Contents On the Cover

www.finning.ca
Contents
building the future issue
Winter 09
28
Columns & Departments
4 Finning Focus A Finning employee
builds in Mexico
6
30
Features
16 Female Operators
New programs aim to get women
behind the iron
19
22
25
22
On the Cover
M.A.P.'s Nick and Paolo Matera
Photograph: Kelly Redinger
www.finning.ca
D7E Road Show
We take you on the road with Finning
Map to the Future
The Materas are one forward-looking
family
Custom is King
An Alberta company tests the waters
in China
28 Meeting the Challenge
Accounting for animals in Banff
National Park
30 Building the Olympic Dream
North Construction preps extreme
slopes for Vancouver 2010
Groundbreaker Tracking criminals,
More Cat art, Going greener, Finning
is winning, Donations up north, Heavy
Duty Gear, Construction optimism
9 By the Numbers
10 Yesterday/Today Early road
construction
11 Safety First A near-miss prompts
procedure changes
12 Service Spotlight Finning
re-commits to customers
14 Operators’ Tips Pass your knowledge
along effectively
15 Managers’ Tips Honesty is the best
leadership policy
21 Tech Spotlight Simulate your way to
success
27
Portrait Peter Miller: from mechanic
to manager
33 Bill’s Business Bill dreams of Finning
34 Count on Us
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
32
Time Well Spent
A Finning employee volunteers his
time and expertise to bring water
to where it's needed most
by Jen Janzen
associate editor
Bruce Luney spends his vacation
time in Mexico, but he doesn’t lounge
BUILDING HOPE: Bruce Luney (L) and a team of
on a beach resort. The customer achouse builders rest in front of a recently finished
count manager at Finning’s Fort Nelson
abode during one of his visits to Tijuana, Mexico.
branch has spent every vacation for the
last seven years in the slums of Tijuana,
where he builds houses for povertystricken people who would otherwise
have nowhere to live.
The houses Luney has helped build
are all the same: two rooms with a loft,
a total of three windows and 192 sq. ft.
apiece. By North American standards,
they’re very simple abodes, but to
these residents of Tijuana who could
otherwise spend their lives in anything
from paper shacks to tiny lean-tos
constructed from scrap materials, these
modest houses are the height of luxury.
“When you give them a place like this, there are all
tial water-drilling locations. He says more is involved than
sorts of crying and tears,” Luney says. This year, Luney is
simply digging a hole. To send water over long distances,
going to Creel, a town in the mountains three hours south cisterns, water systems and pipelines are also needed, and
the Rotary Club in Chihuahua is anxious to help.
of Chihuahua. Like many remote places in Mexico, water
In May, Luney will be back in Mexico for four weeks,
in Creel is scarce, but Luney is going to help find it. This
driving the truck from Fort Nelson to Creel. He'll do as
year, instead of providing shelter, he’s going to provide
much work as he can while training a local missionary
water. family to use the rig. When his time is up, he’ll leave the
Two years ago, Luney founded Walls and Wells, a nontruck in Creel and the family will continue the work.
profit society with a straightforward mission statement:
If you ask Luney what brought him to consider such
provide simple housing and fresh water. He’s spent the
volunteer activity in the first place, his answer will be
last year modifying a truck into a drilling rig with the help
simple: as soon as he found out how much some people
of Finning employees and customers who donated time,
were suffering, his own fate was sealed. “At a human level,
materials and energy. “Almost all of our customers have
had something to do with it,” Luney says. “We never could as a regular guy, I have to do something,” he explains. “I
have gotten it done without all this help.” don’t want to just send money. I’d rather do it myself so I
When I spoke to Luney he was days away from another know the effort is getting right to the people that need it.
trip to Mexico, this time to scope out Creel and the poten- And the need is huge.”
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
www.finning.ca
WINTER 2009 Volume 49, No. 4
Publisher
Ruth Kelly
rkelly@venturepublishing.ca
Executive Editor
Jeff Howard
jhoward@finning.ca
Associate editor
Jen Janzen
jjanzen@finning.ca
Editor
Emily Senger
esenger@venturepublishing.ca
COPY CHIEF
Kim Tannas
Editorial Advisors
Danna Beatty, Patrick King, Michelle Loewen
art director
Charles Burke
cburke@venturepublishing.ca
ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR
Rodrigo López Orozco
Production manager
Vanlee Robblee
Production COORDINATOR
Betty-Lou Smith
circulation coordinator
Andrea Cruickshank
circulation@venturepublishing.ca
Advertising representative
Anita McGillis
amcgillis@venturepublishing.ca
Contributing Writers
Katherine Fawcett, Keith Haddock, Kim McMurray,
Clare Neilson,Lindsey Norris, Lisa Ricciotti
Contributing PHOTOGRAPHERS and illustrators
Brian Clarkson, Drew Myers, Kelly Redinger,
Heff O’Reilley, Curtis Trent, Chip Zdarsky
Tracks & Treads is published to provide its readers
with relevant business, technology, product
and service information in a lively
and engaging manner.
Tracks & Treads is published for
Finning (Canada) by
Venture Publishing Inc.
10259-105 Street
Edmonton, Alberta T5J 1E3
Phone: 780-990-0839
Fax: 780-425-4921
Contents © 2009 by Finning (Canada)
No part of this publication should be
reproduced without written permission.
www.finning.ca
000.Finning4_1/2V_nBL.indd 1
tracks & treads
32
PM
12/1/09 1:32:42
Winter 2009
by Emily Senger and Jen Janzen
Thwarted Thieves
On a sleepy August morning at 4 a.m., Riverside
Equipment owner Ernie Hildebrandt got an unpleasant
wakeup call. His truck along with a Caterpillar excavator
were missing from the Riverside yard.
Hildebrandt called the Abbotsford RCMP to report
the missing equipment. At 8 a.m., he logged into the
Finning Global Maintenance System (GMS). It's an
online tool that helps Finning customers stay on top
of their machines' maintenance requirements. It also
uses GPS technology to track equipment locations.
Hildebrandt hoped his stolen excavator would show
show up on the software. “I got on my laptop and dialed
in,” Hildebrandt recalls. “Lo and behold, I got a reading
that it was just outside of Merritt at that point.”
From there, Hildebrandt called Finning technical
communicator Chris De Marchi in Edmonton, who logged into the system to watch
the machine's travels. De Marchi tracked the excavator as it travelled north along the
Coquihalla Highway, through Hope, Merritt, and Kamloops. The machine stopped
near Chase, a small town between Kamloops and Salmon Arm. When he was sure
it stopped, De Marchi called the RCMP who got a search warrent and, sure enough,
located the stolen machine.
It didn't take long for Hildebrant to be reunited with his iron. “It was stolen on a
Monday and by Wednesday it was back in our yard,” Hildebrandt says. “The whole
system paid for itself right there.”
The crime-stopping actions that early August morning were a far cry from De
Marchi's usual job, which consists of maintaining the Product Link GPS hardware
that is installed in many Caterpillar machines and training customers and sales staff in
how to use it. “These people stole this machine and didn’t think that they ever would
have been caught,” De Marchi says. “I wanted to see the look on their faces more than
anything.”
Gas Power
Finning helped ensure future
oil and gas field operators will
get the training they need
by donating two natural gas
compressor driver engines to
Northern Lights College in Fort
Nelson, B.C.
Stacy Smith, trades and
apprenticeship chair at the
college, says the engines will be
used to help prepare residents
in Fort Nelson and the surrounding area for successful careers in the oil and gas industry.
“One of the big advantages of having the engines right on-site is
that, not only do the students look at the visual aspects of the engine, but the instructors can use them to pinpoint diagnostic issues
that they might run into out in the field,” Smith says.
Finning donated the gas engines, a 3406 and a 3304, in October.
Including shipping and crating costs, the pair of engines is worth ap
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
Finning donated two natural
gas compressor driver engines
to Northern Lights College.
proximately $70,000.
Mark Balaski, Finning
general manager, said better
trained gas operators will
help Finning customers in
the Peace Region. “We
wanted to have our name
there to show our support,”
Balaski said.
The Oil and Gas Field
Operators program is a new
18-week pilot project that
partners the college with the Horn River Basin Shale Gas Producers
Group. The 11 oil and gas companies in the producers group
helped launch the program to remedy projected labour shortages in
the area.
