Natasha D'Souza

Anna Cullinan is Director General of Professional and Technical Service Management at Public Works and Government Services Canada. She holds a Bachelor in Civil Engineering degree and an MBA. Anna went to high school in Montreal and quite enjoyed math and science courses. In her last year of high school, she looked into university programs. Through this exploration she began to have an understanding of who builds buildings, sewers, bridges etc. and found this very interesting and that engineers were responsible for this.

“I applied to McGill University for Engineering and was accepted. Back then the first two years were general engineering courses.”

After graduation she traveled in Europe and then came back to Montreal to look for a job. Most of her counterparts had started working and most jobs seemed to be taken. She interviewed at SNC and found out that they were looking for a Junior Engineer for Project Management functions with minimum two years work experience.

“I went ahead and applied for it and I was offered the job even though I had just graduated. Don’t be afraid of rejection. You don’t know what is going on in a company and managers are usually very busy. They need good staff to help them meet their objectives”

“As a Junior Project Engineer I was responsible for the project reporting, setting up systems and being the liaison between the Senior Project Manager and the engineers. I made sure that projects they were on budget, on time and working off the right sets of plans. I ensured that information was shared between the different groups – civil, electrical, mechanical – and was basically the right hand person of the project manager and ensured things ran smoothly.”

Anna stayed in this group for a year after which she moved into the Civil Engineering group, then the Cost Engineering group and finally back to Project Management. Working in various departments made her realize what she liked to do which was to make plans and schedules bring people together. After four years she moved out west to work for Bechtel Canada to work on an Alberta Tar Sands project. This was in the early eighties at which time that National Energy Program made it difficult for companies to commit to long-term energy projects. Many projects were cancelled, including the one that Anna was hired to work on.

“I stayed with Bechtel in Alberta for a year and spent some time at the Fort McMurry Sucor plant. Then I was transferred to California to the nuclear power plant project, in Diablo Canyon. I worked in Cost Engineering where I made sure costs were properly accounted for and forecasted. I stayed here for a year but I had a goal to earn an MBA by the age of thirty.”

Anna went on to do her MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, (the same university that Donald Trump attended, but not at the same time!). Many engineers attend this business school because of it’s analytical focus. She also did an exchange with a school in France for a term.

“After graduation I moved to Ottawa and worked for Bell Canada in the Economic Analysis group. My engineering background came in very handy as I needed to understand what the telephone company does.”

After Bell Canada she went to work for Canada Post and was there for nine years.

“I started off in the Financial Analysis group then moved to the Engineering group, Operations and back to Engineering. “

I asked Anna why Canada Post hired engineers.

“Engineers are needed for time and motion studies in the plant and to design carrier routes. Mail boxes are designed by industrial engineers, as are the layout of the plants, scheduling of the trucks that do pickups, forecasting when you are going to have extra requirements, etc. The physical aspects of the machinery require mechanical, computer and electrical engineers. For example, OCR (Optical Character Reader) is sophisticated machinery that uses algorithms to decipher both typewritten and handwritten information to sort the mail to the letter carrier route using the postal code. Addresses are checked against the postal codes to detect errors, errors are corrected and then mail is sorted to letter carrier routes.”

Anna went to work in Toronto for Consumers gas/Enbridge, in the financial and economic group. Following this she came back to Ottawa to work for Public Works and Government Services Canada in the Real Property Services branch where she did policy work.
Next was Natural Resources of Canada, in the Office of Energy Efficiency. Her program provided funding to large companies, to make buildings more energy efficient by adding insulation or by retrofitting HVAC, electrical and control systems. The next move was to Industry Canada in the Industrial Technologies Office.
We discussed how being an engineer had impacted her career path.

“Engineering was crucial in my career path and the best advice I can give is to figure out what your like and what your interests are. You have to be passionate about what your doing.”

Anna is an avid gardener, likes reading and solving cross word puzzles. She is currently studying at Algonquin College to be a Sommelier. In her spare time she travels the world on wine tasting tours.