Fort McMurray Chapter Meeting Report

Wednesday February 27th the Fort McMurray Chapter of the Plant Engineering and Maintenance Association of Canada held its quarterly chapter dinner that drew over 100 participants. The full cost of the evening was graciously sponsored by SKF.

[Several people in a banquet room with guest speaker]

Bryan Jackson (Keynote speaker) Suncor Energy Inc spoke on the topic, "Lean, now more than ever". Discoveries of 'tight oil' and restrictions on pipelines is forcing companies to operate more lean to reduce operating costs.

Ed Weare (Sponsor speaker) SKF, focussed on the benefits of "Operator Driven Reliability" as well as some of the challenges. Engaging the operators to take a greater role in plant reliability requires a clear understanding of roles, responsibilities and gaining “buy in” at all levels.

The Fort McMurray Chapter is pleased to be able to offer the maintenance, reliability and asset-management professionals practicing in their region a venue to network and share their knowledge to solve problems they face in their challenging and critical role. 

Chapter President Amin Elsherif expanded, "As maintenance professionals in Fort McMurray we are taking care of the means of production of the second largest oil reserves in the world. There are a lot of challenges, but also a lot of knowledge to be shared to solve them. Professionals working for every company in this region are constantly striving for operational excellence. Networking and knowledge sharing can only help us with that goal."

The Chapter took the opportunity to promote PEMAC's annual conference, MainTrain, coming to Calgary in November 18 - 21, 2013.