Keystone remediates contaminated sites for public and private sector clients

THE KICK-OFF: A.Aminder Grewal works at Keystone Environment for longer than some of his team members have been alive. Ttwo years after studying environmental engineering at UBCGrewal joined the Burnaby-based environmental consultancy, which oversees projects ranging from contaminated sites to indoor air quality service. “It’s a very technical area,” he says, “but the simplest way to put it is we help our clients when they have a contaminated property and we’re trying to remediate the property.

ACTION PLAN: Keystone was founded in 1988, but has grown from about 30 employees when Grewal joined the company in 2000 to about 145 today. It also diversified its portfolio to include the public sector and opened offices in Ontario and Victoria. This made Keystone one of the largest private environmental consulting companies in British Columbia.

Although the company has seen massive growth under his leadership as president, Grewal credits his staff for it. “We put the right people in the right jobs and stay out of their way,” he says. “It all comes down to our technical expertise; It’s important that people understand our clients’ business goals and our place in the environmental arena. Our other support positions (IT, accounting) help us understand how we move forward, how we make things flow. It’s a collaboration.

The projects Keystone has worked on are confidential, but Grewal can say the key to the company’s success is tailoring its methodology to the client. “The environmental process may be similar, but by understanding how (each customer) operates, what their business objectives are and how the environmental process and approvals overlap, we really try to understand where (the customers) are coming from.” , he said. said.

CLOSING STATEMENT: As an environmental consultancy, Keystone invests heavily in taking into account its own ecological footprint. The company signed a commitment to become carbon neutral by 2050. “We are in the process of understanding our current carbon footprint and then we will find a way to become carbon neutral,” Grewal says.

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