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 B usiness is booming for New Flyer Industries and Motor Coach Industries, and a steady influx of talented engineers is needed to keep up with the growing demand. They continue to steer along a successful path as North America's top manufacturers of transit buses and motor coaches. And since Motor Coach Industries (MCI) became part of the New Flyer group a little over a year ago, even more opportunities exist for engineers to cruise down the road to a rewarding career. Currently, MCI is looking to hire 25 engineers in Winnipeg while New Flyer needs another 10 for a grand total of 35 engineers needed locally. The New Flyer organization, founded in Winnipeg in 1930, manufactures low-floor transit buses between 40 and 60 feet long, mainly for use within cities. Meanwhile MCI, founded in Winnipeg in 1933, creates the highway cousin of the transit bus. Its vehicles are typically 45 feet long and are used to travel longer distances throughout North America. MCI president Ian Smart provides a well-rounded perspective of both areas since he recently transitioned from New Flyer. "Both businesses design the vehicle literally from the ground up. We deal with everything from the design and initial testing of the vehicle all the way to supporting it through its useful life in our customers' environment — whether that's a transit environment or highway coach," Smart said. "Most of the engineering work is done for both companies here in Winnipeg, so as you walk through an engineering department either at MCI or New Flyer, you'll find a lot of U of M grads." As an engineer himself, Smart has appreciated the opportunity to get involved and learn about each step of the process. "You go to engineering school with the view that you're going to design things and make the world a better place," he said. "Then when you actually get the opportunity to see engineers doing that — designing something on a clean sheet of paper and taking that through to fruition — it's a pretty rewarding experience." With all the new transportation technologies, environmental standards and regulatory requirements, engineering opportunities continue to expand. "As vehicles become more advanced and complex, there's a tremendous amount of engineering work to be done. In MCI right now, we're designing our next-generation vehicles to support customers and adding new products to our portfolio. It's certainly an exciting time to be part of our engineering and marketing organization," Smart said. "In the case of MCI, we're designing a 35-foot coach. We've also announced that we're in the process of designing a battery electric coach as well. Both of those represent some new technical challenges from how the vehicle operates to how the systems on it are supported. The scale of product renewal that we're undergoing right now is a once-in-20- year update. From an engineering perspective, it's a great place to be. There's plenty of opportunity to move vertically in the company and into management." Chris Stoddart, New Flyer's senior vice-president of engineering and customer service, also sees a positive shift in the industry. "I think this is probably one of the most exciting times in the sector of transportation right now because there's so much new technology coming down the pipeline. We're just on the cusp of it, in particular electric propulsion and battery-electric vehicles. The next thing that's coming down the road is autonomous driving where the vehicle can drive itself," he said. "We're just into the first few years of having onboard vehicle telematics where you can see what's going on in the bus real time over the Internet to diagnose any problems and get particular information off the vehicle to help make it better." An explosion of technical resources will be required to match this technology road map, he noted. "It's not only the traditional areas of mechanical engineering and electrical engineering but there's a whole new world of software engineering. That's a skill set that has existed Engineers in demand at New Flyer and Motor Coach industries By Jennifer McFee for the Free Press

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