en.Wedoany.com Reported - The City of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, awarded in July a construction contract worth approximately $580 million for the modernization project at the North End Water Pollution Control Centre, with a joint venture led by Aecon Group responsible for building a new biosolids treatment facility. This contract represents the second major construction phase of the city's multi-billion-dollar wastewater treatment plant upgrade plan.
The Winnipeg City Council approved awarding the contract to Red River Biosolids Partners, a consortium comprising Aecon Group, MWH Constructors Canada Ltd., and Oscar Renda Contracting of Canada. The team previously completed the progressive design-build development phase and negotiated the implementation contract.
Construction is expected to begin within weeks, with biosolids treatment operations scheduled to start in October 2030 and substantial completion targeted for March 2031. The project aims to address the impending capacity shortfall at the North End Water Pollution Control Centre. This facility treats approximately 70% of Winnipeg's wastewater and processes biosolids from all three municipal treatment plants. A city report warns that the existing biosolids system could exhaust its remaining capacity within five to eight years, while Winnipeg's population is projected to approach one million over the next 25 years.
The biosolids facility is the second major phase of the long-term upgrade of Winnipeg's North End Water Pollution Control Centre, following the completion of new power supply and intake infrastructure. Winnipeg's long-term modernization plan aims to support population growth while bringing the largest wastewater treatment plant into compliance with increasingly stringent environmental requirements. The entire program is expected to exceed $2 billion and includes a future nutrient removal phase designed to reduce phosphorus and nitrogen discharged into local waterways.
The contract award marks a successful outcome of adjustments to Winnipeg's procurement strategy. In 2023, after consulting with potential contractors, the city realized its initial fixed-price design-build approach was no longer viable. Companies cited the project's scale, lengthy construction schedule, rising costs, and design risks, and by that spring, only one team remained interested in proceeding under the city's original fixed-price design-build method. The city then shifted to a progressive design-build approach: first selecting a contractor primarily based on qualifications, then collaborating to advance the design and negotiate the final implementation price. Officials stated that this method improved cost transparency, preserved the owner's involvement in key design decisions, and reduced contingency costs that contractors would have otherwise included in fixed-price bids. The collaborative process also enabled the project team to redesign portions of the facility, including changing the biosolids treatment process, to reduce costs before construction pricing was finalized.
The construction package includes a new biosolids treatment facility, expanded digester capacity, and modifications to existing plant infrastructure. Stantec leads the design services with support from Hatch Engineering. During the collaborative development phase, the project team replaced thermal hydrolysis with thermophilic digestion to reduce project costs as part of broader value engineering efforts. The redesign also consolidated buildings, eliminated basements where feasible, and replaced some original concrete designs with structural steel. City officials stated that these changes reduced project costs through engineering optimization rather than by scaling back the project scope or treatment performance. Lana Obach, an engineer for major capital projects at the City of Winnipeg, said that in the biosolids project, the project team found many savings opportunities by adjusting the design, and these savings resulted from making informed design and engineering choices, not from cutting corners.
Aecon Group stated that the contract will be added to the company's construction backlog in the third quarter of 2026. Jean-Louis Servranckx, President and CEO of Aecon Group, noted that the North End Water Pollution Control Centre in Winnipeg is undergoing one of the largest water infrastructure upgrades in North America. The city estimates that the biosolids project will create approximately 3,770 person-years of employment during construction and contribute about $442 million to Manitoba's gross domestic product. The planned nutrient removal facility will complete the final major construction phase of the North End Water Pollution Control Centre modernization.
