BOB COLLINS is an Economist and Regional Labor Market Information Coordinator for the Construction Sector Council (CSC), an independent labour/business partnership to address the workforce needs of the Canadian construction industry.  As regional coordinator, Bob is responsible for managing the activities of provincial committees to ensure the development of accurate and reliable labour demand and supply information that describes current and anticipated market conditions for 33 construction crafts by province.  Bob holds a Bachelors of Economics degree from Memorial University of Newfoundland and a Masters in Economics from Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia.

JOHN CRAGER is a Senior Consultant in AP Networks Houston office. He has over 20 years of major project experience covering a very broad footprint of industrial, commercial, and academic leadership roles.  As a senior consultant, John deploys the Turnaround Assistance Program for numerous clients. Most recently, John functioned as the Project lead responsible for the development of a corporate integrated turnaround management system for an international natural gas processing client. His experience in the design and implementation of processes proved invaluable.  John's industrial project experience includes significant leadership and individual contributor experience in turnaround, construction, commissioning, and start-up operations within large process and package gas plants for Air Products, Air Liquide and the US Government. As a lecturer at Texas A&M's Dwight Look College of Engineering, John taught senior level students in the capstone industrial engineering course on developing and maintaining effective quality processes.  Immediately prior to joining AP Networks, John was the Practice Leader for Performance Excellence at the American Productivity & Quality Center, where he specialized in custom benchmarking, process design, and performance measurement projects. His major writing credits include Six Sigma Management: A Guide to Your Journey to Best Practice Processes, Balanced Scorecard: A Guide to Your Journey to Best Practice Processes, Measuring the Impact of Knowledge Management, and Effectively Managing Performance Measurement Systems. John is an active member of the Project Management Institute, is a Six Sigma Master Black Belt and holds a BS in Management from Park University.

FRANK ENGLI is the Turnaround Manager at Imperial Oil Limited - Strathcona Refinery in Edmonton, Alberta and has been with Imperial Oil for over twenty four years at various operating sites.  Over those years, he has been in a number of different positions in engineering, project management, continuous improvement and turnaround and maintenance planning and execution. Mr. Engli has engineering degrees from Universities of Windsor (B.A.Sc.) and Toronto (M.Eng.) and has an MBA from Saint Mary’s University and is a licensed engineer in Alberta and Ontario.

GRANT EPP P.ENG. is the Projects Supervisor at Agrium’s Carseland Nitrogen Operation and is Chairperson for Agrium’s Wholesale Project Network. Mr. Epp graduated from the University of Saskatchewan (1998), and is a registered member with APEGGA. Much of his work focuses on supporting the project group onsite, while continuing to execute projects. Mr. Epp continues striving for better practices, improving project tools, and developing a better understanding work practices of other site groups.

MICHAEL HURLBURT 29 years at Syncrude, 26 of them in maintenance for the Extraction Hydro Maintenance Team, whose primary responsibility is all maintenance on the Slurry Preparation and Hydro Transport Equipment at Base Mine and Aurora. He is presently working as the Maintenance Advisor within this Maintenance group. Originally from Nova Scotia, Michael has worked in construction for a marine based company, building bridges, wharfs and container facilities and was recruited in Halifax by Syncrude in 1980. Michael, his wife and 3 children are involved with community work, presently sitting on the United Way Allocations Committee in Fort McMurray as well as the Ashlar Building Assoc. He is also the joint owner of an M&M Meat Franchise in Sylvan Lake, and looking forward to the new challenges that it will bring. Retirement is on the radar and will certainly miss “Helping to Secure Canada's Energy Future”.

MIKE JOYCE is presently Executive Director Health & Safety Association Network since October 26, 2009.  Executive Director, Manufacturers’ Health & Safety Association from 1992 to 2007.  Retired at the end of 2007.  Sit as Public Member Alberta Occupational Health & Safety Council advising the Minister on health & safety in Alberta.

STEPHEN MCINTOSH is a Planning Team Leader for BP’s Southern Gas Asset in the UK.  Much of his work is focused on logistics 8Q planning and alignment of costs. He has several years experience in all aspects of planning from Maintenance, Tar’s and Major Projects.  During the experience he gained working in Russia for TNK-BP his role was to present the 5 year financial look-ahead for all Greenfield projects to the Management Board; total project value $6 billion.  Mr. McIntosh has also specialized in the management and delivery of Tar’s and with BP’s Chief Technology Office (CTO) he helped develop the “Tar Tracker” He has presented the Tar Tracker to several BP sites around the world.

