Buildings & Spaces
Managed and supported industrial infrastructure work at Harmac, including major pipeline replacement stages, helicopter-lift coordination, trestle protection, and mechanical upgrades.
My role at Harmac Pacific started early in my career and expanded my project management experience in an industrial operating environment. The work was different from commercial renovation work: the scale was larger, the consequences of downtime were higher, the stakeholders were broader, and the field conditions were often less forgiving.
The main thread was practical industrial coordination. I worked with operations, maintenance, trades, contractors, utilities, residents, property owners, environmental stakeholders, and regulatory agencies while helping move mechanical and infrastructure projects from planning into execution.
One of the major projects was part of Harmac’s water supply pipeline replacement. The work involved replacing roughly 1,200 metres of 52-inch creosote-soaked wooden stave pipe with 48-inch HDPE pipe. My role focused on managing and coordinating difficult stages of the work where the pipe route, access, environment, and existing structures made the work more complicated than a straightforward pipe replacement.
A key challenge was that sections of the old wooden pipe were on trestles over environmentally sensitive areas. Access was limited, the old material required care, and the project had to protect both the surrounding environment and the remaining support structures while keeping the replacement work moving.
For one difficult stage, the old pipe sections had to be removed from a trestle where conventional access was limited. I helped coordinate the removal strategy, including the use of a helicopter lift to remove old pipe sections from the site.
The new HDPE pipe also had to be pulled through a route where the trestle needed protection from excessive loading. Rather than defaulting to a more complex equipment approach, I helped develop a method using a sacrificial cable and a secondary restraint cable. The sacrificial cable provided a controlled weak link, while the restraint cable helped protect the trestle if the pulling force became too high.
That approach allowed the work to proceed without installing a torque-limited winch onto an excavator, reducing complexity while still giving the team a practical safeguard for the structure.
On another stage of the pipeline work, I reviewed the constraints around existing trestles and HDPE pipe flexibility. Based on that review, I suggested removing unnecessary trestles and replacing the approach with culverts where appropriate.
That kind of decision was less dramatic than a helicopter lift, but it reflected the same pattern: understand the real constraint, check whether the assumed construction method is actually necessary, and look for a simpler path that still satisfies the project needs.
I also supported replacement of an aging chlorine dioxide mixer in a harsh pulp-mill chemical environment. The work involved materials and details that had to suit the service conditions, including titanium valves, 317L stainless steel, fiberglass components, and Derakane epoxy vinyl ester resin.
That project required coordination across safety, maintenance, operations, materials, procurement, contractors, and installation planning. In that environment, the design and material choices mattered because the equipment had to survive chemical exposure and fit into an operating industrial system.
My work also included preparing RFQs and RFPs, using weighted criteria for contractor selection, and producing technical information needed by fabricators and contractors. I designed machinery bases and lifting equipment in SolidWorks and produced manufacturing, assembly, layout, foundation, and lifting drawings.
Those drawings were not just documentation. They were part of the handoff between engineering intent, fabrication, installation, safety planning, and field execution. In an industrial environment, unclear drawings or incomplete scope can quickly turn into shutdown risk, contractor confusion, or unsafe work conditions.
This work came early in my career, but the systems and consequences were large. It put me in the middle of operating industrial infrastructure, environmental constraints, old structures, contractor decisions, hazardous-service equipment, and shutdown pressure.
The pattern still shows up in my later work: understand the system, verify the field condition, involve the right people, and find the practical path that lets the work move forward safely.
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Related
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Buildings & Spaces
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