The first students will graduate in January. “It’s going extremely
well,” Smith says. "If the students finish up the way they’re going,
I think we’re going to have a 100 per cent success rate.”
www.finning.ca
An Emissions Update Q&A
The United States Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) is set to
launch tough new Tier 4 standards,
which will drastically reduce the
amount of nitrogen oxides and
diesel particulate matter nonroad engines are allowed to emit.
This means big changes for some
Cat engines, from the smallest
pumps to the largest trucks.
How much will the new
standards reduce emissions?
The Tier 4 EPA standards will reduce
diesel emissions for non-road engines
by 90 per cent.
When do these
new standards
come into effect?
The standards will be
introduced in two
stages: interim, coming
into effect in 2011, and
the final phase, which
will apply between
2014 and 2015.
What is happening
in Canada?
While the new targets
apply to the U.S., it is
expected that Canada
will harmonize its
emission standards
with the U.S.
What does it mean for Caterpillar
equipment?
Cat is working hard to develop engines and aftertreatment systems that reduce emissions to strict
Tier 4 levels. It’s the largest product development
effort in Finning Canada’s history.
Looking Good
Everyone agrees that Cat
machines help shape tomorrow’s world, but they don’t do it
by themselves. The operator works with
the machines day after day, coaxing
every last bit of performance out of the
big iron.
Finning’s Heavy Duty Gear (www.
heavydutygear.ca) design team was
inspired by calls from operators, and
families looking for gifts, requesting Cat
merchandise. While a heavy equipment
operator is qualified to operate any
brand of heavy equipment machinery,
they’re proud to operate a Cat, and that’s
a big difference.
Not every machine can be represented
(but of course that’s why there’s the
www.finning.ca
R6012 “Full Line Machine Tee,” a black
T-shirt with a design displaying the full
line of Cat machines on the back), so
there are both machine-specific and
generic versions of merchandise in the
operator line. The bestselling operator
hat incorporates anti-skid diamond
plating in – what else? – Cat yellow.
There are machine-specific licence
plates, travel mugs, and T-shirts, too.
The Heavy Duty Gear store doesn’t
only stock operator apparel. It also has
a full lineup of gear for every yellow
iron aficionado, even if they’re only two
months old.
To see the wide range of stylin’ Cat
clothing and merchandise, visit www.
heavydutygear.ca.
When will
the new
engines
be on the
market?
The greener
engines are
scheduled to
begin arriving in
late 2009, and nearly
100 Cat engine
models will get
“greener” by the
time the roll-out is
finished.
Construction
Warms Up
After a year of bad news in the construction
industry, there is finally some positive movement
in residential construction. Housing starts were up
this fall after a year of steady decline, according to
information released by the Canadian Mortgage
and Housing Corporation. “Despite a small decline
in single home starts in October, the level of single
home starts remains at its second highest level since
October 2008,” Bob Dugan, chief economist at
the CMHC Market Analysis Centre said in a press
release. In the West, B.C. lead the country in housing starts, with a 15 per cent increase in urban new
home starts compared to the same time last year.
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
32
Gothic Cats
This sculpture by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye is entitled quite literally:
D11 Scale Model. It is indeed a full-size replica of a Caterpillar D11
dozer constructed out of Corten steel, which has been perforated
with intricate Gothic designs. This sculpture was part of Delvoye’s
Caterpillar project, where he created a replica of this dozer as well as
a Cat excavator, a cement mixer, a shovel and a pile of sand. His work
is described as the juxtaposition of “medieval craftsmanship with
machine-age technology.” For Cat-lovers out there with room for a
dozer in their living room, D11 Scale Model is currently for sale at the
Galerie Thomas Modern in Munich, Germany.
Greener Generators
Think it might be time
to take that generator
in for an oil drain?
Well, hold your
hoses, because
select Caterpillar
generators are
now eligible
for extended oil
change intervals.
Finning customers
with a C9 through
3616 diesel standby
generator or a 3500 series
diesel generator who are
participating in a Customer
Support Agreement have
the option of tripling their
oil drain intervals. This
means up to 67 per cent
less oil waste to dispose of. That’s
good news for the environment
and for your maintenance costs, too.
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
Cat's 3616 diesel standby
generator
Forest for the
Future
The Alberta boreal forest is the largest natural region in
the province, and the Boreal Research Institute, based
in Peace River aims to ensure this vast
natural resource is managed
wisely. The institute is administered by Northern Alberta
Institute of Technology
and joins researchers,
the forestry and oil and
gas sectors, communities, and students by
providing seminars,
workshops, field tours
and public information
sessions. Recent projects
include research into oil
and gas site reclamation,
and a project to help private landowners develop land
management plans. It’s partnerships like this that ensure all
stakeholders will see the forest and the trees
for years to come.
www.finning.ca
By the Numbers
100
200
797 trucks
Finning sold by
by
2007
2009
Pixel resolution of
a Tamagotchi toy,
North America's most
popular Christmas
present in 1997
24 x 24
Weight of an
average full-grown
potbelly pig
Supplier of
the Year
Finning (Canada) has been named the 2009
Supplier of the Year by Oilsands Review.
Finning’s win this year is “strongly tied to the
delivery of the 200th Caterpillar 797B to the oil
sands earlier this year, and basically… [those] mines
don't run without Finning,” Oilsands Review editor
Deborah Jaremko told Finning. “The company has
also shown resilient results in tough times, and has
significant service operations to support its fleet
supply.”
The Supplier of the Year article appears in the
magazine’s November issue and highlights why
Finning is a leader in the oil sands business. In the
400-ton truck category, Finning holds 91 per cent
market share; in the 240-ton truck category, 92
per cent; in the100- to 200-ton truck category, 95
per cent; in the ultra-large tractor category, 89 per
cent; in the large tractors category, 94 per cent; in
the ultra-large graders category, 100 per cent and
in the large graders category, 99 per cent.
“It would be really good to achieve this title in
normal economic times,” says Finning (Canada)
president Dave Parker, “but it’s outstanding to
achieve this given the challenges we’ve experienced
this year. I just want to thank our employees for
their work, and our customers for their support.”
Oilsands Review launched the annual award in
2007. Finning was also nominated in 2008.
www.finning.ca
1,000
200 lbs
Amount of spiders
discovered in a man's
luggage in a Rio de
Janeiro airport
Weight of an
average full-grown
teacup pig
45%
50 lbs
of new years'
resolutions are
maintained after
six months
25%
of Canadians
planned to spend
money on home
improvements
this year
19.5
Number of feet of the
longest dreadlock in
the world
5
Number of flannel shirts given
by a true love in Jeff Foxworthy's
"Redneck 12 Days of Christmas."
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
32
by keith haddock
Elevating Graders
Caterpillar’s elevating graders built highways long before
motor scrapers, and placed the dirt from ditch to roadbed
in one continuous motion
DITCH DEMO: This Caterpillar No. 42 elevating grader,
pulled by a vintage Caterpillar D8 tractor, was built in 1936.
Excavated material runs from the ditch in one straight motion
to discharge on the road embankment during a demonstration
by Graham Brothers Construction Group of Edmonton which
owns the outfit.
WAGON LOAD: Another Caterpillar No. 42 elevating grader
shows how wagons are loaded alongside the machine.
A Caterpillar diesel thirty-five tractor hauls the grader, while
a Caterpillar D4 keeps the wagon under the moving belt to
gain a full load.
10
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
Now obsolete for more than
half a century, elevating graders were once king on county
and highway road jobs. Initially
pulled by teams of horses, later
by steam traction engines,
and finally by crawler tractors,
elevating graders performed
the major earthmoving tasks
on these early projects.
An elevating grader consisted of a cutting blade or disk,
which directed the material
onto a moving belt or conveyor
suspended laterally from a
heavy frame. The conveyor was
powered by chain or gear drive
from the wheels, or in later versions, by a separate power unit.
The discharged material could
be loaded into wagons moving
alongside, or formed into rows
for compaction into a road base
or berm.
The earliest elevating graders
were built back in the 1880s
and pulled by teams of horses.
An early manufacturer was the
Russell Grader Manufacturing
Company of Minneapolis,
Minn., founded in 1903.
The company’s first product
was a horse-drawn elevating
grader with a gas engine-driven
conveyor. After this, Russell
expanded to manufacture pulltype blade graders, drag and
wheel scrapers, and plows.
