Giant Mine: socio-economic approach to remediation
The Giant Mine Remediation Project strives to deliver social and economic benefits to Indigenous and Northern communities while protecting the environment and people's health.
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Maximizing socio-economic benefits
Parsons Inc. is the main construction manager. They use many tools to help the project team reach their socio-economic goals. This includes incorporating criteria into all procurements, called Indigenous Opportunities Considerations (IOC), that:
- foster employment, training and apprenticeships for Indigenous workers
- encourage subcontracting to Indigenous and Northern businesses
IOC provide essential criteria to evaluate the bids on request for proposals and invitations to tenders. Successful bidders must meet or exceed their IOC commitments. If they do not, they face financial deductions, which are based on the contract value.
Some contracts are also issued under the Procurement Strategy for Aboriginal Businesses (PSAB). Under PSAB, whenever practical, contracts are set aside for PSAB-registered Indigenous businesses to compete on. This approach helps manage Northern and Indigenous employment, training and business opportunities. It has been successfully used in other contracting processes.
Contract highlights
- between 2005 and 2020, approximately 43% of the contract values were awarded to Indigenous businesses, for a total of $225.6 million, compared to $300.2 million to non-Indigenous companies
- between 2015 and 2020, Northern contracts represent 57% of total project spending for a total of $109 million awarded to Northern companies
Employment highlights
- between 2006 and 2020, 21% of workers were Indigenous employees
- between 2013 and 2020, Northern workers made up 47% of the workforce representation
The project set targets for key performance indicators to help measure and improve on these numbers.
Now that the regulatory approvals are in place, the site is moving from care and maintenance into remediation in summer 2021. During remediation the project will need more people to complete the work. The team expects more Northern and Indigenous hires in this active work phase. The team is also implementing its socio-economic strategy, which was co-developed with our partners. The strategy guides how the project identifies and delivers socio-economic benefits by:
- structuring project contracts to reflect local capacity and needs
- building capacity
- identifying and reducing negative impacts of social and economic changes the project will bring to the region
The strategy's overall aim is to benefit Northern and Indigenous peoples as much as possible within the federal policies and rules the project has to follow.
To do this, the strategy outlines 3 types of activities it needs to do:
- provide access to employment and procurement opportunities
- support capacity building and skills-development
- anticipate, monitor and reduce negative impacts
To learn more, refer to: plain language summary of the strategy. For the strategy in full, please contact the project team.
Business and job opportunities
As the Giant Mine Remediation Project moves forward, the team will strive to create opportunities for Northwest Territories companies. These companies will provide services, such as:
- blasting
- demolition
- earth moving
- trucking
- underground mining
- water treatment
- environmental monitoring
- drilling
- tailings management
Remediation of the site will include:
- filling open pits and other openings that pose a risk
- freezing the arsenic chambers
- demolishing most site buildings
- constructing and operating a new water treatment plant
The project will also continue to treat mine water to prevent contaminating the surrounding environment.
Once remediation work is complete, the project will support:
- the ongoing care and maintenance of the site
- long-term monitoring
This will remain the responsibility of the federal government. In the meantime, the project needs workers dedicated to keeping the site stable until remediation can start. We expect to start remediation in July 2021.
Find out about upcoming contracts
Parsons Inc. posts all upcoming contract opportunities on Merx, where potential bidders and other interested parties can access the information.
Parsons also maintains a website specific to the work for the Giant Mine Remediation Project. There, they share information about upcoming contract opportunities and recent contract awards.