No boundaries: Thunder Bay utility contractor big on diversification.

AuthorRoss, Ian
PositionTHUNDER BAY

Good things are in storage for Grid Link Utility Contracting of Thunder Bay.

The expanding company recently moved from a cramped 3,000-square-foot shop near the waterfront in Port Arthur to a spacious 42,000-square-foot building on the city's outskirts that once housed GRK Fasteners on Rosslyn Road.

The move was long overdue, and demonstrates their evolution from starting out as : primarily a power-line company to a more service-oriented, contractor for its customers.

"We now have the ability to park things indoors, which is crucial for us," said controller Jeff Heney.

With a fleet of about 40 bucket trucks, excavators, loaders, dump trucks and borehole drilling equipment, space was at a premium at their former Clavet Street digs. It forced the company to rent space around town, including at Keefer Terminal on the waterfront, to store equipment.

"We had indoor storage for one unit, the hydrovac truck, which freezes if not kept indoors," said Heney. "That took up the entire space indoors all winter. Now we have five bucket trucks indoors, ready to go in case of emergencies, rather than having to show up early and heat up the trucks in the morning."

The company was established in 2000 but the growth spurt has only occurred in the last three to four years. Powerline transmission work has always been the company's bread and butter, but it was a chore to continually drum up that kind of work in the region.

Company owner and president, Jody Bernst, a former Thunder Bay Hydro lineman, made a bold decision to buy out his original business partner and pour more capital into equipment to secure more diverse civil work.

"It's ownership's willingness to take risks and keep reinvesting with a vision for growth," said Heney. "Every year, our main customers have given us a bigger piece of the overall jobs they run."

For their largest customer, TransCanada Pipelines, it's meant expanding beyond pole work to becoming TransCanada's prime regional contractor, which involves digging up and replacing the anodes in their cathodic protection system, a method used to protect underground pipelines from corrosion.

For Canadian Pacific Railway, Grid Link is erecting crossing signals, installing culverts, hauling ballast, delivering timbers and brushing out vegetation.

To that end, the company has made a sizeable investment in Hy-Rail equipment by retrofitting bucket trucks, digger derricks and purchased basic track maintenance trucks to assist with infrastructure...

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