Progress continues at Fariview

The Prince Rupert container port construction continues down at Fairview, as the actual working area begins to take shape and plans are made to receive some of the container moving equipment in town.

The Daily News had a front page story on Tuesday about the expected arrival of some container handling equipment to be used to load and unload container from rail cars. Maher Terminals which will be operating the container terminal hope to be training their “specialized longshoremen” in the operation of the cranes once they arrive.

They are presently looking for an area around town that can handle their requirements for training, which we assume means a road and a train track. Since the construction is ongoing at Fairview they can’t do their training there, so alternate locations are needed, perhaps the pulp mill site might work for them, I believe it’s pave out that way and they have a siding or two if memory serves correct.

The much anticipated bounty of jobs for Prince Rupert probably won’t happen until the early fall of 2007, when The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU Local 505) will supply the 140 tradespersons and labourers required to run the container port. Hope somebody shares with the local rabble where and when we need to go to jump on the jobs bandwagon!

As for the site itself, the story in the Daily says that about 50% of the workers on the site are local residents, with 300 more having left off resumes with the contractors on site, in the hope of catching on during the construction phase.

NEW PORT HARDWARE SET TO BEING ARRIVING SOON
By Leanne Ritchie
The Daily News
Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Pages One and Three

Prince Rupert’s container port dreams are coming closer to reality as Maher Terminals expects to have the first piece of container handling equipment on the ground by this October.

Frans van Riemsdyk, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Maher Terminals, said a reach stacker will be arriving in Prince Rupert in the fall and this will allow them to being some training with the specialized longshoremen who will load containers onto rail cars.

“What you will see is a machine called a reach stacker. It is much smaller than a container crane. It is in essence a miniature crane that is able to load and unload containers to and from rail cars,” said van Riemsdyk. “It’s a very mobile piece of equipment that will also be able to move around the container yard.”

Because there is so much progress being made on the construction of the Fairview Container Terminal, van Riemsdyk said it won’t be possible to do any training at the site itself.

“We are trying to get our heads around where we will do that training,” he said.

Maher Terminals, which operates the largest marine terminal at the Port of New York/New Jersey, will be operating the Fairview Container Terminal. They are working with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 505m which will be supplying the more than 140 trades persons and labourers for the day-to-day operations of the container port. Any hiring will be done through the Local 505 union hall, however most of the hiring is not expected to take place until closer to the start up of the operations in early fall 2007.

As construction on the project continues, van Riemsdyk said they will continue to work closely with the Port of Prince Rupert and everything appears to be progressing “very, very nicely.”

The first phase of the container terminal will be able to handle 500,000 TEU’s (standard size shipping containers) per year and van Riemsdyk said there is plenty of interest in boosting that capacity.

“There’s strong interest (in the project) and our commitment to the project underscores our confidence in that level of interest and being able to bring that business to Prince Rupert,” he said.

On the East Coast, Maher’s Port Elizabeth operations provide import shippers with direct access to more than 125 million consumers. Meanwhile, 50 per cent of the people currently working on the terminal construction are local.

Barry Bartlett, manager of corporate communications and public affairs at the port, said that in August there were 108 personnel on the site, including 53 local workers.

“That’s basically 50 per cent local and that’s pretty damn good,” he said.

In addition, an estimated 25-35 per cent of required services and supplies have been sourced locally or regionally. These range from concrete, gravel trucks, building supplies and mobile cranes, to apartments, hotels and restaurants.

Bartlett said that provisions for hiring local were included in the contract process; however it would be impossible to expect 100 per cent of the work to be handled locally.

“When you are committed to completing your portion of the contract on time and on budget, companies have their own core group of expertise they bring from job to job,” he said.

“But for positions like labourers and painters it makes good business sense to hire local.”

Most of the companies working on the site currently have 300 applications on file.

“As a position comes up they go through the resumes.”

“With 300 resumes, obviously a lot of people are dropping off resumes,” he said.