Acknowledgments
I express my gratitude to Jean Rochette, chief project manager of the City of Québec’s 400-million-dollar Multifunctional Amphitheatre, as well as to Clément Demers of the Quartier international de Montréal (a project that received the Project of the Year Award given by the Project Management Institute in 2005), and to Michel Dubuc. My appreciation goes as well to the many businessmen from the Nova Scotia community, especially along Bay Ste-Marie in Nova Scotia—Jean-Paul Deveau, André LeBlanc and his team, Graham Oakley, Brian Saulnier, David Saulnier, Gilles Thériault—and to my students from all over the world. A special thanks to Mount-Allison University, where I teach, and which has been named the best Canadian undergraduate university 17 out of 23 times by the influential Mclean’s magazine, for its financial support in some of my research.
Thank you also to the many contributors who have generously provided pictures and/or who have agreed to discuss some of the topics covered in this book: Daniel Bourgoin, Daoust Lestage Inc., Éric Déry, André Girard, Stéphan Poulin, Pierre Martin Tardif, and Gaston Thérrien. Grégory Huchet has generously assisted me with the mathematics found in this book. Thank you also to my colleagues from various universities who have helped me put my ideas together: Julien Bousquet (L’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi), Michel Noël (University of Sherbrooke), Hélène Plamondon and Andra Smith (University of Ottawa), Stéphane Potvin (University of Montréal), and François-Éric Racicot (University of Ottawa). I extend a special word of appreciation for those who have supported me during the year I spent writing this book: Maria Arruda, Olivier Beaudoin and his team, Alain Belliveau, Stéphane Bouchard, Sophie Boyer, Jean Lepage, Michel Paiement, Karinka Tremblay, Marthe Saint-Laurent, Rick Thériault, and many others, including Me Daniel Johnson, former Prime Minister of Québec, who provided me with sound advice. I have been lucky to get to know all of these people.
I wish to mention that some portions of this book are inspired from my book on the same topic published in French by the Presses internationales Polytechnique in May 2015. This publisher worked diligently to bring the French book to the market, provided me with incredible support, and dealt very diplomatically with the fact that I suffered, at the time of the final editing of the book, from my third concussion in four years, which brought me many headaches. It is thanks to them, in large measure, that I came to be offered an opportunity to write a new book on project feasibility, in English this time, for the reputable publisher at Taylor & Francis. As if it were not enough, I also suffered another sporting accident during the writing of the present book, resulting in yet another concussion. I now qualify to be a professional hockey or football player, which will help my bank account!