Dessau

In September 1957, provincial highway engineer Jean-Claude Desjardins met with Paul-Aimé Sauriol, who ran a small engineering consultancy in Île Jésus, Quebec, after a mutual friend suggested they explore the possibility of working together. By the end of that year, the two men founded Desjardins & Sauriol, ingénieurs-conseils.

In Quebec, the following years marked the onset of the Quiet Revolution, a heady period of rapid change for both the province as well as Desjardins & Sauriol, whose business had grown to 30 employees by 1961. The province was brimming with engineering-construction megaprojects and the firm landed numerous transportation and municipal engineering contracts, expanding its business to include geotechnical, structural, electrical and mechanical departments.

The James Bay hydroelectric project, dubbed by then-premier Robert Bourassa as Quebec's "Project of the Century", would earn the company national recognition and set the stage for the Dessau's international expansion. With a generating capacity of 16,000 MW and spanning an area the size of New York State, James Bay featured one of the largest hydroelectric systems in the world. Headquartered in Matagami, Dessau's team oversaw soil studies, layout verification, logistics and the building of a strategic road through forests and other unforgiving landscape elements. A multidisciplinary team of engineers, geologists, surveyors, loggers, bush pilots, laborers, truckers and technicians was mobilized and they managed to complete the project a full year ahead of schedule.

In 1975, Dessau was mandated to build a new national highway in Zaire and three years later Dessau International was born.

The 1980s saw Dessau's international experience expand but also witnessed the company's first tangible steps in the field of environmental sustainability and energy efficiency. Since the early 1980s, Dessau has espoused a "green dream", from restoring waterways in the greater Montreal area to more recent conservation plans that now play a key role in Quebec's energy strategy.

The 1990s were marked by a series of strategic mergers and acquisitions.

While Dessau continues to take on an increasing number of major international projects, such as the East-West Highway in Algeria, SIEPAC Central American electric grid interconnection project or the Guajimia Canal in the Dominican Republic, the firm's leadership maintains a high premium on retaining the company's position as a key player in the Quebec engineering market.

In 2013, Rosaire Sauriol, Vice President of Dessau Engineering, left the company, just days after his testimony at the Charbonneau Commission. He confessed that Dessau had participated in a system of collusion in Montreal between 2000 and 2010 in which he helped organize $2 million of false billings to help finance political parties.