It’s this phrase that we hear throughout our degrees that dictates our obligations as engineers and geologists: “to hold paramount the health, safety and welfare of the public and have regard for the environment.” But then there are the odd few who have taken these words and very intentionally crafted careers for themselves that embody this vision and drive to create a better future for us all. It is my greatest pleasure to introduce to you Dr.Lianne Lefsrud, an Assistant Professor in Engineering Safety and Risk Management. Lianne graduated from the University of Alberta with an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering, an Interdisciplinary Masters in Environmental Engineering and Sociology, and a PhD in Strategic Management and Organization. She followed this with a Post Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Michigan. She now teaches, leads research, and works with corporations to answer the question of how risk management systems can better be designed to manage unforeseen events and mitigate risk.
Finding Your Fit
Lianne has always been keen on diagnosing problems. She’s got an eye for problem solving, a deep curiosity to find the latent causes behind occurrences, and a proven ability to take concepts of high complexity and reduce them to simple principles. Naturally, she thought these skills were best suited for a career in medicine, and so she joined the Faculty of Science with the hopes of becoming a doctor. For Lianne however, the sight of blood and sick people, told a very different story. Perhaps this was not the best fit. And so, with the encouragement of an older brother who had recently graduated Engineering and seemed to have very marketable skills, Lianne saw a future as an Engineer. While she hoped to use her Engineering degree as a stepping stone to becoming an Architect, her plans changed as she learned more about the architect profession. She started to see in engineering however, the opportunities she had initially been looking for elsewhere: to be creative, to diagnose problems, offer prognosis, and to implement solutions. Instead of dealing with blood and sick people however, she would work on something she wasn’t so off put by: infrastructure and communities.
Lianne with Dr. Fred Otto (Dean 1985-1994), Dr. David Lynch (Dean 1994-2015) and Dr. Fraser Forbes (Dean 2015- )
An Array of Experiences
While she found her classes in engineering very structured and by the book, her co-op experiences provided a broader view of where this degree would take her. She worked for corporations like BP and PCL Construction, where she was able to get field experience working in some very remote places. While at PCL, she worked on a highway project in the Northwest Territories, where even as a co-op student, she was given an immense amount of responsibility. She was acting as the project engineer on site, handling payments, getting involved in hiring processes, and the construction workers reported to her! She then went on to do research in Ice Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Faye Hicks. She completed ice surveys on the McKenzie River to better understand the hydrology, ice strength, and flows from the Great Slave Lake. She realized that this river was a major lifeline for northern communities, in that the ferry served as the main connector in the summer months, and the ice road in the winter months. Through this work and her masters, an idea and vision started to emerge: she wanted to design and work on projects that addressed the societal and socioeconomic concerns inside communities.
The Lens for Change
Lianne joined CN Rail as a Project Engineer following her masters, and two derailments in and around the Edson area would prove to be the stepping stones for the lens through which Lianne would implement change. Particularly, the site of a derailment that had killed three people just east of Edson would prompt Lianne to ask the more difficult questions that were racing through her head. As she witnessed the pieces of the crew being swept into dust pans, and teeth and bones being taken for DNA testing to positively ID the crew, Lianne recognized that different corporations have different tolerances for risk. She was curious as to how attitudes regarding safety could be changed, and she began to consider the ways in which we can help prepare for and predict such events. Lianne held many positions throughout her seven years at CN Rail, and in all of them, she was always thinking about and considering the safety culture and how disasters such as this one could be avoided in the first place. Mitigating risk presented the opportunity to save money and save lives, so why weren’t all corporations jumping at the idea?
Organizational Change
Lianne had this vision of transforming safety culture in corporations, but she found it very difficult to do so from the inside of one singular company. She realized that different leaders have different visions and priorities, and that it is hard to affect change as a middle manager without a leader who is a very strong proponent for change. The magnitude of change that she was trying to accomplish would require work from the inside out, and she wanted to be a public advocate for it, without having to filter or silence her voice in the name of keeping an exterior façade. In this pursuit, she took on the role of Assistant Director of Professional Practices with APEGA, and completed a PhD in Business strategy to better understand corporate decision making and organizational change. This led to the research she does now on safety and risk management for corporations such as CN Rail, and teaching for courses such as ENGG 404, ENGG 200, and the Engineering Leadership Lab.
The Challenges
Lianne’s career, however, has not been without her fair share of challenges along the way. It started with working in remote Northwest Territories during her co-op term, where the experience of being a woman on a male-dominated project site was an incredibly lonely one. She didn’t necessarily fit in with the construction crew, and despite their attempts to integrate her in the team, Lianne was always conscious that her personal safety was something she would have to constantly look out for. Then came the struggle of starting a family in the midst of what was also expected to be the peak of her career. She navigated having a newborn baby and moving to a completely new city for work, thousands of miles from her partner and family; being unfairly demoted when she wanted to grow her family; and quitting (despite how hard it was to do) when her work culture was damaging her personal goals. She talks about the struggles that come when we don’t have shared parental leave, and how toxic work cultures can damage our emotional well-beings.
Lianne with her Family.
Your People
Through all of this however, Lianne insists that pushing through it was only possible with the support of an incredible group of females; engineers and scientists like herself, who supported her, saw her, validated her feelings, and lent a helping hand whenever she needed it. Lianne encourages us all to find a clan of people who will support us as we carve our way in this profession.
Lianne with Fellow Engineers, Dr.Margaret-Ann Armour, and The Right Honourable Kim Campbell (19th Prime Minister of Canada).
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Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, Lianne. You are an inspiration to us all.