Hannah Sutherland (BScEng'10) didn’t realize when she took a co-op engineering position at McCain Foods in Florenceville that she’d one day be managing multi-million dollar projects in countries around the world for the food giant.
A Woodstock, New Brunswick native, Hannah transferred to the UNB mechanical engineering program from UPEI in 2007 and knew right away that she wanted to participate in co-op work placements during her studies. She says that applying the knowledge she was learning in the real world gave her a whole different view on engineering and allowed her to understand what kind of job she wanted to pursue. That turned out to be project management. “I worked at Shell in Alberta for a summer and then at McCain Foods in Florenceville for an eight-month and four-month co-op term while I was doing my degree at UNB,” Hannah explains. “I realized during that time that project management was a good use of my skill set and that I really liked the pace and the camaraderie of working with a team of people on every stage of a project.”
Her co-op placements were good for something else too: both Shell and McCain offered her full-time positions at graduation. She went to work in the engineering group at McCain and began travelling to factories across Canada to manage small projects like rebuilding pieces of equipment. She loved it, and it must have shown, because three years into the job the Vice-President of Global Engineering, Lloyd Borowski, popped his head into her cubicle and asked, “Want to go to India?” Since then, Hannah has had a whirlwind experience taking on larger projects in countries around the world where McCain operates.
At just 26 years old, she moved to the Ahmedabad area of India to help manage building a new factory from the ground up. For 14 months, she was in charge of the day-to-day construction, including budgeting and resource management of the $65-million project.
“It was a game changer for me. There was definitely culture shock, coming from Carleton County, New Brunswick, but I learned to work in a new culture with some frustrations and many rewards. I grew so much from that experience.” She was fortunate to be able to travel around India, as well as Vietnam, Thailand and Nepal. “My family was nervous when I first moved there. But they realized, as I did, that I could do it. We even became closer because we Skyped all the time.”
After a few months stationed back in Florenceville, Borowski again offered her a project manager position at a global corporate site, this time in Argentina. Not long after she began overseeing the building of an automated cold-storage plant in the South American country, she became the regional engineering manager for LATAM. “It was a great and challenging experience. I needed to learn a whole new language and become fluent in working at the construction site in Spanish. I learned a great deal from this project.” Again, Hannah was able to travel around beautiful Argentina, as well as Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Columbia. “Travelling in South America and living on the Atlantic Coast was an amazing experience.”
In 2017, a new opportunity arose and Hannah flew to England to interview for the position of project manager, process & utilities on a large project for McCain. She got the job and moved to Scarborough, in North Yorkshire, last March. This is her biggest project yet: a $170-million factory rebuild while still remaining operational. She is in charge of work that accounts for about 80 per cent of the budget, and oversees five project managers looking after new electrical, steam, gas, water, air and process equipment. “This project requires managing and coordinating a lot of details and moving pieces. You need to keep things safe for people and food while in a physically tight location. But despite the obstacles we’re ahead of schedule and on budget.”
"When you’re working on a project, you’re all in the trenches together. You have to be able to communicate.”
When asked how she moved into such big responsibilities so quickly, she modestly replies that 95 per cent of her work is about being good at communication. “I use the technical knowledge learned in school to understand the design process, but it’s being able to build personal relationships that got me where I am today. When you’re working on a project, you’re all in the trenches together. You have to be able to communicate.”
Hannah says she enjoys being a role model for other young women (and men) in the industry. “If you just be yourself and be comfortable and confident in what you know, there are many opportunities.” She says she loves her work as a project manager because she does something different every day and gets to see buildings and factories come to life. Not to mention that she’s been able to see a big chunk of the globe and experience applying her skills - and learning completely new skills - in different cultures.
“I’m so glad I was open to the opportunities that came my way and decided to challenge myself. McCain Foods gave me the chance to prove myself and succeed, with a lot of support along the way.”
