Episode 11 - Strategic Advisory Services

Craig MacDonald, an engineer in Associated Engineering's Strategic Advisory Services (SAS) group, discusses his career path and projects focused on asset management, climate risk assessment, and infrastructure planning, particularly for First Nations communities. The episode ties into Indigenous Services Canada's 2023 Closing the Infrastructure Gap by 2030 report, which estimates $349.2 billion needed to address underfunding in First Nations infrastructure, including gaps in high-speed internet access for 466 communities.

Career Background and Entry into Strategic Advisory

MacDonald's path to engineering was unconventional. After a civil engineering bachelor's from the University of Calgary, he explored emergency management through summer roles: researching winter disasters, developing water emergency guidelines with the City of Calgary, and managing transportation projects on the Green Line. He then spent four months in Sri Lanka evaluating the government's implementation of the Incident Command System—a standardized emergency response framework used for wildfires in the US, Canada, and Australia—finding poor adoption and recommending improvements. This led to six months in India designing decentralized water and wastewater systems.