Progress continued in 1912 with stronger pull-type
graders, which incorporated heavier frames suitable for
tractors to pull. By 1925, Russell was producing a reliable self-propelled grader. The company’s success attracted Caterpillar Tractor Company, which purchased
the Russell Grader Manufacturing Company in 1928.
The former grader products became Caterpillar’s first
addition to its product line since the formation of the
company three years earlier.
In addition to the blade graders, Caterpillar
acquired the 42C and 42 Giant elevating grader
models from Russell, which continued for a while as
Caterpillar products. However, Caterpillar eventually
modified these models to suit its own crawler tractors.
The Caterpillar No. 42 elevating grader, in production from 1935 to 1942, was available with its own
40-horsepower engine, or could be driven by power
take-off from the towing tractor. It weighed 16,630
pounds in operation. The slightly larger No. 48, in
production from 1933 to 1942, tipped the scales at
18,470 pounds and was also available with its own
engine, or it could be driven by power take-off from
the tractor. The model numbers on these two elevating
graders referred to the width of their conveyor belts
in inches.
Thousands of miles of road were built using elevating graders. They plied up and down the road alignment, cutting a thin slice of earth on each trip. The
earth was promptly conveyed upwards and discharged
into wagons or directly on the ground to form the
roadbed after compaction. By the mid-1940s, most
grader manufacturers had discontinued the elevating
types in favour of nimble motor scrapers and regular
graders with greater capability.
Although their technology is obsolete today, elevating graders built roads efficiently, as the dirt moved
straight from ditch to embankment over the shortest
distance in one continuous movement.
www.finning.ca
story By emily senger
photoGRAPH By drew myers
A Lesson
Learned
Proactive information sharing
from a client leads to an industry
wide safety measure
It could have been a worst-case scenario.
A journeyman mechanic who had just earned his ticket was removing the counterweight on an 850 John Deere excavator at a water
and sewer infrastructure project at a Whissell Contracting site in
Calgary. The counterweight removal mast was in the downward position, and if just one of those bolts cracked, that counterweight could
have come crashing down – all 29,300 pounds of it.
Luckily, a senior mechanic walked by and corrected the junior
mechanic’s procedure before anything happened.
Rather than just breathing a sigh of relief, Whissell Contracting
equipment manager Greg Baher followed up with the incident, both
with his own mechanics and with local equipment dealers, including Finning. By taking safety into his own hands, he ensured that the
near-miss led to positive safety procedure changes both at Whissell
Contracting, and in excavator safety information. “I was trying to be
proactive rather than reactive,” Baher says.
After the near-miss, his first step was to call a staff meeting for all
Whissell mechanics. He learned one of the senior mechanics had
already added his own unofficial step in the safety procedure: check
the mounting bolts for cracks before removing a counterweight.
It’s not that the bolts on the excavators are faulty, Baher explains,
but sometimes the threads on a bolt get stripped, or a bolt is not
exactly square when it is tightened. Both of these scenarios can cause
the bolts to crack, increasing the potential for failure.
Though the near-miss incident was with a John Deere excavator,
Whissell's fleet also contains Cat excavators, so Baher called Finning
parts and service sales representative Garett Dick to tell him about
the potential for bolts to crack, and to suggest an additional step be
added to Cat's official safety procedure.
What followed reads like a who's who of excavator documentation.
Dick brought the concern to Garry Hadley, industry marketing manager for excavators and wheel loaders. Hadley then contacted Josh
Papke, Caterpillar large construction accounts representative. Papke,
in turn, contacted the Caterpillar engineering team responsible for
large excavators.
On Sept. 1, just 10 working days after Baher called Finning, Dick
came back with the result of Baher's safety vigilance: updated satfey
information. Cat's Service Information System (SIS) now contains a
special note about the necessity to check mounting bolts.
The manuals for Cat's 354CL and 345DL excavators are also
updated, carrying the following message: “Warning! Personal injury
www.finning.ca
RAISING THE BAR: Whissell employees, from left, Dale Elliott, Greg Baher and
Stacey Warn believe the safety recommendation they made to Finning engineers will
prevent serious accidents in the future.
or death can result from a counterweight falling during removal or
installation. Before you begin the Removal Procedure make sure that the
support blocks are in the horizontal position.” The warning will also be
added to the 365CL and the 385CL manuals and SIS the next time they
are updated.
Dick says the fast turnaround time wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. “Any time that a safety concern is raised, we take it very seriously,”
he says, noting he is happy the changes could be made so quickly. "I
think that in my role, I just did what was expected of me.
On the customer side of things, Baher says he was pleased with the
way Caterpillar followed up with the issue to ensure all equipment is
handled as safely as possible, so that potential accidents don’t become
real ones. “It was phenomenal,” he says. “It’s just another example of the
supplier and the customer working together.”
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
32
11
Spot light
Customer Service
Commitment
By JEn Janzen and Jeff Howard
IllUstration By Rodrigo López Orozco
To be the first choice for customers,
Finning has enhanced its service
guarantee
In this economy, you can’t put a price on peace of mind.
So when your equipment fails, it’s more important than ever before
to know you can depend on Finning.
And when peace of mind is important, Finning wants you to
know about our Customer Service Commitment. It’s a three-point
approach to ensuring we answer your most basic questions: How
much will the repair cost? When will it be ready? And what happens if my machine fails following the repair?
Every time you entrust us with your repair, our service teams
will provide you with three straightforward promises: a guaranteed completion date, an invoice with no surprises, and work that’s
guaranteed for a year.
Backing our service work is nothing new, but now, instead of six
months no-cost warranty repairs on any service work we perform,
you’ll receive 12 months, along with money in your pocket, should
your Finning service team miss a promised completion date. This
means we’ll issue an account credit to a maximum payout of 20
per cent of the total repair price when we don’t meet a promised
completion date.
The key to these improvements is better communication, says
parts and service operations general manager Brian Shaw. Your
Finning service team will make sure they ask you the right questions up front so you get exactly what
you need. And as repairs proceed, if we
find that additional repairs are needed,
A Better Approach
we will discuss these with you and get
your authorization before proceeding.
Along with our refreshed customer
We conducted focus groups with
service, you will notice a difference in
customers several years ago and asked
our branches. We’re asking the right
them to describe what they looked
questions up-front so you can get
for in terms of customer service. One
exactly what you need in the shortest
exclaimed: “When Finning says ‘no
time possible.
surprise invoice,’ it gives me peace of
mind that, hey, I’m not going to open
the bill a month later and almost have
12
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
www.finning.ca
service
“TO BE THE FIRST CHOICE, YOU NEED
TO BE EFFICIENT, CONSISTENT AND THE
EASIEST COMPANY TO DEAL WITH."
a frickin’ heart attack. The
bill could be the same at
$30,000 but they’ve given
Always Committed to Customer Service
you five phone calls to tell
you they’ve found this, and
When you entrust your repair job to Finning, you’ll
this, and this. In the end
receive the following commitments:
you don’t have that ripped
off feeling because they’ve
Guaranteed on-time completion date
kept me informed.”
Should we miss the agreed to deadline, we’ll issue you
Another customer
an account credit or a cheque to a maximum payout of
commented: “A good job
20 per cent of the total repair price.
can be ruined by a bad
bill. Nothing leaves a taste
No surprise invoice
in my mouth worse than
You’ll receive an up-front repair quote and any changes
something coming down
to our quote will be communicated as repairs proceed.
that’s a surprise when it
gets to my desk.”
12-month no cost service warranty
One customer said even
Our skilled team of trained technicians will complete
bad news goes down better
your repair right the first time or we’ll fix it again for
when it’s delivered in an
free. And now all repairs and workmanship are covered
up-front manner: “Just tell
for a period of 12 months or 3,000 hours, whichever
me what it is and I’ll deal
comes first. We mean no cost – should the need arise
with it. Let me get on with
to perform service warranty work, the cost of parts,
my business.”
labour, travel time or transportation costs up to $1000
On the value of a solid
will be covered during our normal hours of operation.
completion date, the customer was matter-of-fact:
“We won’t bring a machine in for repairs if we don’t need it. We want to get it up
and running.”
