Discover Moose Jaw is counting down our top-15 stories of 2020 and we are at number 4, which was another important land deal for the City of Moose Jaw.

The Great Plains SaskPower plant continued to move forward as Kiewit Construction and Burns & McDonnell made the shortlist in 2020 to become developers of the 350-Megawatt natural gas power plant that will be built in the southeast industrial park.

In November, SaskPower announced that they awarded the project to Burns & McDonnell.

Burns & McDonnell is the same company that built the Chinook Power Plant in Swift Current. They said of the 120 companies contracted for the Swift Current plant, 76 were Saskatchewan companies and 42 were from Swift Current.

During a presentation to potential contractors, they said they spent about $143 million locally while working in Swift Current.

"We know that we need small local suppliers to help us be successful," said Burns & McDonnell deputy project manager Weldon Stubbs.

"It's just the best way, the most efficient way, to execute that project so that's one of the things we want to do. We want to reach out and make sure that we have opportunities presented for folks to compete to do that work on budget."

Questions began to immerge earlier in the year as the COVID-19 pandemic hit and a lot of construction projects were put on pause.

Joel Cherry, SaskPower spokesperson, talked about the effect the pandemic had on the project.

"We basically wanted to reinforce with the community of Moose Jaw that we are still committed to this project. Thankfully thus far we haven't experienced any delays as a result of the COVID-19 situation."

Road construction for the site got underway in September. Site preparation is expected to begin next year and construction will get underway in 2022 with the peak at the end of 2022 and early 2023. The plant is expected to go online in 2024.