The Construction Source

capability. Today, working from their base in Abbotsford, BC, they employ about 20 people and typically take on between six and seven projects at one time. Initially, the company intended to focus on geotechnical engineering, but these days most of their work is on the environmental side – mostly because that’s where the consumer demand is, but also because they find those projects more interesting. “With every commercial real estate transaction that happens in the Lower Mainland, they all have to go through some level of environmental assessment,” Ross explains. “And a lot of these projects are reoccurring,” he adds. “We’ll drill the site for one potential buyer, they back out, and a month later we’re drilling for a different company. Then they find contamination, and then they must delineate it, so we have to go back again. Then they delineate it a bit more, so we go back again. A lot of these jobs start out as one day jobs, and then we end up drilling them four, five or six days over the next few months.” “So the work is there,” he says, “and that’s what we’ve focused on.” As for why those clients choose VanMarsDrilling,Rosscanspeak from personal experience. He used to be in a position where he was hiring drilling companies, and he recalls that “I was never satisfied with the service that was provided.” “Drilling companies were often challenging to deal with,” he remembers, “and when I was working on time sensitive projects they were usually slow to respond.” MAY 2022

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTYzNTg=