Suncor North Steepbank River Crossing Project

Suncor’s North Steepbank Mine is located north of the Steepbank River and east of the Athabasca River approximately 25 kilometres north of the city of Fort McMurray in northeastern Alberta. The North Steepbank Mine contains an estimated resource of 659 million barrels of recoverable bitumen.

The scope of work included building the west haul road section including a temporary access road to the Steepbank River. Total cut volume was over 2,000,000 BCM of material with 1,000,000 BCM of fill material. The road construction also included clearing and grubbing and 4,000m of ditches. The material in road was compacted in 1m lifts achieving 95% SPMDD. The waste material was hauled to the North-In-Pit-Dump.

The challenges within this project included working in conjunction with other
contractors and a very tight schedule in which to complete the work as the west
haul road was required prior to the bridge across the Steepbank River was built and required for the contractor responsible for the east haul road to mobilize equipment.

The scope of work also required special attention to working procedures for working close to a water body. KMC incorporated specific operating processes to minimize the safety risk for employees working near the Steepbank River and specific maintenance and servicing practices to minimize risk of environmental spills of fuel, lubricants and other fluids.

KMC completed the project on budget and on schedule.