Elgin Street Renewal

Municipal & Public Infrastructure

Urban Reconstruction

Taggart Construction partnered with AECON Group to replace the network of existing underground sewer and water infrastructure along a 1.2 km section of Ottawa's historic Elgin Street. New sewer networks with diameters up to 1350 mm and depths up to 7 m were installed, including connections to existing brick sewers and replacement of existing sanitary and water services. The Elgin Street Renewal Project introduced many construction challenges such as contaminated soils, large amounts of above ground and below ground utilities, regular pedestrian traffic & retail business distruption. The nature of working in an urban environment brings unique challenges such as maintaining water and sewer service for all businesses and residences along the 1.2 km construction corridor and ensuring that necessary outages were completed during off-peak hours to minimize impact.

Scope

The scope of work consisted of a full replacement of the existing combined sewers and watermain with new combined, storm, sanitary, and watermain networks. This included new catch basins and trunk sewers to meet the growing demand of Ottawa's downtown core. No surface works or landscaping were included in this contract.

Project Highlights

• Installation of storm and sanitary pipe networks up to 1350 mm in diameter at depths up to 7 m
• Protection and monitoring of existing watermains in extremely cold temperatures
• Working within tight schedule requirements to meet incentive deadlines
• Requirement to work around delicate and critical underground utilities (e.g. hydro, telecom)
• Modifying and connecting to existing century old brick sewer networks
• Navigating tight workspaces with overhead utilities
• Ensuring the safety of our workers and the public in a busy area