User:Chepanet/Dessau (engineering)

Dessau

Image:Logo DESSAU.jpg
Industry	Engineering Services
Founded	1957
Headquarters	Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Key people	Jean-Pierre Sauriol, President & CEO
Products	Engineering Services, Project Management, Procurement, Transportation, Energy, Telecommunications
Revenue	C$600 million (2009)
Number of employees	4,300 (as of June 1, 2010)
Website	www.dessau.com

Dessau is one of Canadian's largest engineering firms and is based in Montreal, Quebec. Active in both national and international markets, Dessau ranks 63rd among the world’s top 150 engineering firms. The company traces its origins to 1957, when Jean-Claude Desjardins and Paul-Aimé Sauriol founded an engineering consulting firm by the name of Desjardins & Sauriol. The firm, which now sports a shortened moniker that fuses both founders' names, currently employs 4,300 people across regional offices in Quebec and Ontario as well as international offices in North Africa, Central America, South America and the Caribbean. In 2009, the company's total revenue amounted to C$600 million.

History

In September 1957, provincial highway engineer Jean-Claude Desjardins phoned Paul-Aimé Sauriol, who ran a small engineering consultancy in Île Jésus, after a mutual friend suggested they explore the possibility of working together. The two men met and by the end of 1957, the men founded Desjardins & Sauriol, ingénieurs-conseils, Quebec's 2oth engineering consulting firm.

The following years marked the onset of the Quiet Revolution, a heady period of rapid change for both the province as well as Desjardins and Sauriol, whose business had grown to 30 employees by 1961. The province was brimming with engineering construction megaprojects and the firm kept landing transportation and municipal engineering contracts, expanding its business to include geotechnical, structural engineering , electrical engineering and mechanical engineering departments.

The James Bay hydroelectric project, dubbed by some as Quebec’s project of the century, would put Dessau on the map and set the stage for the company’s international expansion. With a generating capacity of 16,000 megawatts and spanning an area the size of New York State, James Bay featured one of the largest hydroelectric systems in the world. Headquartered in Matagami, Dessau’s team oversaw soil studies, layout verification, logistics and the building of a strategic road through forests and other unforgiving landscape elements. A dedicated team of engineers, geologists, surveyors, loggers, bush pilots, laborers, truckers and technicians was mobilized, surprisingly managing to complete the project a full year ahead of schedule.

In 1975, Dessau was mandated build a new national highway in Zaire and three years later Dessau International was born. The 1980s saw Dessau’s international experience mushroom but also witnessed the company’s pioneering first steps in the field of environmental sustainability and energy efficiency. Since the early 1980s, Dessau has espoused a “green dream”, helping to restore waterways in the greater Montreal area to levels of water quality enjoyed in the not-so-distant past and participating in a number of forerunners to more recent ambitious conservation plans that are now a core element of Quebec’s energy strategy.

The 1990s were marked by the company management’s ambition of becoming an integrated firm able to provide clients with an exhaustive set of engineering and project services. The pursuit of that vision led to a series of strategic mergers and acquisitions.

While Dessau continues to take on an increasing number of major international projects, such as the East-West Highway in Algeria, SIEPAC Central American electric grid interconnection or the Canadian embassy in Rabat, Morocco, the firm’s leadership, spearheaded by Jean-Pierre Sauriol, maintains a high premium on retaining the company’s position as a key player in the Quebec engineering market.