Category: Work-Experience

I managed a group of 10-12 software developers – engineers and CompSci grads of varying experience and confidence.  It was quite a change to see the railroad industry perspective.  There’s a lot of opportunity in the railroad industry, for sure, and Wabtec is well placed to provide solutions!  The Wabtec Winnipeg group makes some cool products, basically hardened network infrastructure, internal/external communications, sensors, and edge computing resources for the locomotive.

During my time at Wabtec, one of our brilliant junior engineers went off to work at Tesla Motors, so sad.  On the other hand, I was asked to hire three more people, which I did in December 2019/January 2020.

Unfortunately, during the recession connected to the COVID-19 pandemic, locomotive sales declined, and this had a big impact on Wabtec.  A large number of staff were laid off in June 2020, including me.  You never know what the future will bring!

NxtPhase acquired the APT Division of Vansco on January 1st, 2001, and I went with the sale.  NxtPhase was venture capital funded, and ran into cash troubles repeatedly.  In June 2003, they announced a plan to move its Winnipeg operations to Vancouver in May 2004.  I was asked to move, but advised of my intention to seek a termination instead of moving.  In December 2003, they decided to cancel the move.

I decided to do consulting instead.  A former colleague joined with me and we created Elecsys Solutions Inc.

I joined Vansco as its 2nd employee on December 3rd, 1980.  I was in first year Engineering at the time, and worked part time.

I was hired to build turn signal flashers for Versatile tractors, but was not very good at soldering.  They gave me the opportunity to design some circuits, and I was very good at that.