Host Chad Hughes welcomes Robert McCallum, President of McCallum Environmental, to the show. Robert has been working in the environmental consulting industry for over 25 years and he specifically brings his experience in working across varied Canadian provincial jurisdictions to the conversation.

Robert is a professional biologist registered in Alberta and though he started his career in oil and gas, in 2003 he was pulled into a renewable energy project and has been working in the renewable space since. His company is called into projects to do environmental assessment work; looking at birds, wetlands, watercourses, and land use habitat. 

Chad and Robert discuss how Robert’s experience in the practical side of the industry helps him communicate the regulatory processes to clients, how the regulatory boards differ from province to province, the lengthy time frames involved in obtaining permitting approvals, and how to balance project and client needs against environmental requirements. Robert’s insight sheds light on how provincial regulations are the same in spirit but very different in process and execution, something to always consider when working across jurisdictions. 

“And you can't really take the approach that one thing is more important than the other or one thing is just going to be a token effort at the end of this and we can just move forward with it. So you really need to have it all lined up in the beginning and then you can check them off. Oh yeah, that's not going to be applicable. We don't need to worry about it. We've had the Department of National Defense come back and say that's going to interfere with our radars and no, you can't have turbines there. Now, the Department of National Defense doesn't have the authority to say you can't have radars there. But when the regulatory agency hears the Department of National Defense doesn't want turbines, that holds a lot of weight” - Robert McCallum

About Robert McCallum:

Robert has been working in the regulatory consulting industry and has worked throughout Canada with a variety of industries and people for over 25 years. He has learned that no matter the industry or location, Project Management is about people. Working as a team, having fun, and enjoying the accomplishment of a successful project.

He has extensive project management experience in an owner and consulting environment and he understands and can articulate technical, business and project management functions associated with project development and execution. Robert understands typical owner-company project sanctioning / funding cycles and business drivers. He has a demonstrated ability to adjust Project Management approaches to meet the requirements of projects with varying scopes, complexity, risk, constraints, etc. while understanding the implications of process variance. He also has extensive planning, regulatory, construction and commissioning planning and execution experience.

What sets Robert apart is both his responsiveness and ability to bring a big-picture approach to all the assessments he is part of. This comes from working on projects through assessment, permitting, construction monitoring, operations monitoring, and reclamation. 

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Chad Hughes | CEO, Entrepreneurial Leader, Author: website |linkedin

Robert McCallum | Project Management, Environmental Consulting and Assessment, President at McCallum Environmental Ltd: website | linkedin | email