A worker in his 40s was seriously injured on an Edmonton construction site in June 2023. Nearly three years later, the company responsible has pleaded guilty and been fined.
Marigold Infrastructure Partners Inc. pleaded guilty on May 26 in Edmonton Court of Justice to one count under Alberta's Occupational Health and Safety Code for failing to ensure equipment or material was contained, restrained, or protected to eliminate potential danger. The court fined the company $120,000 including the victim fine surcharge. The Crown withdrew 13 other OHS counts and dropped related charges against two affiliated entities Marigold Infrastructure Partners Limited Partnership and Marigold Infrastructure Partners LP.
Marigold and the Crown each have up to 30 days to appeal the conviction or penalty.
What happened on the job site
The incident occurred June 23, 2023, on the Edmonton Valley Line West LRT project. Workers were completing post-tensioning of a segment of the LRT line when a worker was struck by equipment and seriously injured.
Post-tensioning is a concrete construction technique where high-strength steel cables are threaded through a concrete structure after it has been poured and then tensioned pulled tight using hydraulic jacks. The tension compresses the concrete and dramatically increases its strength, which is why it's used in bridges, elevated guideways, and large-span structures. The cables are under enormous load during the tensioning process.
The specific OHS Code violation Marigold pleaded guilty to was failing to ensure equipment or material was contained, restrained, or protected to eliminate potential danger. In post-tensioning work, that standard exists precisely because tensioned cables and hydraulic equipment under high load can move suddenly and with significant force if something goes wrong.
The worker's identity has not been publicly released.
What Marigold is building and how big this project is
Marigold Infrastructure Partners is a consortium of two major international infrastructure companies Colas Canada and Parsons Corporation. In December 2020, the City of Edmonton selected Marigold to design, build, and partially finance the Valley Line West LRT extension under a project agreement valued at $2.6 billion one of the largest infrastructure contracts in Edmonton's history.
The line runs 14 kilometres from downtown Edmonton west to Lewis Farms, with 14 street-level stations and two elevated stations. Construction started in 2021. The project is funded by all three levels of government federal and provincial governments each covering roughly 40 percent, with the City of Edmonton contributing the remaining 20 percent.
The most visible section of the project is a two-kilometre elevated guideway along 87 Avenue near West Edmonton Mall and Misericordia Hospital. That section was built using a 400-tonne gantry crane brought in specifically for the project, which hoisted 60-tonne precast concrete segments into place. Those segments manufactured off-site in Red Deer were joined with high-strength epoxy and pulled tight using tensioning cables. All concrete segments for the elevated section were completed in October 2025.
The June 2023 incident occurred during that same post-tensioning work on those concrete segments.
Where the project stands right now
Edmontonians have been living with Valley Line West construction disruption since 2021. In 2026, the most disruptive active work is along two corridors. On 102 Avenue downtown, the full block between 107 Street and 102 Street has been closed to vehicle traffic since March 16 and is expected to stay closed until early August. On 87 Avenue in west Edmonton, major roadwork is running through the end of 2026 between 159 Street and Anthony Henday Drive.
Construction on the full line is expected to be complete in 2028, followed by testing and commissioning before passengers board. The project is currently on budget and on schedule according to the City of Edmonton.
When it opens, Valley Line West will connect with the Valley Line Southeast which runs between Mill Woods and downtown and opened in 2024 creating a continuous 27-kilometre urban LRT line from Mill Woods to Lewis Farms with no transfer required.
The fine in context
The $120,000 penalty goes to the Crown as a standard fine. No creative sentence was applied directing funds toward safety training or community benefit unlike the Weyerhaeuser case in Grande Prairie earlier this year, where a $355,000 penalty for a worker fatality was directed to Northwestern Polytechnic to fund industrial safety training for new workers in northern Alberta.
Alberta's OHS laws allow charges when a failure to follow safety rules results in a fatality or serious injury. The guilty plea on one count with 13 withdrawn follows the pattern of OHS prosecutions in Alberta, where negotiated resolutions focus on the most clearly supported charge.
Sentence documents are available through the Edmonton Court of Justice.
Sources:
Government of Alberta news release — LRT builders fined for workplace injury, May 29, 2026 (alberta.ca)
City of Edmonton — Valley Line West project page (edmonton.ca/projects_plans/transit/valley-line-west)
City of Edmonton — Valley Line West Project Agreement, December 2020 (edmonton.ca)
City of Edmonton — 2025 End-of-Season LRT Construction Update (edmonton.ca)
Marigold Infrastructure Partners — Project overview (marigoldinfra.ca)
