001-48_126_RENEW_SEPT-OCT26_PT - Flipbook - Page 42
PEOPLE & EVENTS
EVENTS
TORONTO
SITESUMMIT 2026
(L to R) John
Tenpenny, Editor,
ReNew Canada; Sarah
Elliot, OPG; Mark
Philpotts-Delisser,
Aecon; and David
Leclerc, Aecon.
HE NUCLEAR ENERGY landscape is undergoing a massive,
era-de昀椀ning pivot, and Canada is positioning itself
at the absolute forefront of global execution. Far
from the old tropes of over-budget and delayed
infrastructure mega-projects, the modern nuclear
sector is proving that immense complexity can be
handled with predictable, on-time, and under-budget
delivery.
Inside Canada’s $100B Nuclear Renaissance, a panel
discussion, hosted live at the SiteSummit in Toronto,
featuring project leaders from Ontario’s nuclear industry,
gathered to break down the mechanics of this operational
turnaround. The consensus was clear: successful
execution is entirely a product of integrated delivery
models, rigorous workforce training, and an unwavering
commitment to cultural alignment.
T
Shifting from “owner vs. vendor” to one team
The jewel in the crown of Canada’s nuclear footprint
is the recently completed $12.8-billion Darlington
Refurbishment project. Navigating a massive project like
this required an aggressive overhaul of historic structural
barriers. Sarah Elliot, Project Director at Ontario Power
Generation (OPG), recalled that the culture in the sector’s
early days looked fundamentally di昀昀erent from today’s
tightly aligned ecosystem.
42—RENEW CANADA – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026
“One of the shifts was de昀椀nitely our one team
approach,” Elliot explained. “This is our kind of
integrated view of the project with our vendor partners,
so it really transitioned from an owner versus vendor to
a one team attack problems together. It doesn’t matter
what company you’re with; it just matters on leaning in
and helping each other solve the problem.”
This cultural blueprint was reinforced by physical colocation, ensuring that engineers, managers, and contractors
worked side-by-side. “Being together and not on conference
calls where, you know, Wi-Fi can drop and you can close
your laptop and the problem goes away—it’s you’re there
together,” Elliot noted. This collaborative foundation
allowed project teams to seamlessly transfer massive
repositories of programmatic insights into future builds.
OPG tracked roughly 8,000 distinct lessons learned during
the refurbishment, embedding them directly into current
readiness reviews for the Darlington New Nuclear Project
(DNNP), which will see the construction of the G7’s 昀椀rst
Small Modular Reactor (SMR).
Rehearsing the ballet: field-level innovations
When executing 昀椀eld operations under rigid safety
margins, builders must optimize every physical sequence
to the second. To accelerate timelines on Darlington’s
Unit 4 without compromising quality, Aecon relied
RENEWCANADA.NET
SITEMEDIA
Inside Canada’s
$100B Nuclear
Renaissance, a panel
discussion, hosted live
at the SiteSummit in
Toronto.
