Mary River Project Rail Infrastructure

28,000 tonnes
shipped in
2 months

Over 500 people
housed on site

700 jobs
created

800,000 manhours
with 0 LTIs

Challenges

Located 500 km north of Canada’s Arctic Circle, severe climate and conditions posed significant technical and logistical challenges.
The southern third of the railway corridor was in severe rock topography, raising significant rock-fall concerns.
Ice-rich soils and deep permafrost along the railway corridor required critical and innovative geotechnical solutions to construct rail embankments.
Frozen ocean conditions limited bulk resupply and shipments to a 70-day window in late summer. All other transport was by aircraft from local communities and southern Canada.

Completed optimization study of preliminary railway-infrastructure-design elements done by others to identify cost-saving innovations and measures.
Executed detailed design of the main-railway-corridor civil works, including bridges and culverts; design of both yard-terminal tracks, sidings, and railway communication systems; and associated foundation.

Conducted two railway risk workshops.
As part of the preliminary design, a Monte Carlo simulation modeled the project’s delivery based on 300 potential risks identified by stakeholder specialists.
Conducted a second risk assessment within the project design team prior to beginning detailed design. Resulting mitigation measures were incorporated.

290 km of tracks
30 bridges
200 culverts
57 switches