Mike: Good afternoon and evening. My name is Mike Kilburn. I am the VP of Regional Governance for North America at ICXA. I am joined today by Spencer and Daryl from Graham’s Technical Services group for a commissioning conversation.
Great to have you here, gents. Why don’t you give us a little background on Graham and yourselves?
Daryl: I will start with a little background on Graham. We are a fully employee-owned company, and we have just celebrated our 100-year milestone. Our home base is in Saskatchewan, with our corporate office in Calgary.
We are a multidisciplinary construction company working across multiple industries, which has brought the two of us onto this call with you today, Mike. We do everything from road repairs and rip-and-replace work to heavy earthworks, heavy civil work, concrete, and anything from the anchor bolts up.
Our work extends from commissioning back through construction, whether you call it EIC or SMPEI. We work with mechanical, electrical, piping, and control systems. We build and construct them, turn them on, turn them over, and, in some cases, operate them.
We have been around for 100 years, and this is part of that evolution. Spencer and I work within the Technical Services group. My name is Daryl Chipman. I have been with Graham for 12 years and in the industry for just over 20 years.
I worked as a subcontractor to Graham for a number of years before joining 12 years ago, in a slightly different capacity. Through various roles and exciting career opportunities, I have taken on the challenge of tackling complex projects with complex problems and needs. A huge part of that is commissioning.
I am looking forward to this conversation. Spencer, I will hand it over to you.
Spencer: Sure. I am Spencer Yardick. I have been with Graham for almost 11 years and in the industry for 12. I am now a Technical Services Manager with Graham. I started in Edmonton, primarily on oil and gas projects.
That is where I gained much of my early experience on the construction side, working for our industrial clients. Over time, I moved into other divisions: pharmaceuticals, mining, back to pharmaceuticals, and, most recently, electrical utilities in Calgary.
I have been all over during my 10 or 11 years with Graham and am looking to do more. I am getting ready to move into our water division now. All our divisions are rapidly expanding their capabilities, commissioning needs, and what we can deliver to our longstanding clients. That has created room for growth and exciting new opportunities.
Mike: That is amazing. As you said, Graham has been delivering projects for over 100 years, which is a huge feather in its cap, and it continues to evolve with the industries and communities you serve. What made becoming a corporate member of ICxA a natural fit for Graham at this point in the journey?
Spencer: As you said, 100 years. We do a lot of work with recurring clients, especially in oil and gas and on some of our heavy infrastructure projects.
While we have 100 years of experience, one of the things we have seen more recently is a shift in some sectors. Clients are looking to move some commissioning responsibilities to third parties or, in our case, to the contractor. We have seen increased responsibilities and requests from clients in a short period of time.
Some of the tools and resources we found early on after joining ICxA have been significant for us. They are helping us quickly adopt these processes and incorporate them into the way we do business.
It has been a good fit as we grow as a group and continue to provide new capabilities to the same clients we have been working with for many years, in some cases upwards of 100 years.
Daryl: I can build on that, Mike. As Spencer was suggesting, the industry has evolved in a similar way to what happened about 20 years ago, when we were going through a substantial boom cycle and quality and safety were being established as distinct functions within each project.
Commissioning is the natural next stage of that evolution. With ICxA, we saw the ISO certifications it has been pursuing and its work with ISO as something natural to draw on. The hard work others had done was available to share with an organization like Graham.
We could draw on knowledge from external members who were professionals in those areas of construction, while building on our internal processes without disrupting the approach we had developed through 20 years of evolution in quality.
We are absorbing a functional approach and an operating manual that help us describe how we do things to clients and get their buy-in. The additional benefits of industry recognition, industry partners, and other major contractors participating in ICxA made it feel like a natural fit and the right thing to do.
Mike: Definitely. That evolution you described from 20 years ago keeps going. With things like AI, it continues to evolve. When Graham looks at an organization like ICxA, what value do you see in having an independent professional body focused specifically on advancing commissioning, assurance, competency, and industry best practices?
Daryl: You have this one, Spencer.
Spencer: As we mentioned, our different divisions have their own clients and ways of executing work. The boundaries can change from project to project. Daryl and I work in Technical Services, so we move around based on project needs.
