Large and small firms all in play for CEO excellence awards

Ellis Engineering project manager Duane VanGeest found himself in a pickle as the 2015 Ontario Consulting Engineering CEO Awards gala unfolded at Mississauga’s International Centre last April.

Ellis, based in St. Catharines, Ont., is a tiny firm, with only eight employees. VanGeest had been told they had won an award and should attend the gala, and they were nominated in a couple of categories, so he made sure his boss was on hand as well as clients and a key contractor. But their name had not been called and now it was time for the final award, the big one, the Willis Chipman award for excellence.

"I was kind of scared, I was worried if I made a mistake and we didn’t win an award," the University of Ottawa grad (P.Eng.) said recently. "I was afraid we made a fool of ourselves. I didn’t think we were going to get the Willis Chipman award."

But their name was called, and VanGeest and his team were able to bask in the recognition of their peers. The award went to Ellis for its innovative approach to reconstructing the Canadian Niagara Forebay Bridge in Niagara Falls, Ont. while preserving the original 100-year-old stonework.

Diane Lee, communications consultant for the CEO, was recalling Ellis’s win at the 2015 awards event as she issued a call for entries in anticipation of the 2016 awards deadline coming up soon.

"We go to Niagara often and walk on the bridge and pathway that Ellis Engineering has done, but we didn’t know it was a combination of the old and the new," said Lee.

Projects entered for the 2016 Ontario Consulting Engineering Awards qualify if they have been completed in the period from Jan. 1, 2014 to Sept. 30, 2015.  A total of 12 awards will be handed out at the awards gala, which next year will be held April 16 at the International Centre.

Five Awards of Excellence will be given according to firm sizes for projects completed either in Ontario or outside the province, provided they were managed by an Ontario office. Categories include firms with 1 to 25 employees, 26 to 50 employees, 51 to 100 employees, 101 to 350 employees and more than 351 employees.

There will also be Awards of Merit presented in six categories, including Building Engineering and Science; Environment; Industry, Energy and Resources; Project Management; Studies and Research; and Transportation.

VanGeest says the 2015 gala was a night of supreme satisfaction for Ellis Engineering.

"We are a small company so we were pretty excited. It was great to see all the great projects done by all the other companies. We were pretty surprised ours was chosen one of the top ones, and to be congratulated by our peers."

Winning the prestigious Willis Chipman award was the culmination of a two-and-a-half-year period that started with the thrill of such a small firm being awarded the Niagara bridge contract in the first place, said VanGeest.

"We had some ideas," he said, "they wanted to take down the whole bridge and we wanted to save the existing structure, so what we proposed from the start was to salvage the structure and make it look good somehow, and we got the job.

"We had to go a ways to make that idea work."

Since it was a design-build project, Ellis worked closely with contractor Rankin Construction during the six-month design period and then the two-year construction phase. "The whole office worked on it in bits and pieces, on the design and then the construction, making sure everything fit on the structure."

Discussing the origins of the CEO awards, Diane Lee said, "Starting in 2002, the reason we initiated the engineering awards was to recognize the important contribution engineers make to Ontario’s social, economic and environmental well-being.

"When you think of engineers, they are not the type of profession who enjoy that recognition so it is nice to create that opportunity."

There is no fee to submit an entry and member firms may submit up to five entries. The Notice of Intention to Submit must be emailed to dlee@ceo.on.ca by Oct. 28 and the deadline for submission is Nov. 27. More information on submission guidelines is available at www.ceo.on.ca.