ASET Technology Alberta Winter 2022 - 25

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Since leaving school, Earle's efforts have been directed in
large part to the crucial arm of sustainable transition. " My
very first projects out of school were existing plant modifications,
often to reduce emissions, " she says. " Then there's
been facility development to produce things like ultra low
sulfur diesel, which is intended to reduce the amount of sulfur
emissions into the atmosphere, and later, liquefied natural
gas (LNG). "
Her first exposure to this type of work sent her almost
straight out the doors of SAIT directly into the frigid climes
of Northern Alberta.
" I was asked to go take a site assignment. And so here I was
a junior, barely in my 20s, working very far from home on a
fly-in, fly-out basis, in a very isolated, very cold place. And I
did that for about a year, " she says.
" Back in those days you would actively comb through every
aspect of the piping at the facility, " Earle recalls, " planning a
bunch of tie-ins for a big turnaround and expansion that the
facility was planning. "
That trial by icy pipe rack caused a fundamental internal
change, giving Earle a completely different outlook on the design
of complex projects, based on their physical closeness.
" You can touch and feel and smell everything that you're doing,
and you have daily conversations with the people who
are operating and maintaining it, " she says. " Inherently, you
absorb that information almost into your bones. You begin
to know how not to put a weld in a place that's ergonomically
impossible to locate, and you might not have that sixth
sense if you've only viewed it on a computer screen. "
After that first site assignment up north, Earle and her husband
travelled east to Lloydminster, where they lived for five
years. There, they went back and forth between sites on a
regular basis. Earle added further to her robust knowledge
about facilities, their construction and their operation.
In the ensuing years, Earle took on
more supervisory positions at Fluor.
She transitioned from piping design, to
discipline management, to engineering
management, utilizing the P.Tech.
designation to boost the shift.
" I graduated from piping, a single discipline, to team management
of multiple disciplines. At
that point,
it became more
important to have that recognized status of practicing independently,
as I was managing a complex and diverse team. It
involved responsibility for the entire facility layout, " she explains.
" It kind of elevated that technologist perspective, to a highly
specialized person who can practice within a specified
scope, " she says.
Recently, Earle has revisited her roots in piping as a department
manager at Fluor, working on staffing support, training,
hiring, recruitment and other operational duties. She
additionally provides global management at some of Fluor's
offices around the world.
" My role there is to look after our training, our procedures,
things that assure people are doing work the right way and
producing the correct results, respecting the design bases,
respecting the codes, and the project requirements, " she says.
" That all has very much to do with what a technologist does
here in Alberta. But in that role, I'm caring for not only the
designers and technologists, also the application specialists,
stress engineers, material engineers, and material controllers, "
she says.
Such an arrangement might fly in the face of certain notions
about organizational hierarchy, Earle notes.
" I used to have this assumption that engineers are in charge
and technologists report to them. In piping and plant layout
that's not necessarily the case. We work together as a team,
and we have different skills that we bring. "
Even with such a breadth of experience in piping under her
belt, Earle still finds herself being pleasantly surprised by
the challenges that pop up.
" The thing I love about it is, you can never do the same thing
twice. It's always a new design challenge. There's no such
thing as coming to work and punching a card and doing the
same thing over and over again. With piping design, it's always
something new. The technology is always evolving.
There's always a new challenge; you could move from revamping
an existing facility to creating something new from
scratch, " she explains.
" You're always learning and you're always growing your
body of knowledge and expertise, and that's something that
I find personally very satisfying. "
TECHNOLOGY ALBERTA | WINTER 2022 | 25
ASET Technology Alberta Winter 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ASET Technology Alberta Winter 2022