The Customer Service Commitment gives Finning’s loyal customer base the
quality of service they deserve. “Our customers are the reason we’re here,” Shaw
says. “They’re always our top priority, and we want to treat them in a manner that
genuinely reflects our appreciation of their business.”
Shaw adds that Finning’s goal is to be the first choice for customers. “To be the
first choice, you need to be efficient, consistent and the easiest company to deal
with. That’s where we’re headed.”
www.finning.ca
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
32
13
Tips
operators
Knowledge Keeper
By Kim McMurray
I
ILLUSTRATION By HEFF O'REILLY
Passing down knowledge to the young guns
is the key to smooth operation
You know the inside of a cab better than the
back of your hand, and the young guns on the site
could stand to learn a thing or two from your years
of expertise. But how do you help lead someone else
into operator excellence? Eugene Dugan, a Finning
heavy construction applications specialist, knows
the value of learning from experienced operators.
“Always rely on the old hands,” Dugan says. But for
the old hands who have been honing their skills for
years, teaching a new guy or gal isn’t always easy.
Here are some tips to keep in mind when you’re
passing knowledge along.
Assume nothing. “Do not ever assume the guy
understands what you said,” Dugan says. Just saying
something once isn’t enough for knowledge to sink in.
Repeat and discuss what you are trying to teach and try
to be patient because learning takes time.
Ask for explanations. Dugan suggests getting an
operator to explain back in their own words to help
ensure the message was received clearly and accurately.
If an operator can’t explain
a concept back to you, they
might not fully understand
it, so try to explain again in
a different way. Then ask
again until everything
is clear.
Encourage questions.
One of the biggest
mistakes new operators
make is not asking enough
questions, Dugan says.
Asking questions can be
intimidating for someone
who is learning a new skill,
so encourage a learning
environment where questions are welcomed.
Change up the method.
Not everyone learns
in the same way. “You
can’t be afraid to change
your teaching technique
between different guys,”
14
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
Dugan says. Some people learn just by hearing something once, while others need to see a demonstration or
try a technique for themselves. Dugan uses a variety of
teaching techniques to accommodate various learning styles and says that videos, PowerPoints and group
discussions help operators learn the basics before they
hop onto a new machine.
Keep groups small. “When you have too big of
a group, and you have inconsistencies in how people
learn, it takes way too long to get a point across,” Dugan
says, noting he usually limits his teaching groups to
include only 4 or 5 people. While it may seem more
efficient to teach a larger group, one-on-one time can
really help get a new skill across.
Learn a lesson. Teaching isn’t easy, but chances are,
the challenging process will teach you a thing or two
as well. “The old hands can’t be scared to learn from
the new hands,” Dugan says. The best way to fully
understand a concept or skill is to teach it to someone else.
www.finning.ca
managers
Open Communication
By Lisa Ricciotti
‘Honesty is the best policy’ is hardly
an outdated cliché when it comes to
strong leadership
Your mother always told you to tell the truth. But how
important is honesty at work? Although companies enshrine words
like “transparency” and “open and honest communication” in vision
and value statements, the real test for managers is what happens when
things go sideways. Do employees admit mistakes? Or, do they
cover up and look for someone to blame? When flaws appear in
your strategic plan, do staff dare to speak up – or do they clam up?
Today’s global economic crisis has corporations placing renewed
emphasis on hearing the truth – the whole truth, both good news
and bad. Perhaps Lehman Brothers wouldn’t have collapsed if employees had felt freer to sound alarms about company risks. The lesson is
clear. Managers who plug the flow of information can’t expect employees to tell them when the ship springs a leak and starts to sink.
The latest business trend is a shift away from old-fashioned mushroom management practices that kept employees in the dark on a
diet of manure, to what’s called “a culture of candour.” This approach
begins with managers who walk the talk. As Stan Amaladas, acting
director of leadership studies at Victoria’s Royal Roads University puts
it: “Managers set the tone for the company and must examine their
own behaviour. If there’s a gap between the company’s espoused value
of honesty and what’s really practised, employees become cynical. The
greater the cynicism, the lower the productivity.”
Amaladas points out that an obstacle to organizational truth-telling is fear – fear of losing a job or promotion, or of being labelled a
trouble-maker. “You can’t build candour on management by fear,”
Amaladas says. “If employees think they’ll be reprimanded for telling
managers they’re behind timelines, or for questioning current business
practices that no longer seem workable, they won’t report problems to
help the company improve. Instead, they concentrate on not rocking
the boat and protecting themselves.”
To combat fear, managers must build trusting relationships and
show it’s OK to be honest, says Amaladas. He suggests managers
come clean about company errors, starting with their own mistakes.
Show what was learned from missteps and how problems are being
corrected, which sends a clear message that going off-course once in a
while is part of learning new ways to move forward.
Candour takes courage, Amaladas emphasizes, and that means
allowing criticism. Reinforce the need to tell people what they need
to hear, not what they want to hear. Encourage suggestions and, most
importantly, act on the good ones. Use meeting times as well as private conversations to focus on real problems and concerns, instead of
constantly quoting the company line. Share information openly, unless
www.finning.ca
there’s a sound reason not to. Lastly, set up ways that allow those who
“tell truth to power” to do so without fear of consequences.
Hard work all of it, but as your mother may also have mentioned,
honesty is the best policy. Mark Twain later rephrased Ben Franklin’s
famous saying as: “Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in
it.” Given the financial and personal payback delivered by a corporate
culture of candour, it looks like both Franklin and Twain were telling
the truth.
IT’S NO SECRET
What makes a good leader? Americans Jim Kouzes and Barry
Poser, world-respected researchers in the field of leadership
studies, have explored this question for 25 years and have
surveyed more than three million leaders worldwide. Their most
recent study compared responses from 10 countries in identifying the top qualities valued in a leader. Three characteristics
consistently ranked at the top: competency, an ability to inspire
and forward-looking inclinations. But the one quality that consistently came out as Number 1 in every country? You guessed
it: honesty.
Put on your Reading List
What’s Needed Next: A Culture of Candor. By James O’Toole
and Warren Bennis, 2008.
tracks & treads
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15
CAREER SHIFT: Operator Kathy Fizer sits
on the yellow iron she now operates.
16
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
www.finning.ca
Female heavy equipment operators
are breaking new ground
by Emily Senger
Photograph by Curtis Trent
F
our hundred kilometres southwest of
Yellowknife, the tiny community of Trout Lake
has some new projects on the go: a road, an
airport, and a three-bay garage. But with a population of
just 97 people, all of this construction creates a labour
problem.
“We have a bit of a boom going on here in Trout Lake
and we needed to expand our labour force,” says Rick
Phaneuf, general manager of Sambaa K’e Development
Corporation, which handles business operations for the
Sambaa K’e Dene Band.
The solution seemed obvious: rather than import
labour from elsewhere, why not train community
members to operate the heavy equipment neccessary
to complete the new projects? With funding from the
Northwest Territories government and the Sambaa K’e
Development Corporation, along with equipment supplied by Finning's Yellowknife branch, the community
launched a two-week operator training course last June.
A similar training program took place the previous summer, but this time the course was only open
to women. All 10 students graduated with the skills to
work on construction projects in the community.
The Trout Lake initiative represents one of several
new women-specific training programs in Western
Canada, which are slowly making inroads to encourage
women to work in the male-dominated operator field.
Brenda Jumbo, office manager at Sambaa K’e
Development Corporation and a graduate of the course,
can now fill in as an operator if there is a labour shortage on a project, in addition to her regular duties.
www.finning.ca
Jumbo says she appreciated the opportunity to learn
something new with other women from the community. “Working with other women is easier because I
don’t have to feel shy.”
The location of the course was another advantage. By
training right in Trout Lake, women with small children
were able to come home in the evenings. The close-tohome training was an important factor for Jumbo, who
has two children, aged 8 and 4.
Phaneuf says the course was a success and there
are plans for advanced operator training in the future,
which will build on the basic skills the women have
already learned.
Jumbo says she will sign up when the advanced
course is offered. “Yes, it is different than just sitting in
the office,” she says of operating a piece of yellow iron.
“At first it may be intimidating, but once you get to
know the dynamics, it’s a piece of cake.”
A similar women-only operator training program
launched in Edmonton in June, with its first graduates
earning certificates in September. The program, called
the Heavy Equipment Operator Course for Women,
is a partnership between Olds College in Olds, Alta.,
and Women Building Futures, an Edmonton-based
not-for-profit agency that provides trades training and
mentorship to women.
