338 Chapter 11 Temperature and Temperature-Related Parameters
John Mann
When I graduated as a Bachelor of Applied
Science — Chemical Engineering from the
University of Toronto in 1979, the job sit-
uation for young engineers in my field was
very similar to the opportunities today. The
oil industry in Canada was booming, with
significant refinery expansion and the development of
upgraders to extract oil from Alberta’s tar sands via the
Syncrude project. That boom subsided, but as world oil
prices have increased again, the oil sands are the subject
of renewed attention as a reliable energy resource for the
North American market. It promises to be an exciting
time for engineers in the oil industry.
My fascination with science was sparked by the
achievements of the U.S. space program in the 1960s
and 1970s. An insightful high school guidance coun-
selor noted my interest in math and science and steered
me toward chemical engineering as a career choice.
After four years at the University of Toronto, I joined
Imperial Oil (Esso Canada). Much of my work focused
on debottlenecking and increasing capacity at the com-
pany’s Vancouver refinery. This was a great opportunity
to go into and study the whole refinery from end to
end, learning about every process at a detailed level.
From there I spent five years at the Sarnia, Ontario
refinery as part of a task force analyzing ways to improve
safety, reliability, and efficiency. Then it was back to
head office in Toronto, working on process simulation.
My section was reorganized into corporate IT, so there
were new opportunities for training in areas such as
database design, data flow diagrams, and modeling
design, including simulating models in plant design.
Esso’s career development and mentoring programs
gave me a solid basis for evaluating economics andworking to schedule in the oil industry. With these skills
I moved to a Canadian consulting company focusing
on designing and developing process plant information
systems in the oil industry. The work often involved
travelling to meet with clients in places such as the
United States, Italy, the Netherlands, France, and the
Middle East. Working for a smaller company meant that
I experienced much more client interaction — making
proposals, designing and quoting on projects, and nego-
tiating contract terms. I was working closely with other
members of the team, but at the same time the job
demanded that I be capable in many different areas. You
could almost call it trial by fire —I was learning on the
job, but enjoyed the challenge of going outside of my
particular “box.”
I am now working for Honeywell Canada as part of
the software development group that adds value to the
process control systems Honeywell is renowned for. We
bring customer requirements into the development pro-
cess, soliciting customer input and extrapolating to the
larger market to genericize processes so that they can
accommodate the different site requirements and work
practices of our clients. I work with software developers
in India and have traveled to support sales efforts and
consult on projects around the world. From a begin-
ning in the oil industry, my travels have taken me to
iron mining in Australia, aluminum smelting in Argen-
tina, and phosphate mining in Northern Ontario.
To engineering students today, I would say that we
are entering an era in which resources are becoming
more and more valuable. There will be a strong demand
for a long time to come. Harnessing resources more
effectively, with less pollution, will be thechallenge for
the foreseeable future.Professional Profile
Source:Courtesy of John Mann
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