EngSpotlight Interview: Chemical Engineering

What made you decide to go into Chemical Engineering?

So in high school, I did well in math and out of the sciences, I enjoyed chemistry the most. I also liked solving problems and figuring out how things work, so at that time, in my mind, all of these intersected at chemical engineering, and the fact that it had a co-op program was also an added bonus.

How is Chemical Engineering different from all the other engineering disciplines?

So I'd say other engineering disciplines can be more discrete at times, not always, but you know, ‘design a fixture to hold this,’ or ‘calculate the load of this,’ or ‘what are the stresses on this component.’ But chemical engineering has a little bit more of a flow of many different things like unit operations that come together you know, you're grinding this, you're reacting it with this, filtering out this part and collecting this and distilling it to get to your end product.

So I think because of that, you start to have a little bit of a higher level overview of things and seeing what needs to come together to get to your end goal. And then I also think since chemical engineering is more industrial process-driven, it lends more to sustainability and green design than other disciplines because the potential environmental impact that designs and decisions can have in a process or plant could have a much greater impact to the environment than say, designing a circuit board or manufacturing equipments, so sustainable design is a big part of chemical engineering, and is an important factor in that discipline.

How was your career journey after graduation?

So after graduation, I joined Kinectrics within their graduate training program. So a few companies offer something similar but Kinectrics has a very strong graduate program. It’s a 2 year program, you're full time from graduation and then entering the program but it gives you the option to rotate through four different departments about a 6-month term per department with the intend to sort of experience all the diff groups work under different managers work under different departments and really figure out what you like to do for your career and make an informed decisions on what you want to do moving forward once you complete the program.

Can you explain how your current job relate to engineering and what skills you are using in your role?

So I currently work as a project manager for Inspection and Maintenance System group. So, I manage our CWST program, that stands for Circumferential Wet Scrape Tool. So what we do, it is a tool that allows us to scrape the inside of pressure tubes in CANDU reactors and collect these scrapes for analysis to get a better understanding of the health of the reactor. So engineering is all across this program in terms of what we do from the design point of view, from procurement, from maintaining QA and reliability to also executing in-field on the reactors with our tool during plant outages.

So in terms of skills, I would say a big skill is critical thinking and collaboration like what problems are we faced with, what solutions do we have to these problems, what options do we have to implement these solutions, that’s a day-to-day skill that you have to use personally and with your team.and working as a team to come to these solutions. Organization is a huge one. You have your own internal commitments but also external commitments to your clients. You’re working with the team to delegate an assigned work and you’re also managing competing priorities for you and your team.

And then a big one is communication as well, I would say. You’re consistently interacting with clients, status update meeting, design review meetings, preparing presentations, summarizing information, reviewing reports, so really, a skill in being able to distill and present information in a digestible format, is a really strong skill to have and refine, entering an engineering role. 

As a Project Manager, how do you contribute to Kinectrics?

What are the different fields that Chemical Engineers can specialize in?

There are many different and unique fields for chemical engineers. Of course, you have your typical ‘oil and gas’ fields but the energy industry as a whole is a really exciting sector for chemical engineers, especially within the nuclear industry. There are many other fields that can utilize the skills we learn in school; automotive, aerospace, even banking and software. We’re good with numbers, we’re good at understanding, we’re good at critical thinking, and those skills really apply to many industries and a lot of industries look to engineers for those skills regardless if it's an engineering role or not. And studying engineering doesn’t really limit you as well to your typical engineering or designer roles; if your more managerial roles such as with project management or even if your more business development oriented roles with account management and technical sales as well.

Career advice: For our future engineers who want to enter the chemical engineering field, what do they look for in a candidate? What skill sets should they have or what do you view as “most needed” skills?

The willingness to learn and the willingness to try. Having that desire to learn sort of that growth mindset, always wanting to try new things, to challenge yourself, not being afraid of challenges, but also not being afraid to seek out guidance when you're unsure.

I think a lot of students are sort of afraid to step into that when they get out of school, but you have to be able to give things a shot, to try it out, to see if you can figure it out before you go for help, and i think people recognize that when you're willing to learn, and willing to try and you're not scared of failure, is something people definitely pick up, and that sort of leads to a strong work ethic, right? You're a team player, you have this desire to grow, you're not afraid of challenges, right? And that will help build your time management and organization, help you become a strong team player.

And I would say, another piece as well is your presentation skills. It's not something you really learn about in school or focus on in school too much but your ability to understand a concept and explain it in simple, understandable terms, or your ability to interface with your team and your clients. and communicate clearly and confidently, both written and emails, and vocally in meetings or in-person. So it’s a very strong skill set to have and refine.