You can move from one division to another within the same year, working on similar scopes but having to approach them differently. It depends on who owns certain aspects of commissioning: the owner, Graham, or a separate third party on site.
Going through ICxA’s material, there is an overarching approach: regardless of who is responsible for particular tasks, this is how we do things. We have found that useful for standardizing our internal processes and applying them regardless of which part of a project we own.
For example, getting scheduling milestones into the project early enough is important regardless of who is responsible for those milestones. Having those inputs during design applies across the board.
For us, the value is in taking ICxA’s standardized processes and mindset and applying them across the business. Different groups will use some parts more than others, but overall, it is a consistent approach to how we work going forward. We saw an amazing amount of value in ICxA’s material.
Daryl: I will add to that. You mentioned independence, and 90% of the time it is built into the contract as well. It is the same reason we do not have construction teams accepting their own work or essentially performing their own quality checks. A project organizational chart typically has the quality team as an independent arm of the construction project.
Commissioning represents that next stage of evolution. We have an independent arm of technical professionals who can speak to the client in the language of turning things on and, in cases such as our water group, operating a facility over a period of time.
Independence is a critical element of successful commissioning. It allows the team performing commissioning to focus on that work, with less emphasis on simply getting finished and leaving. The focus is that the facility has to operate. The independent element is probably the most critical.
Mike: That is great. I see Graham as an integrator, involved in projects from early planning and construction through commissioning, start-up, and ultimately operations. From your perspective, how important is bringing commissioning thinking into a project early, rather than treating it as something that happens at the end of construction?
Spencer: Daryl and I have both been on jobs where we had to rebaseline schedules. Sometimes we were not responsible for commissioning, and sometimes we owned it. We have seen both situations: you reach a point in the job where commissioning was not a focus early enough, and the project has to go through a significant rescheduling exercise.
Nobody is happy when that happens, whether it is Graham owning the work or the end client facing a new schedule with a date they were not prepared to see.
When you experience the headaches and heartaches that come with those situations, it naturally shifts the focus of the whole team. If we had a chance to do it again, there would be certain milestones and exercises we would put much earlier in the project.
We had already started updating our processes so that commissioning milestones were included in design reviews and at particular stages of design. Keeping commissioning in mind allows construction to flow smoothly into commissioning, instead of reaching a dead stop.
When we joined ICxA, we found the same mentality: many of those markers need to be hit early in a project, whether or not commissioning execution feels close. You still need to plan for it just as carefully as you plan for mechanical or construction completion.
Mike: Absolutely. I think we have all come away from projects with scars or memories of fighting to get commissioning involved early and then having to deal with it at the end.
As you said, we have grown as an industry, and Graham has grown in the work it takes on. Projects have become larger, more technically complex, and involve more stakeholders. What role do you see strong commissioning leadership playing in reducing risk and achieving successful project outcomes?
Daryl: With these larger, more complex projects, shifting from simply building to building with the end in mind is a necessary evolution. Construction teams need to understand that facilities must be built and must also work.
We have seen that involving commissioning leadership early enables creativity when you encounter an issue that seems difficult to overcome in how something works or is supposed to work. Your commissioning team can provide an operational perspective and options for overcoming those hurdles.
It is similar to quality. Twenty years ago, we fought against our quality teams. Now, when we reach an impasse in construction because we cannot build something exactly as the drawings or specifications show, the quality team is part of the process of determining what can be accepted.
There are industry-standard practices and methods we can apply to a particular problem. We can look at the options and ask what the client will accept. We can overcome barriers in commissioning in the same way. If we are supposed to meet performance requirement X but cannot seem to get there, what are our options?
In many cases, the commissioning team are the nerds of the group who like turning things on. They can provide a perspective that helps make things function and work, getting the project moving again.
They are part of the team and can provide solutions to construction. Once construction teams began seeing it that way, we saw much more success at the end of projects through that philosophy of building with the end in mind.
Mike: I think collaboration and partnership are key to ensuring that a project’s intent is met. From your standpoint, how important is collaboration between owners, designers, constructors, commissioning teams, and operations personnel in delivering a facility that performs as intended?
