Civil Engineering In Canada 1

[tuto]

Hi all!
I was rather puzzled by the results of a recent internet search for consultants in Canada. The largest civil engineering consultant I found had 700 people and was founded 50 years ago.
It is enought to try the British site of ICE (

http://www.nceplus.co.uk/consultants_file/az_home/)

and to aquire an idea of how large the consulting civil engineers can get (some of the companies listed in Consultants 2001 file are American).
I know that "large" is not everything about a consultant but still, I believe that this feature can reflect to a certain extent how civil engineering is doing in a certain country.
If my perception is right and civil engineering in Canada is indeed very fragmented (I am generalising slightly to the whole construction industry there), why do you think this is?
Thank you.

 

[Ron]

Civil Engineering is a broad discipline of engineering. Most of the "large" firms do not practice only Civil Engineering, but are multi-discipline. Most classic "Civil Engineering" is practiced by small to medium size firms. Heavy civil construction is usually dominated by the large firms (bridges, dams, ports, etc.). I doubt that Civil Engineering in Canada is any more fragmented than in the US or other places.

 

[waterguy]

As an engineer working in the Toronto area, I can tell you that there are very many consulting firms within the Province of Ontario ranging from the "one man show" operations, to firms with 200 to 500 people (Ontario offices only). In fact, most of the "typical" civil engineering works that you see will be done by the small to medium sized firms.

 

[tuto]

Ron, thank you for responding. I might have been slightly unspecific so I will try to clarify. I was not talking about classic "Civil Engineering" only. Many of companies such as: Black & Veach, Fluor Daniel, Montgomery Watson (American) or WS Atkins, Ove Arup, Mott Mc Donalds, WSP (British) which employ up to 12000 staff (and growing) do not do only civil engineering, true, however probably more than a half of their staff work in the field of civil engineering and the largest part of their turnovers and profits is in civil engineering jobs. In my terms civil engineering includes not purely consultance type of work but maintenance and operating infrastructure facilities as well.
So, can you name similar size companies in Canada?
By the way, as a matter of interest, do you work in Canada?

 

[tuto]

Waterguy,
Thanks for your reply.
Please could tell me how's the civil engineering market at the moment around where you work. I would appreciate if you specified the field as well if you think it's relevant(transportation, water, buildings, environment etc).

 

[waterguy]

Right now the market for Civil Engineers is very good (dare I say excellent !), and has been for the past two (2) or three (3) years. Since there is a lot of land development work going on, anything related municipal design, environmental, and water resources is in big demand. With the ever increasing focus on environmental protection, those of us in the environmental and water resources fields always have something to do. Aside from just the design work, there is a lot more ongoing monitoring that is being done. Transportion seems to be doing well also. Whenever you have newly developing areas there is always the need for traffic studies and such. The larger highway construction/reconstruction jobs tend to go to larger firms that have related experience, and there is quite a bit of this work around as well. Some of our industrial people (which also includes structural to some extent) are having a little more difficult time because their work is closely tied to the economic health of the large manufacturing companies and the automakers etc. If profits are down or forecasts look grim, they seem to postpone work or limit the scope.

 

[tuto]

Waterguy,
I much appreciate the information you provided.
Here in UK the situation is much the same. In transportation for instance there is a lot going on and the government plans to invest £180 bilion in the next 10 years in improvement and maintenance of the road infrastructure.
Such surges of work have lead to shortage of skills in the industry. Companies are recruiting staff from abroad and the next step I assume is to send work abroad benefiting in the same time from cheaper labour.

 

[Ron]

Tuto...I do not work in Canada. I was formerly associated with a Canadian firm. I believe Waterguy is giving you an accurate assessment from my knowledge of the current conditions.

I don't know that Canada has any firms based there that compare in size to the ones you mentioned. As Waterguy says, most of the Civil work is done by small to medium sized firms.

I understand your dilemna, but I think it is mostly a semantic issue with regard to revenues being related to Civil works. For instance, if some large firm does a power plant, that could be classified in several different areas, but would certainly be considered a civil work. Is most of the work associated with it classical "Civil Engineering"? No. It is much more diverse than that.

If you are looking for a job as a "Civil Engineer", you possibilities are only limited by you! You can fit in a small design firm, a consultancy, a construction firm, or in government practice. In any of those you may practice Civil Engineering or any of its many subdisciplines. Though educated as a Civil Engineer, my experience and practice is in structures and structural/construction materials, much of it related to failure investigation. The firm I work for is a major international engineering firm, yet what I do is a relatively small subset of the firm's practice. Most of the engineers in our firm are degreed in Civil Engineering, though we have Mechanical, Electrical, Structural, Metallurgical, and Welding Engineers as well as Architects, Geologists, Environmental Scientists and the like.

 

[AquaDoc]

IO believe StanTec (which lists on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and is based in Edmonton Alberta) has over 5,000 staff (municipal infrastructure, roads, structual design, etc.) Try either

http://www.stantec.ca

or

http://www.stantec.com

There are other fairly large Canadian civil based engineering firms (e.g. UMA Engineering, Associated Engineering, CH2M Hill/Gore & Storry, etc.)

 

[tuto]

Thank you chaps, I quite enjoy knowing what's happening in the profession around the world.
Bogdan

 

[BigH]

What an eye opener this query was!

Yes, Canada has some very large firms - look at ENR list of International Consultants.

SNC-Lavalin
Agra (Monenco formerly combined with others)
Acres
Golder

besides the ones stated before. Not all have thousands of employees at each office - but aggregate, the above may have in excess of 5000.