From the CPR to Randle Reef, Bermingham has dug deep for 120 years
They say if you want to make an omelette, you need to break a few eggs.
And if you want to construct a large building, bridge or retaining wall you need to break some ground.
To do that, you’re probably going to need some piles — long steel or concrete poles that are driven or drilled deep into the earth to keep major construction projects from sinking. Bermingham Foundation Solutions, on Ferguson Avenue North, has been building deep foundations for 120 years.
This past summer, they worked on the first phase of the Randle Reef containment project in Hamilton Harbour, driving steel walls into the bottom of the bay that will be used to encapsulate a giant blob of contaminated material at the site. The doublewalled structure rises a metre above the water’s surface, near the Stelco property. But it’s not apparent from the shore that the wall is actually 35 metres high, with more than 20 metres of its length under the bottom of the bay.
In the world of pile driving, that’s nothing, says Andrew Weltz, vice-president of business development for Bermingham.
“The longest piles we’ve driven over the years would be in the range of 250 feet (76 metres),” he said.
The issue is finding bedrock or something solid, and that can take a lot of digging.
“It keeps our life interesting figuring out what might be in the ground.”
Bermingham is commemorating its 120th year in business on Oct. 18 with some private
functions. Engineer William Bermingham started the company in 1897 after landing a contract to supply and install steel rail tracks through the Crowsnest Pass in the Rockies for the Canadian Pacific Railway. The business evolved into canal and lock work and then marine construction more generally.
They were originally based in Kingston but William’s son John moved the company to Hamilton’s bayfront after the Second World War because of growth in the city’s steel industry. Earlier this year, Patrick Bermingham, the great grandson of the company’s founder, retired. He sold his shares to Soletanche Freyssinet of France, the largest deep foundation firm in the world. The move ended Bermingham family control over the company. Weltz said there are no plans to leave the city, because Hamilton is ideally located with great transportation links through water, rail and road. He recalled that Patrick Bermingham used to say, “Hamilton is the perfect strategic position for us; it’s halfway between Tokyo and Paris.”