Besides the standard safety and in-the-field training, the program offers specialized workplace training,
where students learn and talk about what they can
expect working in a male-dominated field. The result,
says Wanda Wetterberg, Women Building Futures chief
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Winter 2009
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17
It's Women's Work
operating officer, is a graduate who is prepared to respond to challenges in the workplace.
“It results in a better retention rate for the employer,” she says. “It
pays off big time to have targeted women’s-only training.”
Response to the initial 17-week course in June was “incredible,”
Wetterberg says. In fact, demand was so great that the program was
expanded from 12 to 15 students, and women were still turned away.
All 15 women who enrolled in the program graduated with certificates
from Olds College. The second class, which began in September, is full,
and a third class is scheduled to begin in March.
Women Building Futures has provided trades training to women
in the Edmonton area since 1998, and adding the heavy equipment
operator course to its programming this year seemed like a natural fit
in the Alberta economy. “We knew there was a big demand for operators,” Wetterberg says.
Kathy Fizer is one of the success stories from the first training
course. Sureway Construction in Edmonton hired her and three other
women after they graduated. “I graduated on the Friday and I started
here on the following Wednesday,” Fizer says, noting that, for her,
operator training was a chance to make a career switch after 15 years
as a customer service rep in the parts department of an auto company.
“My biggest thing is that I like the physical work, rather than sitting at
a desk,” Fizer says. The pay at her new job is also better.
Sureway has been a supportive employer, she says, and Fizer would
encourage other women to consider a career as an operator. “The
biggest thing about women getting into the male-dominated industry
is you just have to jump in with both feet,” she reports. “The resources
are there. You just have to do your homework.”
These two programs are just a start; there's a long way to go before
women and men are operating iron in equal numbers. In his role as an
operator trainer, Eugene Dugan, a Finning construction applications
specialist, sees many more men than women running equipment, but
“THE BIGGEST THING ABOUT
WOMEN GETTING INTO THE
MALE-DOMINATED INDUSTRY
IS YOU JUST HAVE TO JUMP IN
WITH BOTH FEET.”
- Kathy Fizer
there are a handful of very skilled women operators out there.
According to Dugan, the ones who do it are very good at it. The
hours can be long on a construction site, especially in the summer.
These long hours might deter women from getting into heavy machinery operating, but at the same time “there’s a lot of guys out there that
it doesn’t appeal to, either,” says Dugan, laughing.
Mike Obal, the owner of Oceanside Industrial Skills Ltd. on
Vancouver Island, says that only about five per cent of the students he
sees come through his heavy equipment classes are women.
That number has remained steady since he began his career
30 years ago.
When women do enroll, Obal says they are usually better students
and, unlike many male students, women tend to leave their egos at the
door and are “more coachable.”
“We’ve got 10 to 20 jobs at any moment open to female operators,”
he says.
Part of the solution, Obal says, may be in appealling to female high
school students. There is an opportunity to attract female operators in
B.C. logging towns where forestry has taken a major hit and traditional jobs in the industry are scarce. “Dad is maybe a logger, or has an
equipment business. They
know quite a bit about
that already, and we would
CAT WOMEN: (L-R): Joyce Jumbo, Marilyn Lomen, Lyla Pierre, Cody Punch, Norma
like to see that converted
Jumbo, Carilyn Jumbo, Brenda Jumbo and Sharon Kotchea at an operator training course
into equipment operain Trout Lake, N.W.T. Anthony Ekenale, the instructor's assistant, stands behind.
tion,” he says, describing
why young women in such
towns may be more open
to the idea of becoming an
operator.
Obal is working with
local high schools in
Campbell River to develop
courses where young
women and men would
learn heavy equipment
skills and earn high school
credit at the same time.
“The women are coming up and thinking it’s
more acceptable that
women might operate a
piece of iron, while the
middle-aged and up might
be a little more surprised
by it,” he says.
18
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
www.finning.ca
GATHERING ’ROUND: A demo of the D7E
at a gravel pit northwest of Edmonton.
D7E Road Show
Cat's newest diesel-electric dozer takes to the road in a
head-to-head showdown with the older D7R2
By Jen Janzen
W
hen Caterpillar set out to improve the D7 line of
tractors, the company didn’t just produce a machine with
an electric drive. Instead, Cat gave the new D7E a complete
overhaul, from the tracks to the engine to the cab. Along with lower
emissions, the D7E, which will replace the D7R2, has fewer moving parts, improved sightlines with 35 per cent more glass area, and
moves 10 per cent more material than its forerunner.
This fall, the new dozer went on tour as the headlining act in
Caterpillar’s D7E Road Show. It came to Finning’s territory in
September, making stops in Edmonton and Grande Prairie. It was
a chance for customers and staff to get up close to the machine and
watch it in action as it manoeuvred through pylons and up steep
slopes with ease.
www.finning.ca
It also moved dirt in a head-to-head race with the D7R2, which,
as it turned out, just couldn’t keep up with its more agile successor. “They were both going at full power and the D7E excelled,” said
Cindy Sargent, manager of creative services and event marketing at
Finning, who added that watching the machine’s performance was
enough to satisfy any naysayers in the crowd. “Some were skeptical
at first, but after actually seeing it do a side-by-side, they were quite
impressed.”
Gord Chaban of Experienced Equipment Sales and Rentals liked
what he saw. “The blade is way faster than the D7R,” he said after the
tractor had proved its capabilities at the demonstration. “I still have
to get used to the low drive, but I love that D7E. I think it’s going to
be a leader in Caterpillar’s fleet.”
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19
D7E Road Show
Chaban liked Cat’s attention to detail in the design,
and said it was simply a nice-looking machine. He
praised its sealed components, noting that it wouldn’t
be vulnerable to dust leaks or other contamination. “It’s
a good tractor all the way around. We’ll be looking very
closely at that D7E,” he said.
Kevin Bugge, senior operator at Beaver Regional
Waste, echoed Chaban’s rave reviews.
“I was quite impressed with it. Quick to handle, easy
to turn with a load on the blade, very quiet,” he reported.
Dave Zesko, product manager of wear parts at
Finning, was interested to see the machine because of
his role in promoting ground engaging tools (GET),
which help protect machine components by covering
them with less expensive, Cat-engineered sacrificial
iron. He appreciated the benefits of continuity. “The cutting edges and end bits are all the same as what we’ve got
in the D7 line of equipment,” he said.
Frank Tremmel, mechanical services manager at
Precision Contractors in Lloydminster, knows what the
D7E can do. He acquainted himself with the machine
from Aug. 2008 to May 2009, when his company
was chosen as the site for a field follow. Operators at
Precision have put thousands of hours on the machine,
providing Caterpillar with critical feedback.
“There’s been a lot of thought put into it,” he said. “My
background is as a mechanic, so being able to service it
GREENER GEARS: Caterpillar operator
Bob Powers shows off the D7E engine.
20
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
DIRT DOZER: The D7E proves it can move
up to 10 per cent more dirt per hour than
the D7R Series 2.
quickly and efficiently is my biggest thing. You can tilt the cab and you’re able to get in
there. Everything is off to the left of the engine, pretty much in one spot. Given that it’s
electric drive, there are fewer moving parts, and therefore fewer things to maintain.
Everything is easily accessible for routine maintenance or major repairs.”
Combine the serviceability of the tractor with the ability to perform finer controls,
no matter how high
the speed, and his own
experience with the commitment of Caterpillar’s
design team to produce an
unparalleled machine, and
Tremmel is a believer.
And what was it like
to be chosen as official
field testers from a pool of
dozens of other companies? Tremmel says it was
“unreal.”
“Absolutely, everyone at
Precision Contractors
is honoured to have been
chosen by Caterpillar for
the prototype machine.
We all took great pride
in knowing that any
concerns or issues that
we had were being addressed by the people who
could make the necessary changes to make the
machine better... it’s much
more than a feather in our
cap to say that Caterpillar
picked us.”
www.finning.ca
Spot light
tech
Simulation
Station
By CLARE NEILSON
This Caterpillar computer protects equipment from
damage and lets operators log training hours safely
An inexperienced operator can be tough on
equipment, but Caterpillar simulators allow rookies
to train in a safe space where they can log some hours
operating iron without even getting on a machine.
