Is it for people? Is it for people and multi-modes of transportation? How does it interact with water? Water is a massive problem with transportation infrastructure, whether it is significant storms or whether it creates hydroplaning. How do you blend the elements of nature into the infrastructure? Where do animals cross?” Perry said.
“Ultimately, you are trying to create a design that provides for a specific need, which may be to improve the capacity of an airport, port facility, or road all while keeping costs low and emphasizing safety in the design. There used to be an assumed loss in terms of fatalities, but as the industry and technology have matured, the overarching goals of clients, manufacturers, infrastructure owners, and designers is to create and support transformation systems that have as close to zero fatalities as possible,” Perry added.
Safety has become one of the biggest aspects of design in terms of transportation, but there is also a lot of conversation in the industry around environmental safety and how pieces of infrastructure interact with the environment. There is now an effort to review standard design codes to adjust for the impact of climate change on aging, rehabilitated, and new infrastructure. Perry noted in certain locations, engineers now need to plan that a 100-year design storm could happen much more frequently than previously considered, and the design solutions need to better accommodate those changes.
“I think the idea of future-proofing is hard because of how dynamic our world is,” Perry said. “Whether that is geopolitical, whether it is climate, designers need to utilize the information available at hand to create the best solution possible. I think the 100-year design storm is a great example because it shows how significantly water demands have shifted. Many of these areas and pieces of infrastructure were designed within a different climate landscape—and that landscape is often vastly different today.”
Perry also noted that in terms of roads and bridges, there is a massive cost associated with corrosion and the impact of salt on steel. One of the challenges is how to keep roads safe and free of ice and snow while also looking at innovative solutions that address how chloride interacts with bridges—such as embedded anodes into the concrete in new designs, retrofits, and rehabs to try to extend the life of structures. Bridges are a personal passion for Perry, whose introduction to structural design came while supporting work on high-profile, complex projects like the I-69 Ohio River Bridge Crossing, but for him, what really excites him is developing a solution that may not be the immediate thought for an intersection or a bridge typology, but rather digging through and coming up with something innovative that creates a solution that ends up saving millions of dollars.
“In a tight market and economy, coming up with a solution that saves taxpayers millions of dollars from an innovative idea is probably what excites me the most. I think there’s so much value in helping a community become more connected and safer while being good stewards of public funds. While much of the design work happens behind a computer or calculator, you’re ultimately designing a project that will have real world applications and affect people’s lives every day. I think that is the fascinating and exciting part of engineering—what you help create, and design, truly does impact the world,” Perry said.
Stantec’s bridge and structural work is diverse, and over the years has included projects like the design of a modern truss bridge replacing an old connection point in Livingston County—Smithland Bridge—and the design of a five-span, 500-meter-long bridge over Bow River in Calgary, Alberta valued at $100 million that used a complex, segmentally cast-in-place, balanced cantilever method to build the structure. The firm has also overseen the inspection of the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge—a task that saw Stantec’s structural engineering climbing team suspended over the Hoover Dam beneath a spandrel arch bridge that spans 870 feet above the Colorado River.
“I started out as a bridge engineer very early on in my career, because I love the idea of creating something tangible that you can see. A lot of engineering is microscopic, but you can tangibly see a bridge, and you can see how it impacts a community. I think that is really what pushed me in that direction. It allows people to get from their community to their livelihood, whether it is their job or their food source. Bridges are critical for people, and that really spoke to me as an endeavor when I was looking at a career choice,” Perry said.
“I’ve been extremely fortunate during my career at Stantec to work on more complex, notable bridges. I think bridges are unique in that they become features of cities that people really resonate with and cherish. I love being able to work on projects that not only improve lives and connect communities, but also are iconic staples of the cities in which they’re built,” Perry added.
Bridge design is also an expertise that takes into account innumerable factors, like capacity, integration of multi-modalities, wildlife impact, climate, and safety while meeting client and community needs. Stantec has established a long-term working relationship with the City of Toronto, leading its Bridge Program Management Assignment, or BPMA, and was recently selected for its third consecutive assignment since 2017.
“The program is aimed at keeping the infrastructure of Canada’s largest city current. The latest assignment will include bridge assessment, preliminary design, detailed design, and contract administration for the rehabilitation of 28 bridges over the next five years. Since 2017, we will have completed over 90 bridge rehabilitations for the city,” Perry said. “Ultimately, the program has allowed the City and Stantec the flexibility to fast-track delivery in terms of the design, construction, and rehabilitation of these bridges. Since this is one comprehensive program across the city, we’re able to bundle or package up multiple bridges and do them together to take advantage of closures, which creates an economic benefit too.”
The $16 million BPMA contract includes bridge assessment, preliminary design, detailed design, and contract administration for 28 bridges, building on an eight-year relationship between the City of Toronto and Stantec. Some of the major thoroughfare bridges included in the rehabilitation over the years comprise the Don Mills Road, Lawrence Avenue Bridge, and the Kitchener GO Rail. Perry said with any infrastructure project, there is a significant amount of collaboration involved with stakeholders—land owners, users, utility organizations, municipalities, government, agencies, and community-led organizations—and it is important to hear what all their needs and wants are, and try to incorporate as much as possible into the project.
“I grew up in a really small town with a strong sense of identity. The people there knew the community, knew the needs and wants of everyone, and I think for me, this is what drove my passion for designing projects that speak to a community. It’s not about what I came up with as an engineer, or what idea the Stantec team came up with, but it’s what idea we came up with together and how we collaborated with that community to give them something they are proud of and meets their needs,” Perry said.
“One story that I love that’s a perfect example of this is we were involved in a bridge replacement and rehabilitation and got to attend the ribbon cutting once the project was complete. The woman who ended up cutting the ribbon at the grand opening was an elderly woman in her eighties who cut the ribbon on the original bridge when she was just four years old. Just the love of that bridge and the love of the infrastructure that again often provides for their livelihood, to get from place to place, it becomes part of them. So, when you are doing something new and you are upsetting that, being a part of the process and allowing communities to be a part of it and watching them get behind an idea is what energizes me,” Perry added.
First published in Great Lakes By Design: In Flight, Volume 9, Issue 5
Text: R.J. Weick