Tunnelling-Induced Ground Movements

The Canadian Geotechnical Society (CGS) is hosting a seminar on this topic on April 28.  You can access the information by clicking here.

The Bat Flip

For the third year in a row, we had Jays season tickets available for clients this past season.  As an added treat, this year a number of clients got to go to some playoff games !!  We are looking forward to another big year and some more playoffs.  Check the 2016 schedule and give us your preferred dates for a pair of tickets.

Geoprobe 6620

We have added another new drill to the fleet of limited access drills.  In keeping with our niche of machines for limited access areas, the Geoprobe 6620 is a great new tool for our drilling tool box.  For those clients who are familiar with our MiniMole, this drill will be suitable for many of the locations where the MiniMole is traditionally used.  Equipped with an automatic 140lb drop hammer, this machine is equally adept at geotechnical drilling as it is using direct push tooling for environmental investigations.  Although the machine is slightly wider than the MiniMole, the increased weight and larger auger motor make it a more powerful alternative for places you can fit the slightly larger footprint of this machine.  This is the largest of our 3 direct push machines, with our MiniProbe being more suitable for tighter spaces and our Geoprobe 420 being very specialized for more access limited areas.

Efficiency in Well Records

One of the advantages of working with Kodiak drill crews is that we try to minimize the time spent on the job site, filling out the Provincial record that is required when groundwater monitoring wells are installed. That time savings reduces your drilling costs. Since drill crews – from any company – charge out at a substantial hourly rate, the savings can be appreciable.

But to give you that savings, we need your help. We’ll ask you for a scaled map of your drill site and the drill locations. We’ll ask you for contact details for the land owner, since that information must be entered on the well record. If we’ve drilled multiple wells, we can save you a lot of costs by recording them as a single cluster – but we need you to ask the property owner to provided a signed permission form. The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change – and Provincial law – requires that well records be filed, and we do our best to keep that cost to a minimum. When our office calls, asking whether you’ve filled out our drilling information package, we need your help. It’s because we’re trying to help you. For you, or your client, the help you give us is in filing the well record is like putting money in your pocket.

Milestone Cup

The first ever “Milestone Cup” was held on February 19, organized and sponsored by Milestone Environmental Contractors. It was a great day of hockey and networking with about 40 other people in the environmental industry. Additionally, over $3000 was raised for “The Stop Community Food Centre”. Although our team was less than victorious, it was a great way to get out of the normal daily grind. Anyone else out there who works in the subsurface investigation industry who also is prepared to suit up for some hockey may want to consider it for the second annual tournament next February.

APGO Webinar

In April 2013, we wrote that the Association of Professional Geoscientists of Ontario (APGO) had released a draft template for reports completed to satisfy the reporting requirements for Phase Two ESAs for Reg 153.  (See link here for that posting and document).  The finalized version of the document is dated October 2013 and can be found by clicking Template.  On May 15, 2014, the APGO will be presenting a webinar to discuss this document.  You can register for the webinar by clicking here.

Our Office and Shop Have Moved

In the fall of 2013, after 19 years at the same location, Kodiak Drilling moved to a new location.  Still in Oakville, we have moved to the east end; still with excellent highway access.  Our new facility is more than twice the size of our old location, which makes it much better to handle our ever expanding needs for equipment and maintenance facilities.  Although our clients do not normally see our facilities, the improvements to our behind the scenes infrastructure has improved the quality of our day to day operations and the work environment for employees.  Our new address is 1101 North Service Road East, Oakville, L6H 1A6.  All other contact information (phone/email/web) remains the same.  Drop by for a tour when you are in the neighbourhood.

On November 1, 2013, further regulatory proposals were released for comment.  You can view the document by clicking November 1 document.  Although the deadline for responses has passed, it is worth noting some of suggestions that are relevant to environmental and geotechnical drilling.  It would appear that since locates are already covered in three other regulatory regimes (Occupational Health and Safety Act, Electricity Act, and Technical Standards and Safety Act), locate enforcement on excavators will be primarily deferred to the organizations administering those legislative requirements as opposed to the new Ontario Underground Infrastructure Notification System Act (i.e., the 1Call Act).  In addition, where the 1Call Act is used as an enforcement tool, the fines will be limited to $10,000 instead of the previously suggested $1mil, since million dollar fines are already provided for within the other legislative tools.

Bloor Street Explosion – 10 Years Ago Today (April 24)

Dora Carambelas, Tina Kirkimtzis, Robert Fairley, Irene Miyama, Adele Brown, Elizabeth Roy, and Lillian Guglietti; those are the names of the seven people who lost their lives 10 years ago today as a result of utility locate issues.  Today marks the anniversary of the Bloor Street Explosion.  In summary, a problem related to obtaining appropriate locates was the cause of a tremendous explosion at a strip plaza on Bloor Street in the Six Points area of Etobicoke on April 24, 2003.  The incident caused the complete destruction of the plaza and the loss of life for seven people in the plaza.  As a result of the incident, investigations and court proceedings led to the eventual conviction of the excavation company, the utility locator, and Enbridge with penalties of $1.4 million in total.  There are a number of articles in our blog related to this incident and more information in the Locate Resources section of our website.

Interestingly, one of the guilty pleas was for “failing to adequately supervise an employee in the implementation of the locate process”.  This plea should be of interest to environmental and geotechnical consulting firms.  It could have implications for firms ensuring their employees are properly trained with respect to utility locates when they are managing site investigations with drillers.

Five years after the explosion, a memorial garden and plaque were unveiled at the residential/commercial building that was constructed to replace the destroyed plaza.

Over the last 10 years since the explosion that levelled the plaza and killed seven people, there has been increased awareness of utility locate issues, modification to the Occupational Health and Safety Act to improve wording in the construction regulation, and just last year an entirely new Act (Ontario Underground Infrastructure Notification System Act), and we still have people requesting us to drill when they do not have complete locates.