Half the year spent in bone-aching cold. Soils frozen hard as concrete. Mountains of snow. A seemingly unending flow of machinery, workforce and earthen material to and from the site. A temporary city to house thousands of workers for nearly a decade. Wildfires encroaching dangerously close. Working under the ever-watchful eyes of regulators, stakeholders and environmentalists.

These are just a few of the extreme hurdles that multiple teams of contractors have had to overcome since the $11.8-billion USD Site C Clean Energy Project started in July 2015 in northeastern British Columbia for utility owner BC Hydro. Despite budget overruns and delays due to COVID-19 and geotechnical conditions, crews now are tantalizingly close to completing one of Canada’s largest infrastructure projects to date. Site C, located near Fort St. John, B.C., adds a third hydroelectric dam to the Peace River that will provide 1.1 GW of capacity once its six generating units are fully operational in 2025.