Provincial Engineering & Geoscience Week

4 | W i n n i P E g F r E E P r E S S P R O v I N c I A L E N G I N E E R I N G & G E O S c I E N c E W E E k M otor Coach Industries was founded in Winnipeg in 1941 and today employs close to 1,000 people at its operation here and they're looking for a few more good employees, engineers specifically, who would be in for the long haul with MCI. MCI, which manufactures both luxury and long-haul coaches, is looking for up to a dozen engineers of various disciplines to work in Winnipeg. Denis Sutton, vice president of MCI, said in recent years the company has been making and selling approximately 800 coaches each year. A shift to a more efficient business model has had great success and driven the need for additional engineering staff. "We're coming off a good year last year. We're investing in our facility, we're investing in our design for the coach and as a result of that we have increased our resources in the engineering side of our house," Sutton said. "Highly talented people of any discipline are pretty hard to find these days, it's a pretty competitive world out there for talent. So we're looking for engineers… across the spectrum — engineers recently out of school, seasoned engineers, engineers in some respect (who) might even be in supervisor, managerial-type positions." MCI manufactures the J Coach, a luxury liner sold for the most part into the private sector to tour operators and the like, and the D Coach, which Sutton described as their utility coach, used by long-haul carriers, such as Greyhound. He said the D Coach is also purchased by public-sector entities that move commuters, one of their big clients being GO Transit in Toronto. J.P. Pelletier, MCI's executive director of design engineering, said MCI is a great place to be and the ownership has its eye on the future. "There's an investment in our future being made by our owners so the business is very stable and strong now. That's mainly due to the focus of our owners on our operations running in a world-class way. It's not just because of increased sales, it's because of how we're running the operation now," Pelletier said. "They've recognized that the next step after investing in our facilities and our manufacturing processes, they're investing in the design, which is the future. "We have several significant and exciting product-development projects for the future that we're working on right now." Though Pelletier couldn't divulge exactly what new developments MCI is working on — for competitive reasons — he did say they're "new features and systems for our coaches." Jim Macdonald, executive director of manufacturing engineering for MCI, said they're looking to hire engineers or technologists for the Winnipeg operation in three disciplines — manufacturing, design and electrical. Manufacturing engineers or technologists would need training or experience in >> Get on board success sees mci put out caLL for engineers By Donna Maxwell for the Free Press "We're working hard to make this a place where people enjoy working and they want to come to work. We're really a friendly employment culture where we want people to come and apply their creative thoughts. We're looking to do new and novel things with the product that we make." a welder works on a bus frame at mci in Winnipeg. Jason Halstead

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