Hatfield celebrates 20 years in Fort McMurray!
Jul 20, 2023
It is with great pride that Hatfield celebrates 20 years in Fort McMurray providing support to the municipality, local industry, and surrounding communities.
Twenty years ago, a road trip from the West Coast to Northern Alberta ended with the founding of our Hatfield Fort McMurray office, which marked the beginning of our roots into a community we now call home. Seeing great opportunity in the area, Dan Moats, now Director of Environmental Monitoring and Assessment and a senior partner at Hatfield, opened our modest two-person office in the Graystone Building in the Lower Township of Fort McMurray. Hatfield’s initial focus was on aquatic effects monitoring, after being awarded the management of the Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP), a large multi-stakeholder initiative tasked with monitoring the effects of oil sands activity on rivers and lakes throughout the Municipality of Wood Buffalo. Hatfield’s involvement in RAMP spanned 12 years and demonstrated our expertise in the assessment of aquatic environments, including climate and hydrology, water quality and sediment quality, and fish populations.
As our presence and roots grew in the local community, we diversified our environmental services and built strong working relationships to become an established partner for government, Indigenous communities, and private sector companies. Hatfield is now the largest aquatics monitoring consultancy in Fort McMurray, serving a client base throughout northern Alberta.
An important part of building a successful office is the development of local leadership. In 2012, Jasmin Gee, now a senior partner at Hatfield, moved to Fort McMurray from our North Vancouver office to strengthen management capacity. While not intended to be a long-term move, Jasmin felt an instant connection to the Fort McMurray community and fellow Hatfield staff, and more than 10 years later Jasmin leads our Fort McMurray operations and is an important member of Hatfield’s Board of Directors. We have several experienced managers in the office, many progressing to their position within the Fort McMurray operation. Today the office has over 40 local staff and we implement a diversity of projects, working tirelessly each and every day of the year.
Our long-standing history in Fort McMurray has provided us with deep knowledge of the surrounding landscape and local insights that continue to root us into the community and has allowed us to sustain our informed, efficient, and locally-based operations. For our staff, our Fort McMurray office is a place of opportunity, with a range of field work and training programs that prioritize career progression. The people of Fort McMurray are adventurous, active, and resilient, and we are grateful to be a member of this incredible community that we call home.
