From skyscrapers to towering pines

May 28, 2015 4:53 pm Published by Tanner Linssen 1 Comment

Transitioning back from the skyscrapers of Montreal to the towering spruce and pine of Grande Prairie, Alberta has always been a welcomed experience for me. After finishing a fourth year (out of five) of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University, I packed up my summer clothes and headed home for another internship at the always inviting Weyerhaeuser pulp mill. Although I’m just finishing up the first couple weeks of my engineering internship here, hardly more than four months ago I was finishing eight months of interning at the very same mill. But that’s not the extent of my relationship with Weyerhaeuser, besides a summer student position as a planar mill operator two years back, my father worked here and my grandfather before him. That may sound like I should have some sort of legacy around here but it seems as though having generations working here is the norm. If that’s not a testament to the quality, employee care and overall family vibe of this particular mill, I don’t know what is. As such, I am back again for what I’m sure will be another exciting, career-building internship and look forward to telling you all about it.

One of the things I most enjoy about interning here is the diversity of work that I receive and the willingness of my colleagues to help make sure I have what I need to do each job to my full potential. One of my most frequent projects in my previous stint here, and my first job so far, has been the design of various guards. Part of Weyerhaeuser’s commitment to safety has resulted in a massive guarding audit and implementation of safer guarding throughout the mill. Lots of the design and CAD work for these guards has been handed off to me, which has given me the opportunity to tour a million different places in the mill to measure and conceptualize the future guard. It may be small but there was a certain sense of accomplishment as I walked through the mill again and saw my past guard drawings transformed into something real. I’m quite eager to see what will come of my work this time.

While the design of all this guarding has given me a chance to brush up of my CAD skills and interact with a host of different welders and machinists working within the mill, the truly interesting part is in the projects that I have done in the past and the ones that have been assigned to me this time around. There are a few main projects that I have been tasked with the cost estimates, planning and implementation of. The first of which involves creating a new piping system tied into a different line, twisting and turning around the rat’s nest of existing pipe, through a floor or two and into a giant washing drum. The line will allow for hot filtrate water to be put into the washer instead of the much colder mill water that is currently pumped up from the river. This allows us to cut back on not only our water usage from Wapiti River but also saves us the huge energy costs of heating the colder water, thus bringing us even closer to becoming a truly “green” site.

Not all of my time is spent at work, fortunately, I am lucky enough to have found such a wonderful internship only a short drive from the neighborhood I grew up in and some of the best friends a guy could ask for. If I’m not at work, I’m out with my friends; longboarding, motorcycling, boating or just catching up from all the time I’ve spent away. I can’t wait for all the summer adventures to come and hope to tell you all about them, but for now I’m headed to work!