Tracks and Treads - Finning Canada

COMPANY PROFILE: Arthon Contractors Inc.
Arthon has assembled the people and
equipment it needs to get the job done, including
eight new Caterpillar high-capacity
rock trucks. Twinning the busy highway
through the peak of tourist season is problematic
enough. But an additional and
unexpected challenge to construction
scheduling was presented by a small group
of local residents.
A herd of about 20 mountain goats using
the bluffs above the highway alignment usually
move on up to higher ground in
the spring. But not this year. Instead,
they opted to stay put, have their kids
and keep an eye on all the action below
them. At last count, there were six new
baby goats in the extended family. Arthon
had to be equally quick on its corporate
feet to accommodate the continuing presence
of the unexpected sidewalk superintendents.
“We had stop-work orders and extended
no-blasting areas around the goat bluffs,”
summarizes Steve Dimond. “We had to go
to other areas of the project as best we could.
It was something that couldn’t be foreseen.”
Dimond is a partner in Arthon Contractors,
along with Kerry Leong and Guy Ferrari. Arthon
was incorporated in 1991 and bought its
first rock-crushing equipment to use in a Kelowna
development. Today, Arthon has grown
to become a prominent general contracting
company and a specialist in moving massive
amounts of rock and earth.
The company calls on all its expertise on
the Highway 97 project, with some 1.8 million
cubic metres of rock and other material
to move. Dimond explains that the limited
capacity of the soils that support the existing
highway means that more than half of the new
alignment has to be created above the present
two-lane road. And that, in turn, necessitates
extensive rock-blasting and material removal.
The company’s newly acquired Caterpillar
equipment is designed to assist with that sizable
task. On site, Arthon Construction has
four new Cat 740 articulated trucks and four
Cat 775 rigid frame units on a lease-to-own
basis, reports Dimond. The 40 and 75 designations
reflect the machines’ approximate
carrying capacity in tonnes, so these units
are no babies.
Arthon’s equipment management
and logistical approach to the
project looks pretty favourable.
“The Cat trucks have performed quite
well,” says Dimond. “There have been a few
warranty issues, but the wheels have been
turning daily.”
That’s doubly important given the impact
of the goat delays on the project. “When you
purchase each piece of equipment, you try
and get the best deal you can,” he points out.
“The key question we asked ourselves was ‘did
this job by itself justify the Cat machines’
And there’s always a value for them at the end
of the job to consider.”
Arthon is also using Cat dozers on the
road-twinning project in D6 to D10 sizes and
a Cat 235 excavator. Dimond says May was
a productive month, with the company taking
advantage of short hauls to deposit some
30,000 equivalent tandem loads of material
to a designated stockpile site.
Traffic management is a significant issue
on the project. Highway 97 is a major artery
year-round in an area that’s growing rapidly.
Additional pressure comes from the sum-
mer tourist traffic. Arthon and the Ministry
of Transportation and Highways have tried
to establish realistic trade-offs with regular,
scheduled road closures to expedite the job.
The parties developed a pattern of occasional
morning and afternoon closures, restricted to
30 minutes or less when traffic volumes are
highest, with the possibility to close the road
for an hour at other times during the day. The
relative quiet of darkness allows Arthon to
close the road for up to two hours at a go in
the middle of the night. Dimond says
that extensive use of e-mails and good
co-operation from local radio stations
serve to maximize information and
minimize inconvenience to the travelling
public.
“If we can do it faster, the pain will be over
faster,” he says of the overall approach. But,
that said, company reps have to mind that it
can get difficult trying to accelerate construction
activity if they try to commit too much
equipment to a confined area. Establishing
a balance is the goal: one that makes some
sense for the time-pressured contractor and
keeps the traffic flowing.
Equipment working on the job was consuming
between 10,000 and 11,000 litres of
fuel a day. In early summer, Dimond says the
fuel consumption was translating to 1.2 litres
of fuel per cubic metre of material moved.
What it means is that Arthon’s equipment
management and logistical approach to the
project looks pretty favourable. “All in all,
things have gone quite well so far,” summarizes
Dimond.
Arthon’s peak summer construction involved
about 60 to 80 employees, including
contractors. The summer surge of traffic will
dissipate and crews will remain on the job
16 tracks & treads • Fall 2008 www.finning.ca