BY NANCY TOTH, MA CHRP

Manager, Professional Development & Manager, Human Resources

TALKING DESIGN
Panel members in Managing Engineering Design: Industrial, Infrastructure and Commercial address a crowd of about 80 registrants during the APEGGA Annual General Conference and Annual General Meeting, last month.

Your Professional Development Department has just completed another successful round of seminars and speakers in conjunction with the APEGGA Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting.

Our registration total this year was about 450. Although this is down from last year, it’s still a strong showing in a busy economy, particularly when the venues are in Edmonton. The conference alternates between the two major cities, but Calgary tends to attract more registrants because of its larger pool of APEGGA members.

Our goal continues to be to provide a great selection of options for learning to the membership, each year. If you didn’t take in any seminars last month, here’s a recap of what you missed.

Astrophysics Meets
Creative Writing
The Executive Track featured Dr. Alan Lightman, an astrophysicist and best-selling novelist who teaches physics and creative writing at MIT. Dr. Lightman presented two lectures, both of which were heard last fall by University of Alberta audiences: the Physicist as Novelist, and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

The first of these suggested that some of the characteristics of the artist can benefit the scientist, such as a greater focus, in some cases, on questions rather than answers. Dr. Lightman’s afternoon lecture highlighted Einstein’s use of imagination and intuition in formulating the famous Theory of Relativity, and also provided interesting biographical facts on one of the great scientists and thinkers of the 20th century.

Water and Oil
More than 60 people crowded a room to hear eight speakers discuss water management in Alberta’s oilfields, on the first day of one two-day stream.

Kim Sturgess, P.Eng., is the CEO and founder of Alberta WaterSMART, a not-for-profit organization committed to developing and improving the management of Alberta’s water resources. She was the session’s facilitator and also one of its presenters.

Ms. Sturgess has had a varied and remarkable work history, serves on several boards and has just completed a three-year term on APEGGA Council. She also has an MBA and is a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

Water: Alberta’s Next Big Economic and Social Challenge was the topic of Ms. Sturgess’s presentation, which led the way for seven other speakers, who were

• Richard Nelson from the Government of Alberta, A 2020 Fresh Water Consumption Neutral Upstream Petroleum Industry.

• Clyde Fulton, P.Eng., of Newalta Water, Oilfield and Municipal Water Recovery and Reuse in the Brooks Area. Mr. Fulton is an environmental process engineer with a current focus on the treatment and recycling of industrial and oilfield wastewater.

• Keith Minnich, Waste Water Recovery and Reuse in the Oilsands.

• Frank Vagi, P.Eng., a senior process engineer at the Edmonton Petro-Canada Refinery, Petro-Canada Uses Treated Edmonton Waste Water in Refinery Operations.

• Emery Spronken, P.Eng., senior facilities and operational engineer with Petrobank, Toe to Heal Air Injection — Increasing the Potential of the Canadian Oilsands.

• Greg Shyba, LL.B., Alberta Research Council, Recovery and Reuse of Produced Water in Alberta: Regulatory Challenges and Opportunities. Prior to coming to ARC, Mr. Shyba was the executive director of the Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Water Research.

• Kevin Hall, P.Eng., Changing Role of Research in Improving Water Management.

MANAGING WATER Water management everywhere, including oilfields, is becoming a hot topic in Alberta, demonstrated by the popularity of the professional development stream shown here.

All About Mining
The second day of this stream was an overview of mining, facilitated by Jim Letourneau, P.Geol. He’s a consultant whose work involving copper, uranium and other metals has taken him all over the world.

He’s also an award-winning public speaker and has been featured in CBC Newsworld reports on uranium and zinc exploration in Canada. Mr. Letourneau’s presentations on uranium, iron, coal and steel were fascinating.

Mike Dufresne, P.Geol., spoke about the current status of mining gold and diamonds. Pamela Strand, P.Geol., the president and CEO of Shear Minerals, continued the diamond theme in her talk From Kimberlite to Jeweller.

Ms. Strand’s presentation traced the journey of a diamond from deep within the Earth to a ring on a finger. Her slides explained not only the structure and significance of kimberlites but also the location of the major kimberlites in the world, how they are detected and how their diamonds are mined.

All eyes were riveted to the screen for image after image of famous diamonds. Equally interesting were the pictures of “diamonds in the rough.”

Learning Through Lunch
Ready for a lunch break? Before I address the other streams, I’ll cover off our luncheon speakers.
Our members are known for their generous contributions to the greater community, at home and abroad, so the Day 1 speech about RedR was well received. RedR is an international federation of engineers dedicated to relief of the suffering disasters cause.