Spencer: We take a partnership approach across our relationships. Many of our regular clients and customers are recurring clients, and some have more than 20 years of successful projects with us.
Even when we work with them from project to project, we operate with a partnership or joint approach because so much has been invested over the years. Every project needs to maintain the standard of those that came before it.
Graham executes many projects involving early contractor involvement, or ECI, as well as design-build projects. These are often delivered with partners on the design side, such as an engineering firm, or on the execution side, typically a major subcontractor on site.
We use partnership agreements across our divisions. Adding commissioning responsibilities, and the fact that certain projects must start up and operate for a period after construction and commissioning are complete, further increases the value of strong partnerships with all these groups. It is present throughout our business.
Daryl Chipman: I want to add to that because collaboration is probably the most important piece. Very early in most projects, owners engage their operations personnel to find out what they want from the project, including lessons learned from operating and using an asset.
They collect those requirements and try to deliver them within a portion of the construction budget. They communicate them to the designers alongside the performance specifications.
It is important for contractors, designers, and owners to stay closely aligned. Contractors spend a great deal of time with the owner once construction begins. There is what the owner said, what was designed, and what the owner actually intended or meant to ask for. Things can get lost in translation.
When those people are aligned and understand the desired outcome together, the commissioning team can bridge the gap between what the owner said they wanted, what they actually wanted, and what was designed.
No project is perfect. Some elements need flexibility, while other areas provide opportunities to exceed expectations. When the commissioning team is engaged early, it can explain that one outcome may not be possible, but another close to it is achievable, and that there are other areas where we can deliver more.
They can bridge the gap between the end of construction and the operations team. Operations may not be overly concerned about something within the design specification that was a major issue for the owner’s construction representatives. They may say, ‘I do not really care about that. I care about getting this running and getting these flow rates right.’
They may want their process oil systems to flow at a certain rate or to drain and empty their tanks faster. They may ask whether we have a solution that can deliver that. We can work together through those relationships to make it happen and meet the intent of both the project and the owner.
Everyone tends to give a little and get a little. I find that operations personnel especially want their asset sooner rather than later once they see it starting to work. Working closely with them and having a solid relationship tends to get us over the finish line much more quickly.
Mike: They definitely get impatient once they start seeing things start up.
Daryl: When they see things starting up, they get excited.
Mike: We all do.
Daryl: We do. Things are on. Let’s…
Mike: …use them.
Mike: You mentioned something in the last answer that piqued my interest: the commissioning nerds and that commissioning mindset. As an employee-owned company that places significant emphasis on developing its people, how do you see an organization like ICxA and our professional commissioning certification supporting development and career progression for Graham’s people?
Spencer: As you said, Graham is employee-owned. We have always had our own progression and assessment tools to help employees grow. We require regular conversations with managers to make sure people’s career goals are being met and, if they are not, that they are getting the right opportunities to keep pursuing them.
One of the challenges early on, as we took on more commissioning work, was that commissioning could be a one-off activity. People in operations might move from one project where the scope ended at construction completion to the next. Then, perhaps once every couple of years, they would get a job with commissioning responsibilities and spend six months to a year doing something that was not typical for the business or that division.
It could be difficult to assess that work or for managers and others above them to understand its value, significance, and the challenges of doing some of it for the first time.
ICxA’s roadmap and ability to help individuals progress through experience are things we want to incorporate and promote internally. They will help our technical specialists and people primarily working in commissioning advance professionally, both outside Graham and within it.
They will also help standardize that growth across the business and make it easier to explain the work to people for whom commissioning is not their world.
Daryl: That is a good question, Mike. We tend to forget that in a construction environment, many of the people managing the administrative work of a project, such as managers and coordinators, are engineers or tradespeople. Some are tradespeople who are practically engineers.
Through their competency, they have developed skills that allow them to solve problems and get things working. We see that on every project. I do not think there is a construction organization without an experienced person who knows how every nut and bolt on a project operates and why its function matters.
We sometimes forget how technically inclined these people are and direct them toward project management. That is a great career path. We need people who can determine how much schedule remains through earned value management, know when the next invoice is due, and put together a weekly report for a client.
