For the time being, Carillion will continue to serve the area with highway maintenance, plowing and sanding roads.
    There was some doubt cast upon this on Monday when the UK based parent company Carillion PLC went into receivership. However, the Government of Alberta has been in contact with the Canadian company and Carillion Canada will continue to honour its maintenance contracts.
        “Carillion operates as an independent company in Canada with a three-member board of directors. Alberta Transportation is in touch with Carillion Canada and monitoring the situation closely as its parent company in the United Kingdom goes into receivership. It is our understanding that Carillion’s business in Alberta will continue as usual unless we hear otherwise,” reads a statement provided by Alberta Transportation.
    Spokesperson for Alberta transportation, Wayne Wood, says Carillion has three encompassing contracts in Alberta. This includes the local contract for three maintenance areas.  This area encompasses approximately from Highway 21, east to the Saskatchewan border. It includes areas slightly north of Stettler and Provost and south to roughly the Red Deer River.
      Carillion won the local contract in 2012, and it was the first 10-year contract signed by the province for maintenance. The previous contractor was Ledcor.
    Drumheller CAO Darryl Drohomerski is aware of the change. Carillion maintains all of the entries into the Town of Drumheller as well as provides maintenance to about 60 kilometres of highway in the community.
     Wood says that Alberta Transportation is talking to other highway maintenance contractors in the province to have a contingency plan in place in case circumstances change.
        “Highway maintenance will continue in all regions of the province and driver safety will not be impacted. Drivers can be assured of a continued high standard of highway maintenance in Alberta. “

The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology’s 2018 Speaker Series starts this Thursday, January 18. with, First Steps onto the Tangled Bank: Evolutionary Experiments in the Early Tetrapod Form.
This talk will be presented by Jason Pardo, Ph. D. candidate at the University of Calgary.
The early origins of amphibians (frogs, salamanders, and caecilians) are not well understood. This is due to their rarity in the early fossil record, as well as an incomplete scientific understanding of four-legged vertebrate (tetrapod) evolution and the anatomy of possible amphibian relatives. Newly discovered fossils from the Triassic Period give us insights into the origins of caecilians, a group of limbless amphibians from tropical rainforests around the globe. This research contributes to an emerging picture of the early evolution of tetrapods, of which the origin of modern amphibians is a part.
In his presentation, Jason Pardo will talk about addressing the gaps in scientific understanding of early tetrapod evolution. Pardo and his colleagues used high-resolution medical imaging technologies to learn more about the possible fossil ancestors of modern amphibians.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum’s Speaker Series talks are free and open to the public. The series will be held every Thursday until April 26 at 11:00 a.m. in the Museum auditorium.
Speaker Series talks are also available on the Museum’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/c/RoyalTyrrellMuseumofPalaeontology.