Heavy lifting is fun. Ask Ron Sims. “This is a great job,” he says as he shows off models of his firm’s colossal cranes at a Calgary industrial trade fair. “It’s like being a kid. You get to play with toys. The difference is these things are toys that actually work.”

With journeyman operators following instructions provided by engineers, the machines raise, move and deposit loads ranging from house-sized parts in northern bitumen plants to skyscraper-tall pillars for southern wind turbines.

At the Syncrude oil sands complex north of Fort McMurray, it took jumbo lifting equipment just to assemble the world’s biggest crane to be used in construction of a new sulphur emissions reduction system.

Near Pincher Creek in the windswept foothills of the Rocky Mountains, a crane capable of erecting 165-meter vertical structures raised the towering pillars that hold the vast spinning fans of a wind power station.

The work and machinery are anything but crude. In fact, the job can be delicate.

Like other heavy industry, power lifting increasingly has to be done without leaving marks on the natural environment. The super-tall crane used for assembling wind energy projects is mounted on all-terrain tires that protect the grassland against harm that would be caused by a conventional tracked machine.

And all the fun pays too. “We’ve all got some skin in the game,” Sims says, describing how his firm recruits and keeps committed staff with an employee ownership program. “We’re building a company. We’re building it to last.”

As vice-president of Edmonton-based NC Services Group, Sims testifies to the power of Alberta’s energy industry – and especially the oil sands – as an economic magnet for international investment and talent.

He is a transplanted American who enlisted with NC as the group came together over the past two years through four takeovers financed by Northwest Capital Appreciation, a Seattle private equity firm.

With avowed intentions to grow into a leader in its field across Western Canada and the northwestern United States, NC is gaining weight and challenging global mainstays of heavy lifting such as the Dutch household name brand in the field, Mammoet.

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