But there is also a group of people who are geared toward understanding how things work and function. That curiosity is typically where we find commissioning people. Many engineers are curious, and we see ICxA laying out a training roadmap for people to become more technically competent, beyond tasks such as checking whether all the week’s materials have arrived.
It provides an outlet for people who say, ‘I am an engineer for a reason. Being good at Excel is great, but I want to know how systems operate. I want to be able to turn things on.’ That curiosity was a major reason Spencer entered this field, and it has been part of his natural progression.
We had many direct conversations where he said, ‘I do not want to be just a project manager reporting on schedules and percentage complete. I want to know how these things work. I want to turn a transformer on. I want to do highly technical work. What skills do I need, and how do I get there?’
Had we known where we were heading 10 years ago, we would have had Spencer involved in this training program then. We have found it now, and we see ICxA as a way to identify the next Spencer more easily and direct that person toward technical training that develops competency in construction, alongside the established project management path. It is huge.
Mike: Absolutely. I agree. The natural progression used to be that you reached a certain point and then went through PMI and into project management. Technical knowledge is very important to commissioning and to leaders in general. It is one of the tools you mentioned.
What qualities do you believe distinguish an exceptional leader or commissioning professional?
Daryl: I will take this one because it is a big question. Leadership is less about knowing perfectly how to turn something on and more about being able to direct people toward making something happen and getting work done.
The interesting part about commissioning is that it tends to lean more heavily toward technical knowledge than other fields. People want to know they are talking to someone who has successfully turned those systems over.
Highly technical people can get caught up in the details. For example, in system integration programming, you may need to bring together two different programming languages into the system a client wants. You may have a system integrator’s program and a vendor-specific program, with the owner wanting to see everything through the primary network. You need people who can speak those different technical languages and bring the teams together.
The real leaders can take half a step back, understand that those two languages exist, and recognize that highly competent people in those fields need to engage with each other and talk.
A leader can break a problem down into its smallest components and clearly articulate the requirements to people with different levels of technical competency. That could mean other commissioning professionals and senior leadership within a project or organization. You can guess which is more or less technical, but if you can break the problems into manageable pieces, people tend to follow you further.
When you can bring a whole group of people with different skills across the line, you have a great leader. It is difficult to find people who can speak at a high technical level, bring technical specialists along with them, and still communicate upward about the project’s needs and how to resolve issues.
If I had to pick one or two things, they would be personality and the ability to solve problems by breaking them into their smallest elements.
Mike: I could not agree more. People talk about managing up, but there is also the level below. There are many different qualities, and those are two great ones.
We have talked a few times about Graham reaching 100 years in business. That is an incredible milestone. You have seen a lot as a company and as individuals. Looking toward the next generation of projects, what changes in construction and project delivery do you think will have the greatest impact on commissioning over the next decade?
Spencer: A big change for me a few years ago was starting in pharmaceuticals. Many of those buildings are essentially industrial projects inside commercial buildings. Everything you have space for on an oil and gas project is reduced in size and fitted inside four walls, somewhere in a city.
The mindset shift I experienced was that, while the owner or client was pushing toward completion and being able to test and commission systems on their side, there was still a lot of work happening elsewhere in the building. Some areas were still in early construction.
It meant shifting the focus from mechanical and construction completion to an integrated approach of turning over systems and getting them ready to be energized. Safety is the top priority. You never want teams or individuals in situations where testing creates an unsafe environment.
With a very controlled approach, you can separate sections of a project or building and transfer certain systems into testing and commissioning while other areas still have time to complete their construction work. That is one of the evolutions I have been able to see.
When it is done successfully, nothing beats it. Everything is moving smoothly on the project. That is something I have always found exciting.
Daryl: I would add speed, which you hinted at toward the end, Spencer. I see commissioning evolving into its own element embedded in the project, something constructors will have to consider.
We are still at an early stage of adoption, but our ability to move quickly is going to be the next element. Things like AI will be a big part of that.
Data centres are a prime example of how quickly something needs to come online. These hyperscale projects moving at incredible speed will require a great deal of time and people to get systems online as quickly as possible.
