Nov-2017

160 161 WASCHUK PIPE LINE CONSTRUCTION LTD. Waschuk, current President, and son of Wil- liam, talks about its early days and subsequent growth: “My father, who was a welder, did a lot of welding in the 1950s and early ’60,” he begins. “He was an ambitious, independent person and liked to be his own boss, so in 1965, he decided that he wanted to start his own business. He got a small bank loan, bought some equipment, and bid on his first job – one mile of two-inch pipe- line for 34 cents a foot. “It took ten or fifteen years to start doubling the size of the company, and over time, by in- vesting profits back into the company, we be- came larger and larger, bidding on bigger and bigger jobs. In the 1980s, we were invited to bid on some larger diameter work in Saskatchewan and Alberta. In 1987, we got certified and, a year or so later, for ten years, there was nothing but large diameter work and we slowly got into the large diameter, unionized jobs. The growth was phenomenal in the ‘90s. Our equipment never even came home for ten years “Over time we just grew and grew, and to- day, we do multi-million dollar contracts – 500 kilometers at a time, employing, sometimes, close to a thousand people. There have been ups and downs in the last five to ten years, but even though the economy in Alberta is pretty bad, there’s always been large diameter pipeline work available for us to bid on successfully. Our clients include Trans Canada, Enbridge, Inter Pipeline, Pembina, Shell, Atco – anybody who builds large diameter pipelines.” Waschuk believes that his company differ- entiates itself from the competition in several ways. “Most of our competitors are large, public- ly-owned companies and we’re a private compa- Everybody thinks that we have a big impact on the environment, and we do have some impact. But, actually, when we leave a job, all the topsoil and tree planting and riverbank res- toration is probably in better shape than when we started the job. These things impact operations, and ultimately, costs, but you can never spend enough money saving the environment. WESWASCHUK PRESIDENT