|
|
|
|
SNC Lavalin, working for Newmont Mining at the Hope Bay mine property, about 200 kilometres south of Cambridge Bay, was short 10 truckloads of priority equipment. The equipment had been barged up the Mackenzie River from Hay River to Inuvik by Northern Transportation Company Limited, but ice jams in the Beaufort Sea prevented the barge from making the journey east to the mine site. To ensure the materials got to their destination, NTCL vice-president western operations John Marshall called upon Braden Burry Expediting, its sister logistics company in the NorTerra Inc. family of companies, to have the materials flown to the Windy Ice strip at the Hope Bay mine site. “We needed to get the materials moved. We knew BBE could do it cost-effectively and on time,” said Marshall. The gravel conveyors were critical to the construction project and had to be dismantled for airlift by Hercules cargo aircraft and loaded onto 40 foot pallets. BBE staff assessed the situation and reviewed all possible transportation alternatives and the related costs. The decision was made to truck the material from Inuvik to Yellowknife via the Dempster Highway before loading it onto the Hercules aircraft at BBE Yellowknife for the shorter flight to Windy Ice strip, 725 kilometres northeast of the NWT capital. “While the mine site is only a two hour flight from Inuvik, transferring all that freight from there wasn’t economical or efficient. After reviewing the logistics, it made more economic sense to truck the material from Inuvik to Yellowknife, for a shorter one and a half hour flight,” said Stuart Russell, vice-president of business development for BBE. “We chose that route because the Yellowknife airport, and the BBE crew there, is better equipped to accommodate and load Hercules aircraft than we are in Inuvik,” said Russell. That crew also included staff from the Nuna Group of Companies, which dismantled the conveyors and rearranged the cargo to redistribute the weight in the seacans for flying. “It was a pleasure working with the whole group on this project. When people work together and the communication takes place as it should, good things happen,” said Neil Thompson, equipment and logistics manager with Nuna. Because these were 20 foot and 40 foot shipping containers built for stacking on docks and container ships (or “seacans“ as they are known in the marine industry), they needed to have flat metal “sleigh runners” welded onto the bottoms so crews could winch the containers onto and off the aircraft, making loading much easier, safer and more efficient. “NTCL and BBE have developed a great partnership on many northern resource projects,” said John Marshall, vice-president of Western Operations with NTCL. “BBE’s logistical expertise and knowledge of northern transportation ensured our client got the material they needed on time, in spite of the distances, locations or season changes.”
NTCL: www.ntcl.com
|
|
|||||||