Speaker was Martin McCann, the CEO of RedR in the U.K. Many in the crowd were struck by the fact that in disaster situations, 93 per cent of the lives saved can be attributed to engineers. Luncheon attendees were seen copying down the website and asking follow-up questions after the presentation.

For Day 2 of the conference, we invited Dr. Francis Hartman, P.Eng., to speak during lunch. A professor at the Schulich School of Engineering in Calgary, Dr. Hartman has won awards for teaching and is widely published.

Many members said that, since hearing Dr. Hartman speak, they were interested in attending his classes.

Dr. Hartman’s talk, called Thinking About Thinking, drew on the leading-edge theories of Tony Buzan and Edward de Bono. Hilarious and stimulating at every turn, he provoked us to think differently about how we think, and suggested we overturn some assumptions.

Managing Design
A packed hall with about 80 people took advantage of the stream Managing Engineering Design: Industrial, Infrastructure and Commercial. Jim Lozon, P.Eng., the session facilitator, regularly lectures at the University of Calgary and Mount Royal College in subjects related to project management, ethics, engineering management, construction management, and procurement and logistics.

Experts joined Mr. Lozon in the form of three-person panels each morning and afternoon over two days. Panels helped explore several subject areas under engineering design.

Part I panellists included Chris Wade, P.Eng. from the City of Calgary; Dan Rozak, P.Eng., of the Calgary Health Region, and Terry Manning, P.Eng.

Since 2005, Mr. Wade has been director of infrastructure services for the City of Calgary, providing strategy and direction in asset, energy and project management, as well as industry relations. Mr. Wade’s work has focused on developing a more sustainable direction for the city, and it carries over to a University of Calgary-City of Calgary research partnership.

Part 2 panellist Roger Mapp, P.Eng., of Bantrel brought extensive experience to the topic. He has 37 years of experience in the engineering, procurement and construction industry in Europe and North America.

For the past 15 years, Mr. Mapp has been involved with project management programming at the University of Calgary. He holds and a master’s degree in engineering from Cambridge University in the U.K. and is a member of the Project Management Institute.

Joining him in the presentation were Carl Clayton, P.Eng., and Brad Berteau, P.Eng., both from Stantec.

Day 2 of this stream began with a panel comprising Mitch Soetaert, P.Eng., Scott Adkins, P.Eng., and John Droog, P.Eng. All bring years of experience to the podium.

The final section focused on risk and change management. Dr. Nick Lavingia, P.E., travelled from Chevron in San Francisco to add his knowledge to this forum.

Dr. Lavingia has over 30 years of global project engineering, management, consulting and training experience in the energy industry. A member of a project management subcommittee for the Athabasca Oil Sands Project expansion, Dr. Lavingia lectures worldwide.

Dave Evans, P.Geol., is another impressive speaker on risk management. Years of experience have led him to the development of charts and tools that audience members will no doubt be applying in their own companies.

It’s Not All Technical
Much of our role in the Professional Development Department is to help members in all stages and areas of their careers. That means the conference offers streams in soft skills as well as the more technical areas.

Links to Leadership Success was about a new approach to leadership, using the metaphor of golf. Professional members seem drawn to golf — and they were to this session, too.

Little golf flags decorated each table as Marlene Cameron began to teach. “As in golf, so in life” is her motto. “How you do anything is how you do everything,” she says, so you can evaluate your personal strengths in ways similar to how you might address situations on the golf course.
Day 2 focused on mastering the challenge of change. Ms. Cameron prepared participants by stating: “Change cannot be managed, only led. Leadership is the key factor in an organization’s ability to initiate and respond to change.”

Our random interviews indicated that participants enjoyed the golfing analogies. They found that golf helped them remember the leadership techniques and communicated the concepts effectively.
Our second full, two-day stream of soft skills was called Creating Positive Futures: A Creative and Appreciative Approach to Strategic Planning. Nancy Peterson helps teams think, create and communicate to deal positively with change and challenge.

She facilitates strategic planning, team performance and creative thinking programs. Ms. Peterson and her company, Think Unlimited, serve clients in the corporate, health care, non-profit and government sectors across Canada.

Ms. Peterson teaches Appreciative Inquiry, a strength-based approach to change that

• builds on what is already working well within a system

• emphasizes collaboration and participation of all voices in a system

• approaches change as a journey rather than an event.

