Environment

Entrepreneur of the Year 2024: Raminder Grewal is shaping the future of environmental consultancy with Vancouver-based Keystone Environmental

Keystone remediates contaminated sites for clients in the public and private sectors

By Dani Wright /

THE KICKOFF: Raminder Grewal has been working at Keystone Environmental for longer than some of his fellow team members have been alive. Two years after studying environmental engineering at UBC, Grewal joined the Burnaby-based environmental consultancy, which oversees projects that run the gamut from contaminated sites to indoor air quality service. “It’s a very technical area,” he says, “but the easiest way to put it is that we help our clients when they have a contaminated property and we try to remediate the property.”

ACTION PLAN: Keystone was founded in 1988, but has grown from some 30 employees when Grewal joined the firm in 2000 to around 145 today. It’s also diversified its portfolio to add the public sector and has opened offices in both Ontario and Victoria. That has made Keystone one of the largest privately held environmental consultancy firms in B.C.

While the company has seen massive growth under his stewardship as president, Grewal gives the credit to his staff. “We put the right people in the right positions and stay out of their way,” he says. “It all boils down to our technical expertise; having people understand our clients’ business objectives and where we fit in for the environmental field plays a big role. Our other support positions—IT, accounting—help us understand how we move forward, how we make things seamless. It’s a collaboration.”

The projects Keystone has worked on are confidential, but Grewal can say that a key to the company’s success is that it adapts its methodology to suit the client. “The environmental process may be similar, but understanding how [each client] operates, what their business objectives are and how the environmental process and approvals overlay there—we’re really trying to understand where [the clients] are coming from,” he says.

CLOSING STATEMENT: As an environmental consultancy, Keystone invests a lot into considering its own footprint. The company signed a commitment to become net-zero by 2050. “We’re in the process of understanding our current carbon footprint and then we will figure out a path to become carbon neutral,” says Grewal.

Q+A

What’s an odd job you’ve had?

I worked at Domino’s Pizza and made some really good friends. I was very fast at making pizzas.