Caterpillar simulators have improved continuously
since they were first released three years ago. The latest
simulators, which replicate a tractor-scraper and a
wheel loader, are no exceptions.
Paul Raj, Finning products and service sales manager
says the new simulators, released in October, boast
improved graphics, particularly when it comes to terrain details. “We can now simulate how dirt moves, so
you can actually see the bowl on a scraper fill up, or a
bucket,” Raj says. In the new simulators, operators can
view these improved graphics on two screens, one on
the front “windshield” and one on the rear, which allows operators to practise reverse manoeuvres.
The design team took care to ensure accurate details
so the operators-in-training feel like they are actually
in the machine. The finer points include the same
seat and seatbelt found in yellow iron, along with
the official Cat controls.
Simulators aren't just for new operators, Raj says.
Experienced folks can also benifit from the chance to
refine or upgrade existing skills without tying up the
machinery needed for other jobs.
In a teaching setting, the simulators can measure
the operator’s skill level and track progress. For example, the simulator can measure how hard an operator
puts down a bucket, a skill which is sometimes difficult
to measure by just watching a new operator in action.
Some of the older models are used in schools,
including Keyano College in Fort McMurray and a
high school in Smithers, B.C., where students have the
option of learning operator skills as part of their high
school curriculum.
Overall, the new simulators are paving the way to
better, safer operator training with less downtime.
“When you do some basic skills training in the office
they’re much more prepared, when they go back out to
the real machine, to do the work,” Raj says.
THE JOY OF STICKS:
The most recent simulators include
official Cat controls so the operatorsin-training feel they are actually in
the machine.
www.finning.ca
tracks & treads
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21
New technologies and an oldworld work ethic keep this family
business ahead of the pack
by Kim McMurray i Photography by Kelly Redinger
22
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
www.finning.ca
N
TWO GENERATIONS: Paolo
Matera (l), Otto Gagliardi,
Nick Matera and Tony
Matera at the M.A.P. office in
Edmonton.
www.finning.ca
ick Matera wasn’t ready to leave
Edmonton when he faced a job transfer to
Montreal, so rather than pack up his young
family and move across the country, he hired two
employees, rented some equipment and started his own
construction and repair company.
With a family to support, beginning his own company
came with risks.
“It was a tough decision,” Nick says. “I could make or
break. I said, ‘If I make, I’ll be OK and if not, I’ll just go
work someplace else after.’”
That was in 1982, and it appears he made the right
decision. Today, Nick is CEO of the M.A.P. Group of
Companies, presiding as the patriarch of a company
that has expanded to employ more than 300 people in
its water and sewer, earthworks and equipment rental
divisions.
The M.A.P. business has also become a family affair.
Perhaps this was inevitable, as the company is named
for Nick’s three children: Margaret, Antonio (Tony) and
Paolo, all of whom have taken on managerial roles in the
company their father founded.
Part of the M.A.P. success strategy has been slow and
steady growth, but the Materas are also innovators. In
the spring, M.A.P. signed up for Finning's PM Plus 'Work
With Me' program, a 4,000 hour – roughly two-year
– term that incorporates QuickEvac and Product Link
technology to better manage the preventive maintenance
needs of their 135-piece fleet. The program provides
three technical inspections by Finning personnel at
1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 hours, with smaller-scale maintenance performed by M.A.P. mechanics.
QuickEvac, an on-board pump system, transforms an
oil and filter change from a messy hour-long ordeal into
a clean 20-minute procedure. “It’s a lot faster if you need
to service a machine,” Paolo says. “It takes dramatically
less time.”
With the speedy QuickEvac process, mechanics have
more time for other preventive maintenance tasks,
and machines are in and out faster, freeing shop space.
The technology also prevents dry starts by pumping oil
through the engine before it cranks.
Paolo has been working closely with Finning
parts and service sales rep Tony Foat who says the
QuickEvac system is an environmental win that greatly
reduces oil spills. “When you do an oil change using
this technology, you don’t have any open oil anywhere,”
Foat says. “It goes straight from the machine into a
truck and vice versa. You also blow the dirty oil out of
the filters and the lines before changing, so the filter
is nearly empty, making it cleaner and easier to handle.”
The second technology that M.A.P. is installing across
its fleet is Product Link, a global positioning system that
tracks equipment's location, hours of use, and mechanical data like engine conditions and service due dates.
The technology allows M.A.P. staff to better track
smaller, preventive maintenance needs themselves.
Then, when the machine gets close to a service due date,
Product Link sends a satellite message to a Finning rep,
who puts the parts together and contacts the customer
to schedule a service.
Even though M.A.P. is family-run, Paolo still had to
convince management – in this case his father and his
company-president older brother – that installing two
new technologies across the entire fleet was a good
idea. “As much as it’s family, we can’t just go out and do
whatever we want,” Paolo says. “We still have to follow a
chain of command.”
Following the proper procedure where everyone
“[QuickEvac] is a lot
faster if you need to
service a machine.”
– Paolo Matera
has their own clearly-defined roles and responsibilities
keeps M.A.P. operating smoothly. With Nick in charge,
hard work is always expected, and having their dad
for a boss didn’t guarantee an easy ride for the Matera
siblings.
All three of Nick’s children are managers at M.A.P.
Group of Companies, but they didn’t start at the top. The
kids worked hard to get to their current positions, just
like their father did after immigrating to Canada from
Italy when he was just 25 years old.
Margaret, Nick’s eldest child, was a teenager when
her father founded M.A.P. as a small construction business in 1983. “She would help me answer the phone,” he
recalls.
Soon after, Tony started spending his summers shovelling sand as a general labourer. By then, M.A.P. had
expanded from three to 10 employees. Paolo, the youngest child, started work as a labourer when he turned 14.
Both boys have worked as delivery drivers and machine
operators as well. “I just wanted them to work with me
and learn the way I did, from the bottom up,” Nick says.
“Work with me was tough.”
The kids stuck with it while the company grew to
become M.A.P. Group of Companies, which includes M.A.P. Water and Sewer Services Ltd., M.A.P.
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
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23
Map to the Future
“I just wanted them to work
with me and learn the way i did,
from the bottom up. work with
me was tough.” – Nick Matera
Earthworks Ltd. and Williamson Equipment. Today, Margaret is the
office manager for the water and sewer portion of the company and her
husband, Otto Gagliardi, is a project supervisor. In 2001, Tony took a
big leadership step and became company president. Paolo became the
equipment manager in 2004.
Working with family members certainly is a challenge Paolo
says, noting he has no choice but to care deeply about what happens
during the workday. “You don’t just go home and not have any headaches,” he says.
Despite the challenges of working with siblings, Tony says the family
aspect makes M.A.P. an even stronger business. “It has its struggles, but
it keeps us close,” he says.
Paolo says that convincing his father and older brother to make the
QuickEvac and Product Link upgrades to the fleet required a detailed
business plan, in which he outlined the technologies and the potential
for increased uptime. His father and brother agreed to it.
Finning mechanics have been hard at work installing the technology
since June, and have now equipped about 80 per cent of the M.A.P. fleet
with the PM tools.
Tony says Product Link is already helping him manage the company,
since he can keep better track of equipment and can ensure all maintenance is done on time.
State-of-the-art technology and the desire to continuously improve
operations will help the M.A.P. Group of Companies continue the trend
of expansion in the business that Nick founded 26 years ago.
“We’ve been gradually expanding every year,” Tony says. “We want
to become one of the industry leaders. We’re pretty aggressive in the
marketplace.”
A MATERA HISTORY
Nick Matera, 25, immigrates
to Canada from Italy
1965
M.A.P. Water and Sewer
Services Ltd. is founded
1982
1983
Nick Matera is faced with a job
transfer to Montreal and begins
his own Edmonton construction
company instead
24
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
FATHER AND SON: Paolo Matera (l) and Nick
Matera on a M.A.P. site near Villeneuve, Alta.
Margaret Gagliardi (nee
Matera) becomes M.A.P. M.A.P. Earthworks Ltd.
Antonio (Tony) Matera becomes M.A.P. Water and Sewer Services becomes part of M.A.P.
Ltd. office manager
Group of Companies
Group of Companies president
2001
2004 2004
Williamson Equipment becomes part of
M.A.P.
