Breaking New Ground—Stories from Defence Construction Breaking_new_ground | Page 84

The Air Command Headquarters was built
in Winnipeg in the late 1980s at a cost of
$20 million.
and by December 1982, contracts had been approved
for the design of a number of buildings, including the
Multi-Use Maintenance Facility and the Flight Simulator
Building at Bagotville. The construction of the simulator
building at Cold Lake had already started, with completion
scheduled for spring of 1983.
In Europe, CF-18 project work involved conversion
projects, a simulator facility and an avionics facility.
Long-time DCC employee Wally Enders arrived in
Germany at the beginning of a wave of activity that saw
a new hospital built and the arrival of those CF-18s.
Because of my German capabilities, I was the go-
between with the German construction agency—I was
called the Area Engineer. My role was to make sure the
designs were on time, that schedules were met, and
that there weren’t any surprises. I met with these people
on a regular basis, and it was like pushing on a rope. I
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didn’t have any direct authority over them, so I sort of
made them give me a deadline and after that, I held
them to it. It worked, because years afterwards one of
the senior guys in Freiburg said to me that out of
everyone the Germans were doing work for—the British,
the French, the Germans—‘you Canadians were the only
ones who spend your money as planned, on schedule.’
By the end of the 1984–85 fiscal year, construction was
essentially complete at Cold Lake, and the following
year’s completion of the Multi-Use Maintenance Facility
at Bagotville brought work there to the same stage. The
CF-18 Alert Complex at Goose Bay completed the project
in the late 1980s, with four single aircraft hangars, together
with equipment storage and housing for maintenance
personnel and pilots.
In addition to the Hornet program, the $20 million Air
Command Headquarters in Winnipeg was completed
in 1986–87, and personnel and aircraft shelters were
constructed at Lahr and Baden in Germany.
BREAKING NEW GROUND
DEFENCE CONSTRUCTION CANADA