Bronte Construction does not back away from a challenge. They specialize in working in difficult environments, and pride themselves on developing solutions to demanding requirements.
Milton, Ontario-based Bronte Construction has many years of experience; providing a full complement of services including project management, engineering, design implementation, and construction services for clients in the public and private sectors. They have become known for their long-serving professional workforce, as well as the emphasis they place on safety and the environment. Bronte Construction does it all and offers a cross section of services in its portfolio.
Projects range from public infrastructure, municipal construction, bridges, roads, and environmental construction. According to President, Joel Van Beek, the company’s abilities are interconnected – ensuring a safe work place, as well as hiring skilled employees, leads to superior client service. At Bronte, their wealth of internal expertise means they can go above and beyond simply managing a job for a client – they help clients deliver projects on time and on budget, all awhile maintaining their core values of Client Satisfaction, Safety, and Diversity.
“Diversification is extremely essential for our business, and is what separates us from the competition,” Van Beek stated. “For example, two areas of our business that we are getting more and more involved in are bridge and structural rehabilitation, and our environmental work consisting of relining rivers, providing erosion control, and renaturalization projects. Being a well-rounded company keeps us competitive in the marketplace, and keeps us busy all year round,” he says.
Bronte Construction has a fleet of modern and meticulously-maintained equipment, helping deliver successful projects to their clients. Bronte’s fleet includes a range of earthmoving equipment ranging from excavators, dozers, loaders for their environmental work and a more comprehensive range of hydraulic jacks and pressurising equipment with state of the art computer monitoring equipment for bridge and structural projects.
FOSTERING STRONG RELATIONSHIPS
Bronte Construction works with a number of different partners and has built relationships based on trust and accountability. “Our mission has always been to ensure that every project is completed as safe and effectively as possible in order to provide our clients with utmost satisfaction,” he says. “We work diligently to meet each deadline while providing quality work, excellent service, and a personable experience that will bring our clients back again and again.”
Van Beek explained that Bronte’s relationships with their partners give them a competitive edge. “We take everything into consideration and try to do the best every time,” he said. “If there is any job that needs to be done, we will get it done safely and efficiently.”
This level of interpersonal and organizational excellence have also allowed Bronte to foster relationships with their supply chain and partners, making for a more efficient and effective completion of any given project. Over the years, the company has built an impressive client list that includes working with municipalities in Kitchener, Waterloo, Guelph, Cambridge, and many throughout southern Ontario, including Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, and Ajax.
“The municipalities know how we work and they have a certain level of service and expectations from us, and we always perform to that level and exceed those expectations,” says Van Beek. “We get calls often for untendered work or emergency service projects and having the capability to deliver results at a high standard is important to us. We aim to please and it makes their lives a lot easier.”
SAFETY
Behind all the work that Bronte Construction engages in is the highest commitment to safety on the job. Bronte is committed to providing a safe work environment for their employees, sub-contractors, clients and the general public. Bronte’s operations are compliant with the Workplace Health & Safety Act, ensuring that plant machinery is regularly maintained to the highest standards, and the latest training and instruction information is offered to employees.
Bronte stands by the mantra that there is no task so important that it compromises the health and safety of any individual. “We have a health and safety engineer on staff that will go out to a project even before it starts, point out the health and safety items risks for that particular project based on the projects drawing and design and that way we can implement the best strategy to ensure that project is completed the safest,” says Van Beek. “We have very strict health and safety policies that our supervisors adhere to and that we enforce on a daily basis, from daily tailgate meetings, to weekly reviews, to monthly reviews with our health and safety engineer.”
By emphasizing good safety choices and providing immediate recognition to those who make them, their safety program is designed to support and maintain a positive safety culture while improving Bronte’s overall safety record, which is already among the best in the industry. “We are finalizing to be COR Certified, which is an occupational health and safety accreditation system that exceeds regulatory requirements,” states Van Beek.
“In situations where we have to demonstrate that we have an active health and safety management system, participation in COR is an valuable asset.” By achieving COR (Certificate of Recognition), companies are able to demonstrate to buyers of construction that their health and safety management system has been developed, implemented, and evaluated on an annual basis through comprehensive internal and external audits.
SUSTAINABITY
Bronte Construction’s ambition is to shape a better life by delivering projects to their customers that protect the environment while ensuring comfort and well-being for users.
This is why sustainable construction represents a focus of strategic development for them. This commitment involves implementing stringent environmental processes throughout all levels of management, reviewing environmental policy on a regular basis and implementing practices which minimize risk of incidents occurring on site.
“We have an environmental policy that is a part of our health and safety policy and they overlap in many different areas,” Van Beek says. “Some of our strategies include making sure equipment is up to date, that they are well maintained using synthetic oils and if there is an incident like a spill it won’t affect the environment. In other cases we have large spill kits that we keep on site. We work with various conservation authorities with strict guidelines, and because we adhere to all of them, we get repetitive business because they know how we implement safe the practices to protect the environment.” All Bronte staff are trained in environmental management procedures and are required to report and audit practices as part of their extensive quality assurance measures.
DIVERSIFIED PROJECTS
Currently, Bronte Construction is involved in several interesting projects, including the rehabilitation/replacement of the Trueman Street Pedestrian bridge over the CN Railway in the City of Brampton. “It’s a very exciting project that is a bridge rehab project requiring a complete abutment replacement. This of course requires constructing a temporary bent and jacking the superstructure up off the existing abutment,” says Van Beek.
“It will also include new bearing pads, girders, new decks and ramps. It will be new a brand new bridge by the time we are finished with it.” Along with that, Bronte Construction currently has 8 different projects on the go that range in size and scope. “We have a long list of diverse and interesting projects like an entire bridge removal and replacement for the County of Wellington, and environmental projects like stabilizing a river bank behind a section of houses on the credit view river,” says Van Beek. A key strength of Bronte Construction is their ability and flexibility to expand resources when needed for larger projects and release idle resources when no longer necessary.