It is in our best interest to work out how to meet those demands. Even looking at Canadian government spending, moving as quickly as possible is becoming the name of the game. Bringing all those pieces together so we can move quickly is the next big thing for us to figure out.
Mike: For sure. Everyone wants things done right away. It is about enabling tools that let you move at a quicker pace while maintaining safety, quality, and cost control. It will be interesting, and I cannot wait to see where it goes.
Mike: We have reached the lightning round. I will ask a series of questions and look for a quick answer or a sentence. Both of you can answer, or you can handle it however you like. What is one word that describes Graham’s culture?
Daryl and Spencer: ‘Caring.’
Daryl and Spencer: ‘I would say diverse. That includes everything: mindsets, divisions, capabilities, everything.’
Mike: That is good. What makes a great project team?
Daryl: ‘Competency.’
Spencer: ‘That would be my answer as well.’
Mike: What is one thing you wish every project understood about commissioning?
Daryl: One word or one sentence?
Mike: One thing you wish every project understood. You decide.
Spencer: Its significance early on. We consistently hear people say at the end of a project, ‘I wish we had done this earlier. I wish we had considered this earlier.’ We consistently see it being put off too long.
Daryl: Emphasizing its importance.
Mike: What advice would you give your younger self entering the industry today?
Daryl: Be patient. Anything worth having takes time. Anything worth knowing takes time too. That older guy who gave you a hard time is only talking to you because he actually likes you. Do not take it personally. Take the emotional beatdowns and keep going.
Spencer: I would tell myself the same thing people like Daryl told me years ago: chase the experience. You can always catch up on sleep later. That might mean longer days or longer hours on site, or travelling for a short period to see something, whether it is testing or something else.
Chase the experience. If it interests you, go and make it happen. Do not sit around waiting for opportunities to come to you all the time. You have to go and get them.
Mike: That is great. I have heard the advice about patience a few times now. As we develop and understand what those experienced people were trying to tell us, as you said, Daryl, we learn to sit back and take it all in.
Finish this sentence: A successful project is one that…
Daryl: Finishes on time according to the client’s schedule, not just the construction schedule. We may not have commissioning built into our schedules, but, as Spencer has mentioned several times, we see pharmaceutical projects where the client is responsible for validation and commissioning, and construction is one portion of the overall schedule.
A project that finishes safely and on time according to the client’s schedule, with everything working, is a successful project in my mind.
Spencer: We usually get there through early collaboration. That means making sure those milestones are included early, whether during design or early construction work.
It is about collaboration and making sure everybody knows the client’s needs and what the contractor needs to succeed. That allows everyone to pull the same rope in the right direction.
Mike: That is great. We will build on the advice question for our last question of the day. If you could give one piece of advice to someone beginning a career in commissioning, construction, or project delivery today, what would it be? This time, think of someone else rather than your younger self.
Daryl: I will return to Spencer’s initial response: chase experience. If you want to get into commissioning, it is about gaining experience rather than chasing a dollar. If you can take your career from being paid for your time to being paid for your knowledge, there is an endless range of possibilities that comes with that.
If you chase dollars and cents, you can make good money. In my experience, though, fulfilment comes from pursuing the experience that gives you the skills to do something exciting, and construction offers that opportunity.
The financial rewards come eventually. Pursuing opportunity and experience before money leads to a more valuable and fulfilling career. When you are older, like me, it can allow you to set your price or have a great opportunity to work with younger people like Spencer, see what they can do, and learn what they can teach you.
You get a lot of joy and fulfilment from your career when you do things like that. That is my personal view.
Spencer: I do not know if I can say it any better than that.
Mike: Come on, you have to have something! I am just teasing. I appreciate your time. Thank you both for taking time out of your busy day to sit with me and have a chat.
For listeners with questions, please feel free to reach out to one of us on LinkedIn, or we will answer them in the chat. To learn more about ICxA, please visit our website, icxa.net.
Cheers, and I hope everyone has a great rest of their day. Thanks, gents.
Spencer: Thank you.
Daryl: Thanks, Mike.
Visit icxa.net for more information.