DÉGELIS TER-VOILE WALL

SEPT-ÎLES MULTI-USER QUAY

STONE STRONG WALL AT THE QUEBEC CITY INCINERATOR

DUFFERIN-MONTMORENCY HIGHWAY CULVERTS

To engineer the replacement of five corrugated metal culverts with a 1,800 m diameter, located under the Dufferin-Montmorency highway in Quebec City, the MTQ hired the experts at Excavations Lafontaine, who paired up with the precast concrete division at Béton Provincial to complete this sensitive portion of the project.

Rusted and weakened over time, the metal culverts needed to be replaced with reinforced concrete culverts, extending their useful life to at least 75 years. Overall, the new commissioned structures needed to be 56.1 metres long, 6.0 metres wide and 4.5 metres high, with walls 500 mm thick: colossal structures, with pieces weighing nearly 36 tons each! No matter how advanced a technology gets, it is still often at nature’s mercy. Built along the inter-tidal zone of the Saint Lawrence River, this infrastructure overlooks a rich ecosystem of flora and fauna that depend on the changing tides.

Excavations Lafontaine and Béton Provincial had to use their experience and expertise to contend with the rhythm and characteristics of the Saint Lawrence tides. Pieces were placed upstream to downstream for some of the work, and some components had to be modified so that installation could be carried out in several phases. The precast concrete pieces had to be delivered to the worksite with extreme precision so that installation could take place within timelines determined by the tides.

MARSOUI MUNICIPALITY

Opti-cadre and Ter-voile culverts: working together to support the Marsoui municipality

July 5, 2014 will forever be etched in the memory of residents of the small municipality of Marsoui: it was the day when a flood split the village in two, tearing apart its sewage and canal system. Béton Provincial’s Opti-cadre was used with Ter-Voile retaining wall technology, another Béton Provincial exclusive product.

The team in place had to build 62 elements weighing over 20 tons, and use more than 32 trucks to deliver the pieces within the installation timeline set by the client. Thankfully, the effort paid off:  the new structure can withstand natural disasters, and will last for over 75 years. The new culvert allows owners who were impacted by Arthur to regain the parcels of land they lost due to the rupture. Marsoui has gotten a new start, and Béton Provincial is proud to have been a part of the effort to give these residents back their enviable living environment.

CHAMPLAIN BRIDGE, MONTREAL

The story behind this extraordinary project for Béton Provincial starts in June 2015, when the Béton préfabrique du Lac (BPDL) company won the contract for the precast concrete elements to make up the columns, pylons, beams, and other slabs for the new Champlain Bridge. An entrepreneurial gem set up in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, BPDL has lots of experience with large-scale projects: their portfolio includes prestigious projects on both sides of the border, such as Madison Square Garden in New York, Fenway Park in Boston, and the Bell Centre in Montreal.

BPDL was mindful of using impeccable quality materials to build the 10,000 pieces included in the contract, and they called upon Béton Provincial to supply the ready-mixed concrete to be poured into its formwork. Various cements were proposed to the client, including cement from our sister company, Tercim. Tercim was selected because it was the highest quality cement available in Quebec. A neighbour of the BPDL Drummondville plant in Saint-Eugène-de- Grantham, the Béton Central division of Béton Provincial inherited the important job of preparing the selected cement mixes. Every day, BPDL orders a particular mix based on the type of pieces required by the consortium in charge of building the bridge. After the information from the orders is accepted and entered, the orders are subject to minute verification: each of the ingredients in every ordered recipe is validated and certified compliant. Next, the concrete is manufactured, and then loaded into the concrete mixer. Before the truck leaves, a technician again tests it for compliance, a step that is once again conducted at BPDL before the concrete is poured into the formwork. Clearly, meticulousness and precision are the watchwords at all times, a challenge that goes along with the inherent requirements of building large-scale infrastructure such as the Champlain Bridge.

“It is a highly technical contract that pushed us to new levels of expertise, and forces us to maintain it every day,” explains Guy Boucher, managing director of Béton Provincial’s Centre-du-Québec region.

LAURENTIANS PARK

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