Recognizing excellence
Sponsored by Sika Canada Inc., the annual awards luncheon was emceed by Russ Snow, CTR, CSP. The event gave CSC a chance to celebrate its best and brightest members and associates.
CSC Life Award
The CSC Life Award is the highest accolade the association bestows on individuals in recognition of their service. This year, CSC members honoured Willem de Lint, FCSC, MRAIC, with the organization’s prestigious Life Award.
During de Lint’s tenure as CSC president from 1976 to 1977, he executed an agreement with Public Works Canada respecting the development of the National Master Specifications.
Born in the Netherlands, he grew up amid the Second World War, and in 1953, he watched his country all but washed away by North Sea floods. He moved to Canada that year, stopping first in Ontario and then moving west, where he became involved in the oil pipeline industry. He enrolled in the School of Architecture at Toronto, and later Winnipeg, and graduated with top honours in 1962. In 1969, de Lint formed his own practice in Regina and joined the local SWAC chapter, becoming chapter chair and chapter representative on the national board.
His constant criticism and heckling at CSC board meetings eventually resulted in his appointment as membership director (1973 to 1975) and later as vice-president and technical director. He turned his attention to development of a CSC Master Specification for the private sector, by March 1977.
In June 1977, de Lint and J.A.H. Mackay, deputy minister of Public Works Canada, signed a letter of understanding for development of a national master specification. The letter outlined a commitment of up to $250,000 over a five-year period to fund CSC’s review of the GMS, with the aim of producing a master specification suitable for both government and private sector projects. CSC organized an advisory board representing the private sector, to ensure adequate technical review by industry associations and professional bodies.
The National Master Specification Advisory Board held its inaugural meeting in late September 1977, and elected CSC executive director Lloyd Boddy as chair. The process was expected to last five years. The document was to become, section by section, the Canadian National Master Construction Specification (NMS). In the end, the five-year review was done in four years. In late 1978, CSC set up a new review process for the program to transform the GMS into a national master specification.
CSC had been commissioned by the federal government 18 months earlier to do the review. By late 1978, 84 sections of the more than 500 in the GMS had been reviewed.
Members of CSC responded enthusiastically when they were asked to review sections of the national master specification as part of the GMS to NMS process. In 1979, CSC executive director Rene Gaulin reported more than 500 CSC members became involved in the review of 74 sections in 1979, representing 33 per cent of the entire membership.
Following his efforts toward developing the national master specification, de Lint chaired the Construction Industry Joint Committee (1988), where representatives of many construction associations and CSC discuss items of common interest and lobby at the provincial level. He also devoted a great deal of time to the Boy Scout movement and to food bank drives.
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