March 4, 2010

Ottawa construction industry survived economic storm, builders told

KORKY KOROLUK

correspondent

OTTAWA

Buoyed by government infrastructure spending, and university, college and hospital projects, the Ottawa construction industry appears to have weathered the recession in fairly good shape.

Members of the Ottawa Construction Association were told at its recent annual meeting that building-permit value in 2009 was $1.82 billion, the highest in the past decade. The peak figure for the decade was set in 2007, when permit values totalled $1.88 billion.

“I think we were very lucky,” Mike Caletti, the group’s newly elected chairman, said in an interview at the meeting. “We weren’t subjected to the deep valleys that other local economies suffered. The government presence, and some large, continuing projects, levelled things out.”

Caletti succeeds Dwight Brown, of PCL Constructors, as chairman.

“I’m incredibly excited to be named chairman, Caletti said. “I’m the second generation. My dad (Lorenzo Caletti) was chairman in 1978, and was made a life member in 1982.

Caletti is president of the Univex Group of Companies, a family firm long prominent in local electrical contracting and design. He has worked on a number of projects that have become local landmarks, including Scotiabank Place, where the NHL’s Ottawa Senators play, and the National War Museum.

He noted that two large projects coming up are the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park and a start on a light-rail transit system. Both are now on the drawing board.

The light rail project, in particular, will be of a size that will drive the heavy construction sector for several seasons.

Both projects have been hotly debated, so when will construction work begin?

Caletti just laughed and said that while the association works closely with the city on tendering and contract matters, “we wouldn’t presume to give them policy advice.”

Before stepping down, Brown, who is also head of the fundraising committee for the Centre for Construction Excellence at Algonquin College, said more than $3 million has been raised of the $7 million the local construction industry has pledged for the project. He said it is hoped that the objective will be met by the end of this year.

The $77-million centre, now under construction, is to open in the fall of 2011.

The OCA has made a $250,000 pledge to the centre, spread over five equal annual payments. The association has also established a $40,000 bursary fund, which will generate an annual grant of about $1,800 for a student in any of Algonquin’s construction- or design-related programs.

A highlight of the meeting was the induction into the OCA’s Wall of Fame of Zeev Vered, founder of Ron Engineering and Construction Ltd., and the Arnon Group of Companies.

He and his wife, Sara, came to Canada from Israel in 1950, bringing with them very little money but a lot of optimism. He graduated in engineering from McGill University in Montreal four years later and moved to Ottawa in 1957.

In the letters supporting his nomination to the Wall of Fame, Vered was remembered as someone who was always enthusiastic about the job at hand, who believed firmly in the team approach to project development, and who was intensely loyal to the subtrades.

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