CHRIS MCKAY has a background in operations.  After eight years as an operator, he has taken on the challenge of his current role—supervising the maintenance planning and scheduling department, as well as being the site Turnaround Coordinator.  Being a new Turnaround Coordinator, and not having much documentation from the last 30 years of turnarounds at his site, Chris has developed a passion for sustainability and business processes with employee buy- in.  He believes business processes must be set up and documented so they are successful and sustainable as employees and management change.

JAMES REYES-PICKNELL helps businesses achieve operational excellence through their people.  He is a founder of Conscious Group Inc. and leads the operations of Conscious Asset Management.  The “Conscious” companies help clients become completely aware of all their choices so they can successfully choose excellence.  His experience in Asset Management spans over 32 years in a wide variety of industries.  James is a published best-selling author, a Certified Management Consultant, Professional Engineer and a teacher.  He consults and teaches Asset Management including classes through the University of Toronto and Edumine in addition to courses taught at a variety of global conferences.  He regularly teaches about PAS 55 (Asset Management), Uptime and RCM.  James is a mechanical engineer, an RCM2 practitioner, a Toastmaster (ACB), frequent public speaker, workshop leader, student and teacher of consciousness.  James background includes service in the Canadian Navy, work in petro-chemicals, shipbuilding, aerospace, engineering and management consulting.  Before starting Conscious Group in 2004, James led the global physical asset management practice of PwC Consulting.  The late John Campbell and John Moubray were his mentors.  James learned from and blended the best of what they both offered with his own experience, expanding on it in the areas of corporate culture and most importantly, individual change as the key to progress.  His most recent book, “Uptime Made Easy” was published in May 2009 and he is a regular columnist for Plant Engineering and Maintenance.

GEORGE VAN DORP has over 29 years experience in the maintenance, turnaround, and construction industry, with 20 of those years spent with Quinn Contracting Ltd. George holds four provincial and inter-provincial journeyman status certifications. He has also received numerous technical and supervisory certificates related to industry.  Prior to his present assignment as Vice President People Services, George has held the positions of Plant Coordinator, Site Coordinator, and General Manager for the Parkland District. Through past and present roles George has gained extensive experience in the Human Resource and the Health, Safety and Environmental fields that contributes significantly to the success of our industry. As the Vice President of People Services, George is responsible for the ongoing development and continuous improvement of activities carried out in the Human Resources, and Health, Safety, and Environment departments.

JOHN WITTIG is Shutdowns Superintendent at the Xstrata Copper, Kidd Metallurgical Site, (Timmins, Ontario) where he manages the best practice approach to Shutdown preparation through execution of Major Zinc  and Copper Outages.  John is a Professional Engineer and a 6-sigma Brown Belt, having received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Waterloo. He has served in various management capacities for over 20 years in Manufacturing, Utility and Mining sectors including Chrysler, Ontario Hydro and Falconbridge. During the past 13 years, John has served with Xstrata Copper (Falconbridge) in senior management roles supporting Operations/Maintenance and the $600M Kidd Mine D Expansion Project. His strong background in Project and Construction Management combined with solid maintenance and engineering knowledge has provided a solid foundation in raising the bar for shutdown excellence within Xstrata while setting new benchmarks in Shutdown Performance Industry Wide. John has recently led key Divisional strategic projects including Sites Manager for Sites ERP Implementation and Project Manager for the 2.7MTPY sustainable concentrator performance initiative.

KEN YURKIW has over 28 years of experience in the petrochemical industry and is the Turnaround Process Development Manager for Suncor – Oilsands.  Since joining Suncor in 2006, he has worked on two major turnarounds.  In 2007, he was the Turnaround Manager with the Major Projects Group that completed a capital integration project in Upgrader 2 that topped 1.25 MM craft hours during the shutdown period.  In 2008, he was the Support Manager for the Upgrading 1 Turnaround, a maintenance driven project that saw 600,000 hours in the window.  Ken is currently leading the Turnaround Process Development Project, an initiative focused on institutionalizing a world class methodology for turnarounds and outages.  Prior to joining Suncor, Ken worked for Dow Chemical in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta.  In his 25 years with Dow, he gained extensive experience in Operations, Maintenance, Construction and Turnarounds and as an advocate of continuous improvement made significant contribution in establishing the company’s corporate asset management best practices for maintenance and turnarounds.  Ken led the Light Hydrocarbons 1 turnaround in 2004 that saw over 500,000 hrs of activity completed without a medical aid or lost time incident.  His last position held with Dow Chemical was Maintenance Leader for the unallocated businesses.