Author: Tyler Kula, The Sarnia Observer
Nova Chemicals has launched a one-stop digital hub showing what Sarnia-Lambton has to offer as a service for contractors working on the $2 billion in local projects over the next two years.
“We certainly want to be a good neighbour,” spokesperson Meaghan Lawrence said.
The company’s FindIt Lambton app – a listing space for local retailers, restaurants, hotels, government agencies and other businesses – is one of the way’s its doing that, she said.
The app, which officially launched earlier this month and so far has a handful of businesses on board, is a free download, she said, noting businesses can sign up at finditlambton.ca.
“It’s available to everyone,” she said. “It’s not locked down just for people on our project, but we do certainly promote it to them.”
The majority of the workforce building a new polyethylene manufacturing plant on Nova’s Rokeby Line site, and expanding ethylene production capacity at its Corunna facility, are local, she said.
The projects, expected to continue until 2021, will employ 800 to 1,000 construction workers at their peaks and result in 150 permanent full-time jobs. The two projects are going to gain speed throughout 2019, Lawrence said.
With about 350 workers on the Rokeby Line site, things are progressing well, amid gravel deliveries to create on-site parking lots and roadways, temporary timer-controlled lighting going up, and continued work on foundations, she said.
The FindIt Lambton app, meanwhile, is the evolution of a similar paper-based system developed for an expansion project at Nova’s Joffre, Alta., site, Lawrence said.
“We have moved it to this kind of next step, next generation … knowing the way people find information,” she said.
When the construction work is done, so is the app, she said.
“As of right now, the program will end with the completion of our project.”