The Town of Petawawa recently requested the support from Garrison Petawawa in the construction of a sports facility at Valour School. Heavy Equipment Troop (HET) from 25 Support Squadron, 2 CER quickly took the lead to coordinate the contract with the Township and spearhead the task. The task was to clear a 6.5 acre wooded area in order for the township to install a new sports field. HET commenced work on 24 September 2014 and recently came to a close on 29 October 2014.
The work at the Valour School began with felling trees. 24 Field Squadron took the lead on this portion of the task with augmentees from the other squadrons. HET hauled the lumber out of the task site and into a holding area just south of the Petawawa Dog Park.
Next came the removal of stumps. Using excavators and bulldozers, HET was able to rip hundreds of roots out of the ground in order to prep the site for the next phases of the operation. All overburden was concurrently being moved to the holding area. This was done using a combination of dozers piling up the material, and excavators and loaders loading the material into our dump trucks. Although the phases of the task needed to occur sequentially, many were happening concurrently as portions of the site were at various stages in the sequence. Once the overburden was stripped off the top, the next phase of the task was a rough grade using the loaders and dozers. A grader was not required as the grade that was achieved with the loaders and dozers was sufficient for the contractor to come in and begin their work.
The final stage of the task was hauling some of the lumber back to the 2 CER Neder Rijn Engineer Park (NREP). This was done using the excavator to load large logs onto tractor trailers and smaller logs onto pallets and dump boxes that were picked up using our dump trucks. The larger logs will be cut into lumber using the unit’s sawmill while the smaller logs will be used for future 2 CER operations.
The Valour School site was a great opportunity for HET to operate and train on the equipment that they have. Every day, many of the children in the adjacent schools spent their recesses watching intently as the large machinery worked away. Over the past month, the troop was able to accumulate hours and hours of operating time which in turn will improve their skills and level of proficiency for tasks and operations in the future. Projects like this are an amazing way for the troop to give back to the Petawawa community.