Construction began October 7, 1993. SCDI didn't just accept the risk of failure — it had to prove it with money on the table before construction started.
The federal government's brief was explicit: technically sound, cost certain, date certain, with all completion risk assumed by the private sector. SCDI met that brief with a security package required as part of the deal — a $200 million performance bond, a $20 million labour and materials bond, a $35 million defects assurance bond, and a separate $73 million letter of credit reserved specifically against cost overruns.
Then the real problem started. The Strait freezes for roughly a third of the year, with ice driven by tides that reverse twice daily. No fixed structure of this scale had crossed ice-covered salt water before. The piers would have to survive not a single design load, but decades of cyclical impact.
SCDI's answer was the Svanen — a purpose-adapted floating crane — placing prefabricated components manufactured onshore on Prince Edward Island, including main cantilever elements weighing up to 7,500 tonnes, the maximum the vessel could handle. The bridge opened May 31, 1997, under what CCPPP records as a $1.5 billion design-build-finance-maintain-operate partnership.