2004
2006
Paolo Matera becomes M.A.P. Group of
Companies equipment manager
www.finning.ca
YEAR OF THE CAT: A service rig in Changqing, China.
The coil tubing and nitrogen-pumping equipment is
supplied by Hydra Rig, Calgary, Alberta.
Custom is King
A global oil and gas
services company
produces made-tomeasure solutions,
with a little help
from Finning
by Lindsey Norris
www.finning.ca
I
t's a lot easier to be a car salesperson in China today than
it was a decade ago. The country’s population has been growing in
size and wealth, and by 2010, China will have 90 times more cars
than it did in 1990. Of course, the fuel required to power those cars
is almost negligible compared to the amount needed to power the
country’s industrial sector, which is a large reason the country is the
world’s second-largest oil consumer behind the United States.
If you were to compare energy-hungry nations, you’d be hard
pressed to find one hungrier. In its search for secure sources of petroleum, China spent approximately $13 billion acquiring foreign oil assets in the last year. But it is also taking steps to solve its energy needs
domestically. China’s proved oil reserves – the quantity of petroleum
that is estimated to be commercially recoverable – were ranked the
13th largest in the world (Saudi Arabia was first and Canada second)
by the CIA World Factbook in January 2009.
Enter longtime Finning customer NOV Hydra Rig, an international
oilfield services company that manufactures the coil tubing and nitrogen-pumping equipment that is helping China uncover its own energy.
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
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25
Custom is King
SPECIALIZED: Nitrogen pumpers in China
are oufitted with Cat engines adapted to
the Chinese work environment.
"COMMUNICATIONS IS A BIG CHALLENGE.
WE HAVE TO PREPARE OUR MANUALS IN
ENGLISH AND CHINESE."
Essentially, the technology works by
pumping nitrogen into an oil or gas well,
causing the rocks to fracture and enabling
– Norm Fossheim, Hydra Rig (Canada)
oil and gas extraction. The same process is
used to perform regular maintenance on
wells to stimulate higher production.
ment in places like Canada, China, Yemen and the U.S. One of the larg“The Chinese economy is growing very rapidly and expanding their
est members of its fleet is a C32 engine. “They use a wide range of other
oil and gas industry for their own needs, so there has been a lot of
Caterpillar equipment as well, including the C10, C15, the 3412E and
equipment built for that market, and we have started to specialize in
that market here in Canada,” says Norm Fossheim, the sales manager for the 3406C,” says Ian Dagenais, a Finning customer account manager.
“We use the petroleum packaging group for customizing products.
Hydra Rig (Canada).
They take a standard engine and modify it, and then Hydra Rig can
Hydra Rig’s parent company, National Oilwell Varco Inc., has been
customize it further.”
in the oilfield service industry since 1841. The company operates more
With a Cat factory custom package, anything from an engine to a
than 700 manufacturing, sales and service centres around the world.
generator to a transmission can be custom-designed to suit a project’s
Hydra Rig is based in Texas, but it’s the Canadian branch, based in
design requirements and environmental challenges. That’s crucial for
Calgary, that has recently taken on the responsibility of adapting Hydra
Hydra Rig, which offers its equipment in a configuration that will suit
Rig’s equipment so it can be used in China.
the end user. Consider its 660K/840K direct-fired nitrogen pumper: it
While you might think an oil well in China is much the same as one
may be mounted on a truck, skid, or trailer. Its controls may be mounted
in Alberta, moving the technology and equipment to another country is
externally or within the cabin. Its valves may be manually operated
much more complex than simply loading it on a boat and then training
or electric. And its 1,000 gallon tank capacity may be mounted on a
local engineers on how to use it. There are a host of challenges involved,
Mercedes-Benz 8X4 or 8X6 truck chassis.
particularly in a country like China: as a relatively young player in the
Of course, another complication is that every piece of equipment
oil and gas market, it lacks the experience and support infrastructure
that goes to China, modified or otherwise, must be accompanied by
that other oil-producing nations have been developing over decades.
the appropriate manual and training. “Communications is a big chal“It requires a lot of adaptation of the designs we have in North
lenge,” Fossheim says. “We have to prepare our manuals in English and
America to make them suitable for China – the physical size of
Chinese.” Hydra Rig employs several English- and Chinese-speakthe equipment needs to suit their environment, roads and terrain,”
ing people in their engineering group, and they do their own docuFossheim says. In Canada, Hydra Rig might mount a coiled tubing unit
onto a trailer. “But in China, much of the equipment needs to be repack- ment translations in-house. Because, ultimately, whether you’re talking
about engines, operating manuals or nitrogen pumps, sometimes
aged onto smaller vehicles that can better manoeuvre on smaller roads.”
off-the-shelf just won’t get the job done.
Hydra Rig uses Caterpillar engines to power the coil tubing equip-
26
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Winter 2009
www.finning.ca
Portrait: Peter Miller
photograph by brian clarkson
When Peter Miller’s
first job as a Finning
mechanic took him from
Vancouver to MacKenzie,
population 3,000, all of
his shirts were the wrong
colour.
“They were all fancy
colours, and up there it
was nothing but plaid,”
Miller recalls, laughing. “I
stuck out. I remember the
first time I actually went
out the comment was:
‘You’re not from around
here, are you?’”
That was 1983, and
what was supposed to be
a summer job in northern
B.C. lasted seven years
and launched Miller into
his 27-year career with
Finning.
Currently, Miller is
branch manager at the
Cranbrook and Castlegar
locations. Managing
two branches means
Miller drives through the
Kootenay Pass every couple weeks to the smaller
Castlegar branch. The
drive is about 2.5 hours in
the summer, but can take
almost twice as long in the
winter. “You get to be a
good driver,” Miller says.
In nearly three decades
with Finning, Miller
has worked in about 15
branches in B.C. and the
Yukon, filling positions
on both the mechanical
side and in sales. This
unique skill-set makes
Miller a valued leader
who isn’t afraid to get his
hands dirty. “I can help the
mechanics out, I can help
the chargehands, service
billers, sales guys,” Miller
says. “Being at a small
branch, you’ve got to wear
many hats.”
www.finning.ca
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27
Meeting the Challenge
Twinning With Finning
When Dawson Construction began the project to twin the highway in Banff National Park
east of Lake Louise, working in a national park came with unique challenges.
Environmental concerns were foremost. There was no room for error when it came to spills and new
culverts had to account for habitat in the Bow River. Animal underpasses and overpasses were constructed to
give mountain critters a place to cross the highway.
Environmental concerns were simple though, compared to dealing with thousands of summer vacationers.
In peak summer months, up to 60,000 vehicles passed through the job site. “The biggest challenge with any
of these underpasses and overpasses we did in the park was the traffic,” says project superintendent Bob
Froess. “Stopping traffic was out of the question. If we ever did, it would be backed up for miles.”
To complete the challenging job, Dawson Construction turned to Finning. It provided field service technicians from Golden, B.C. to keep things running smoothly and extra rental equipment when it was needed.
Dawson also got some help from Ed Lingel, Finning major accounts manager at the Kamploops branch,
who tracked down two used D9N
dozers at a nearby pulp mill for the
project. After a month of retrofits in
the Finning shop, the dozers were
ready for a new life in the construction industry.
1) PASS UNDER: A Cat roller
smoothes soil in front of an
animal underpass, which will
allow animals to cross the busy
Trans-Canada Highway safely.
2) SOIL UP TOP: A Cat dozer
grades the topsoil on an animal
overpass. Finning’s Kamloops
branch helped retrofit two used
dozers from a pulp and paper
mill for the project. ”The dozers
have been an excellent addition
to the fleet for Dawson, and have
proved themselves as dependable work-worthy bulldozers,”
says Kamloops major accounts
manager Ed Lingel.
3) FISH FIRST: Dawson
Construction employees work
on a culvert near the Bow River.
Dawson worked closely with
Parks Canada during the twinning
project to ensure culverts didn’t
damage the delicate riverbank
ecosystem.
4) PASS OVER: Construction
begins on the second of two
animal overpasses. This steel arch
will be covered with one metre of
topsoil and landscaped with grass
and trees.
5) WEATHERPROOFING:
Workers roll out a waterproof
membrane that goes on top of the
steel overpass, but underneath
the soil, grass and other vegetation that will make the overpass
an attractive path for animals.
