July 31, 2009

It’s not every company that can boast it built a city. SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. has won a contract to handle design and engineering, and manage construction, at a new city that will house 80,000 people in eastern Algeria.

The deal for La Ville Nouvelle de Hassi Messaoud, near Algeria’s biggest oil field, is one of the biggest services contracts ever for the Montreal-based engineering giant, a spokeswoman for the company said yesterday. The contract is expected to be signed within a few weeks, she said, adding that details on the project are being withheld until the deal closes.

Brenda McCabe, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto, said SNC-Lavalin is in a special position, getting a crack at designing every aspect of a new urban community. “It’s exciting,” she said. “It’s not every day you get to build something like this from scratch.”

There are challenges with such a project. “It’s a huge project that will require a huge effort. The challenge will be to take all the technologies that are known and create something that is sustainable.”

Read more at the Globe and Mail.