Award: Gas plant
Value: $4 billion project
Location: Williams County, North Dakota
Client: Basin Electric Power Cooperative
After about a yearlong search for a builder, a Bismarck, North Dakota-based utility company has tapped PCL Construction to build its new natural gas-fueled generation facility.
The nearly $4 billion plant, called the Bison Generation Station, will produce up to 1,490 megawatts, according to a Basin Electric Power Cooperative project fact sheet. Once complete, the plant will help meet electric load growth in the North Dakota region, largely due to demands from industrial work, manufacturing, data processing, residential customers and small businesses, according to the utility company.
“For a general contractor on a project this size, it’s largely a qualification base selection, which the team has been working on for pretty much all of 2025,” said Chris Bauer, supervisor of structural engineering at Basin Electric, in a video announcement of the general contractor selection. “We started out casting a wide net of potential candidates, with a pretty simple prequalification process that gave us key details to evaluate those potential project partners.”
PCL Construction, an Edmonton, Alberta-based construction firm with U.S. headquarters in Denver, plans to start construction activity this spring, according to a Dec. 18 news release. Winter conditions usually limit onsite work in northwest North Dakota, according to Basin.
Until then, PCL will prepare a mobilization plan and finalize agreements with suppliers and subcontractors. Kansas City, Missouri-based Burns & McDonnell, the engineering partner on the project, is working closely with PCL to align construction packages with the contractor’s schedule. That includes the coordination of major equipment suppliers as fabrication and delivery timelines progress, according to the release.
The project includes the construction of two roughly 745-megawatt units. This combined-cycle power plant will eventually be one of the largest electric generation projects in the cooperative’s history, according to the Basin Electric Power Cooperative news release.
Basin Electric expects the first units to come online in early 2029, and the second unit approximately one year later in 2030.