28
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
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www.finning.ca
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29
BUILDING THE
Moving mountains is part of everyday
work as North Construction prepares
the slopes for Vancouver 2010
K
evin Webb may not be a
Lycra-clad aerial skier or a snowboarder with breakfast cereal endorsement contracts, but he is an integral part
of the 2010 Vancouver/Whistler winter Olympic
experience. Athletes and fans who descend on the
West Coast in February can thank Webb and his heavy
construction contracting company for many of the perfect
slopes that make the world’s most famous sports competition
possible.
Webb is president and founder of North Construction, an industry
leader in “extreme” mountain terrain construction. It specializes in
road construction through mountain corridors, civil construction in
steep and challenging landscapes and – its forte – ski area construction and development.
North’s team of earthmoving experts excels at jobs that make
most contractors nervous. In the past decade, North has worked on
slopes and lifts at Whistler Blackcomb, Grouse Mountain, Revelstoke
Mountain Resort, and is involved in the initial stages of the proposed
Garibaldi at Squamish ski resort.
It helps that Webb is a skier and mountain biker himself. He knows
what makes a good run, and he loves that other athletes can benefit
from his work. So it was only natural that when VANOC needed
new runs for the 2010 Olympic events venues, North Construction
got the call.
North started working on Cypress Mountain’s Olympic venues in
May 2006. Cypress Mountain’s terrain and lay-of-the-land was already
well-known to Webb and his staff. North has helped test, create and
carve ski trails from the Cypress Provincial Park wilderness since 1998.
In fact, Webb skied many of the Olympic slopes at Cypress long before
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Winter 2009
by Katherine Fawcett
they were
ever designated as runs.
The work for
VANOC included
building venues for freestyle skiing and snowboarding events. They also laid media
and timing cables and other lines
that will help broadcast and officiate
Olympic competitions from what used to be
isolated alpine wilderness. The work has a price
tag of approximately $14.6 million, a cost shared by the
federal and provincial governments.
Each venue had its own set of demands, with some slopes exceeding 50 per cent grades, and an extremely particular set of design
standards. However, Webb says that working with the people at
VANOC and Cypress Mountain was an excellent experience.
“There were lots of challenges, sure,” Webb says. “But VANOC’s
construction team was very flexible and easy to work with. There’s
a high level of scrutiny and a higher profile when you’re working
on an Olympic site, but we’re used to high quality control.”
To meet stringent Olympic standards, project manager Ian
Lacoursiere says the half-pipe, mogul and ski-jump courses
were “fine-tuned plus or minus a couple of inches. On regular slopes, we normally make it more fluid so skiers can
enjoy the ride, but these had to be very exact.”
In all its work, North employs state-of-the-art survey
technology, including laser, robotic total stations and
GPS tools to ensure precision.
www.finning.ca
READY TO ROLL: PM technician
Mike Todd performs a readiness
inspection
Mountain Cats:
Top: Preparation for a
cellphone tower, Black
Tusk Mountain.
Right: Top terminal site
preparations for Symphony
Chair, Whistler Mountain.
www.finning.ca
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Building the Olympic Dream
SKI EVENTS
Moguls requires a bumpy course with
two jumps. The course required blasting
and levelling to achieve a consistent pitch.
Extra welded tabs – ice cleats – helped the
excavators maintain traction on slopes of over
50 per cent.
Aerials requires the same pitch as the
moguls until the jump section, which was built
on levelled ground. A steep slope below the jump
allows skiers to land smoothly.
Ski Cross features four skiers racing elbow-toelbow down a steep, winding course with jumps, rollers, berms and tabletops. North did extensive surveying
on this course so layout conformed to specifications and
no one competitor will have any advantage.
SNOWBOARD EVENTS
STEEP SLOPE: Initial construction
work on the 2010 parallel giant slalom
course at Cypress Mountain.
“No one
specializes the way
we do,” Lacoursiere said.
He credits the company’s success
to experienced operators. “A lot of our guys have 20-plus years
sitting in that seat. These guys don’t have fears. They know what
their equipment can do.”
Webb agrees. “It’s not just the ability to cling to the hillside,”
he says, describing his best operators. “It’s also about being able to
understand the end goal, to know what client is looking for. This is a
team-based company, and a lot of our operators are brought in during
the planning stages.” The operators are consulted for their opinions on
what kind of work is possible. “They only do what they are comfortable
with,” Webb says. “They are never forced to do anything. We don’t run
with a large supervisory staff. For the most part, it’s the guys who are
out there that are making the decisions.”
North has a core of about 15 key staff, with an additional 25 to 35
employees hired during peak times. Derek Coolen is one of those “key”
operators. His prowess on an excavator is legendary. With 20 years of
experience, Coolen says the challenge of working in extreme mountain
terrain keeps him motivated. “You must get to know your equipment
very well,” he says. “It takes time, but that’s the fun part about running
equipment, putting it to its extreme limits.”
The aerial and mogul runs were “intense” to create. “It’s mainly getting rid of wood, bringing it to be chipped up,” he says. “There was a
lot of blasting. Navigating the slope safely takes patience and technical
know-how. You build yourself a bench and come down safely that way.”
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tracks & treads
Winter 2009
Halfpipe takes place in a half-cylinder-shaped course, which is 170
metres long with 6.7-metre walls dug deep into the hill. The 2010 Olympic
halfpipe was the biggest of its kind in the world when it was built.
Parallel Giant Slalom features head-to-head races down the
mountain. The upper section of the PGS features banked, side-by-side,
symmetrical S-curves and the course was North’s biggest Olympic project
on Cypress Mountain.
Snowboard Cross is similar to ski cross. It is a recent addition to the
Olympic Games, 2006 being its first year as an official event.
Coolen says there were times when the machine started to slide
down steep mountain slopes. When that happened, Coolen says he
would either throw the bucket down or wait for the ground to level
out and the tracks to grab hold. Some slopes required tail-holding.
“There’s always challenging situations, but I’ve never been in a panic.”
Machine maintenance can be an issue when you’re working on
mountain tops, says Coolen. North relies on Finning mechanics Scott Turrin from nearby Pemberton and Doug Fenton from
Squamish, who are transported to job sites by helicopter to keep
the machines purring.
“Those guys are great,” says Webb. “Downtime is a killer, and they
literally move mountains to help us… I can’t say enough about the
knowledge they have and the working relationships they’ve developed
with our operators.”
The North Construction team got a glimpse of its work in action
at a World Cup event held last February at Cypress. The courses drew
rave reviews from future and potential Olympians, organizers and
fans. Watching aerial skiers fly down the run, up a ramp, flip through
the air, and land on another of "their" slopes had special meaning for
the whole North Construction team.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of pride,” said Webb. “It’s a good feeling.”
www.finning.ca
www.finning.ca
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Count on Us
THE TEST OF TIME
“$150 a year brings big savings in downtime,” promises
the 1964 Finning ad that accompanied the above photo.
The topic of the ad was preventive maintenance. For
$150 a year, or $25 per machine, a Finning mechanic
would inspect machines at regular intervals to measure
wear, test adjustments, and service components. The
program ensured worry-free operating and increased
machine efficiency. Fast forward 45 years and the
machines have changed, but Finning’s level of service
hasn’t. Preventive maintenance is still the best way to
keep your yellow iron running. Like Finning said in its
1964 advertisement: “The cost is small; results are big.”
34
tracks & treads
Winter 2009
www.finning.ca
Holiday Gift Ideas
www.heavydutygear.ca
Work Smarter,
Not Harder
Receive $1000 toward your 2nd work tool
purchase with the purchase of your new
machine. See your Finning sales representative
for complete details.
*
Machine versatility is the key to maximizing productivity - using the
right tool for the job saves time and money. Tackle a wide range of
demanding construction and industrial applications with performance-matching Cat work tools. For even greater flexibility, many
of these work tools can be used on other Cat compact equipment,
including compact wheel loaders.
With well over 30 different applications, we’re sure we have the right
tool for your job.
Ask your sales representative about your specific application.
* $1000 credit may not be applied to previous purchases or work orders. Coupon
must be submitted at time of original purchase in order to be credited to account.
Program ends December 31, 2009. Cannot be combined with any other offers.
1-888-finning | finning.ca
(346-6464)