A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
RESEAU-CMI partner WSP has earned three Canadian Consulting Engineering Awards for adopting the Community Circle TM model in tackling Dzit’lain’li (Middle River) IR9, of the Tl’azt’en First Nations in British Columbia. The awards program is jointly produced by Canadian Consulting Engineer magazine and the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies – Canada (ACEC).
WSP took home nods for outreach and problem solving, as well as the Schreyer Award for best technical entry.
The Dzit’lain’li project is a long-term collaboration among core collaborators Tl’azt’en First Nations, Dzit’lain’li, ISC, FNHA, FNOWN BC&YT, WSP, BI Pure Water, Université Laval, Polytechnique Montréal and the University of British Columbia. The project began in 2014 with an in-depth evaluation of source water quality and potential treatment solutions. Through 2017, the team worked to understand the operational pathway for the community – what O&M requirements had to be considered, available operator personnel and their training requirements and the perspective of the wider community were all assessed.
From 2017 to 2018, design and development of the new system was completed. Ongoing communications and collaborations with the community partners will assess the sustainability of the system.
The focus on community needs and sustainability at the onset of each project is what sets the Community Circles approach apart from business-as-usual paradigms that are preoccupied with selecting products and managing budgets over providing real solutions.
See the October/November 2019 issue of Canadian Consulting Engineer magazine for full details about the awards.
Operations staff remove the long-standing boil water advisory sign in Tl’azt’en Nation