This approach is more than a model. Appreciative Inquiry is a philosophy to appreciate the best of what already exists in order to create a positive image of the future and align organizational structures, systems, processes and people with the desired future.

Group discussion among participants was lively and chats with some of them indicated they felt they were learning a great deal from the constructive approach.

INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES The condition of Canada’s infrastructure has been in the news often, over the last few years. Here, a stream centres on monitoring and maintenance.

How’s Our Infrastructure?
A stream called Infrastructure Integrity: Monitoring and Maintenance provided a broad perspective on the subject from the municipal, provincial and national viewpoints.

Facilitator for the municipal perspective was Shiraz Kanji, P.Eng., from the City of Edmonton. Mr. Kanji, a bridge engineer, serves on the Edmonton Branch Executive and on the APEGGA Honours and Awards Committee.

In addition to facilitating, Mr. Kanji presented A Closer Look at Bridges. Francis Wu, P.Eng., also has extensive worldwide experience and provided an overview of the municipal perspective.

Al Cepas, P.Eng., a City of Edmonton civil engineer, spoke on municipal roads. He participated in the National InfraGuide Project between 2001 and 2006 as a member of the Municipal Roads Technical Committee and currently chairs a users’ group for the management of municipal pavement in Alberta.

The morning concluded with two speakers from the City of Calgary: Craig MacFarlane, P.Eng., on reservation of existing Calgary bridges and Joe Chyc-Cies, P.Eng., on the integrity of Calgary roads.

Mr. MacFarlane is a civil engineer with the City of Calgary within the roads business unit and holds the position of chief structures engineer. Mr. Chyc-Cies is a materials and research engineer for the city.

Provincial work on infrastructure kicked off the afternoon. Alan Kwan, P.Eng., from the Government of Alberta, facilitated a session titled Managing the Integrity of Building and Transportation Infrastructure. Four professional engineers from the provincial government presented.

The subject of bridges was addressed by Tom Loo, P.Eng., who received his degree in civil engineering from the U of A and has been with Alberta Transportation since 1986. Moh Lali, P.Eng., also graduated from the U of A and has held various positions in construction, design and maintenance within Alberta Transportation over the past 30 years. He is currently the director of highway operations.

Ken Grey, P.Eng., a civil engineer, spoke about monitoring and maintenance of buildings. He has worked for the Alberta Government for 27 years in several areas within Alberta Infrastructure. He is currently oversees the management of 160 government-owned buildings.

Dr. Touraj Nasseri, P.Eng., concluded the provincial government section by speaking on the transportation infrastructure management system. This is a knowledge system for lifecycle infrastructure management.

Dr. Nasseri is Alberta Transportation’s director and program sponsor for the system he brought to the conference, and also an adjunct professor at the U of A, where he teaches a graduate course in knowledge and innovation management.

The second day of this stream was all about infrastructure and the changing climate, and it featured distinguished speakers from national groups, among them Engineers Canada. In fact the facilitator was Engineers Canada’s David Lapp, Public Infrastructure Engineering Vulnerability Committee secretariat.

The objectives for the day were that participants

• gain a current understanding of the issues around the design, operation and maintenance of public infrastructure in a changing climate

• learn the risk assessment principles behind, and the application of the engineering protocol of the Public Infrastructure Engineering Vulnerability Committee Engineering Protocol, through case studies

• learn issues about applying historical climatic data, climate change modelling and future climate change to the design, retrofit, operation and maintenance of infrastructure.

Darrel Danyluk, P.Eng., presented Adaptation of Infrastructure to Address the Impacts of a Changing Climate — The National Perspective. Mr. Danyluk is active with Engineers Canada and is a past president of APEGGA.

Michael Mortimer, P.Eng., of the Canadian Standards Association, spoke about the implications of climate change on infrastructure codes and standards. Jeff Walker, P.Eng., also from the association, focused on addressing awareness and knowledge gaps for adapting infrastructure to a changing climate.

Ed Hoeve, P.Eng., of EBA Consultants turned the audience’s attention to assessing infrastructure in the North. Edmonton’s Joel Nodelman, P.Eng., of Nodelcorp Consulting Inc., presented Engineering Vulnerability of Infrastructure to a Changing Climate. Brent Burton, P.Eng., presented the Metro Vancouver Sewerage Case Study.

Hugh Donovan, P.Eng., of the City of Edmonton, presented on the Edmonton Quesnell Bridge rehabilitation.

MORE INFO

More about presenters and their presentations
www.apegga.org