Winnipeg, Manitoba awarded an approximately $580 million contract on July 16 to an Aecon-led joint venture to build new biosolids facilities at the city’s North End Water Pollution Control Centre, launching the second major construction phase of its multibillion dollar modernization program.
Council approved the award to Red River Biosolids Partners, a consortium of Aecon Group, MWH Constructors Canada Ltd. and Oscar Renda Contracting of Canada, after the team completed a progressive design-build development phase and negotiated the implementation contract.
Construction is expected to begin within weeks, with biosolids treatment scheduled to begin in October 2030 and substantial completion expected by March 2031. The project addresses a capacity constraint approaching Winnipeg’s largest and oldest wastewater treatment plant, which treats about 70% of the city’s wastewater and processes biosolids from the three municipal facilities in treatment
City reports warned that the existing biosolids system could exhaust its remaining treatment capacity within five to eight years, even as Winnipeg, Canada’s seventh-largest city, is expected to approach one million residents within the next quarter century.
The biosolids facilities are the second major phase of the city’s long-term overhaul of the North End Water Pollution Control Center, following the construction of new power and headwater infrastructure.
Winnipeg’s long-term modernization program is designed to support this growth while bringing its largest wastewater treatment plant into compliance with increasingly stringent environmental requirements. The overall program is expected to exceed $2 billion and includes a future phase of nutrient removal to further reduce phosphorus and nitrogen discharged into local waterways.
Progressive purchase pays
The award concludes a procurement strategy that Winnipeg fundamentally retooled after determining that its original fixed-price design-build approach was unlikely to succeed.
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By 2023, Winnipeg consulted with potential contractors and concluded that its original acquisition strategy had become unviable. The companies cited the project’s scale, long construction schedule, cost overruns and design risks, and by that spring only one team remained interested in continuing work under the city’s original fixed-price design-build approach.
Instead, the city adopted a progressive design-build approach, selecting the contractor primarily on qualifications before moving forward with design collaboration and negotiating a final execution price.
Officials said the approach improved cost transparency, preserved owner involvement in key design decisions and reduced contingencies that contractors would otherwise have built into fixed-price bids.
The collaborative process also allowed the project team to redesign parts of the facility, including changing the biosolids treatment process, to reduce costs before finalizing the construction price.
Engineering changes reduce costs
The construction package includes a new biosolids treatment facility, expanded digester capacity and modifications to existing plant infrastructure. The work aims to increase treatment capacity, improve biosolids processing and expand opportunities to beneficially reuse recovered biosolids instead of disposing of them in landfills.
Stantec is a leader in design services, supported by Hatch Engineering.
During the collaborative development phase, the project team replaced thermal hydrolysis with thermophilic digestion to reduce project costs as part of a broader value engineering effort. The redesign also consolidated the buildings, eliminated basements where practical, and replaced structural steel with parts of the original concrete design. City officials said the changes reduced project costs through engineering optimization rather than reducing project scope or treatment performance.
“With Biosolids, we found many savings opportunities through design adaptation,” said Lana Obach, Winnipeg’s lead capital project engineer. “What’s remarkable about these savings is that they weren’t the result of cutting corners. Instead, they were about making smart design and engineering decisions.”
Aecon said the contract will add to the company’s third quarter 2026 construction backlog.
“Winnipeg’s North End Wastewater Treatment Plant is undergoing one of the largest water infrastructure upgrades in North America,” said Jean-Louis Servranckx, Aecon President and CEO.
The city estimates that the biosolids project will generate approximately 3,770 person-years of employment and contribute approximately $442 million to Manitoba’s gross domestic product during construction. The planned nutrient removal facilities will complete the final major construction phase of the modernization of the North End Water Pollution Control Center.
