Advice from an engineer: “It’s ok to pivot”
Feb 10, 2025
Robyn Jones, Senior Technical Advisor for Tailings with COSIA has noticed a certain longevity amongst the people who decide to work in tailings. When asked what she thinks keeps people around, she suspects it has something to do with how rewarding, all encompassing and fast paced the work can be.
“When I look around the table today, I see a lot of the same faces working in tailings as when I was first starting out in the industry 18 years ago. It’s a small group of people who have spent their careers collaborating and driving change.”
Tailings are the sand, silt, clay, water and residual bitumen left over after mining and bitumen extraction. Managing them effectively is a key component of oil sands operations.
In her first role after graduating university, Robyn was hired to work in mine planning but new tailings regulations were coming into effect and she was moved to a small team tasked with revising a tailings plan to meet these. She had a unique and valuable opportunity to learn about tailings very quickly by being surrounded with co-workers who had been in tailings operations, planning, projects and research for their whole careers. The plan was driven on this pooled expertise, meeting the required changes by including a suite of rapidly developing technologies.
“This common challenge across oil sands companies drove a desire to work together. Over the next few years we were seeing the technologies we put into plans be adopted by companies at very large scales. It was all happening much faster than the typical technology development cycle. Even after getting a technology up and running, it didn’t stop there. We had the continued momentum of – how do we improve it? Going back to the lab, working with our researchers and other companies to troubleshoot issues that arose during field implementation. In other areas of mining, you might be lucky if you see one of those cycles during your career. But in tailings I’ve been able to watch a lot of the technologies evolve quickly.”
That desire for a fast-paced environment, one where you can never quite predict what each day is going to bring, is exactly what sparked Robyn’s interested in pursuing a career in engineering. Having initially planned for an education in accounting, one of her early jobs was as a file clerk for an oil field services company. A family friend, the one engineer she knew, worked there and had helped her get the role. The more she saw the type of work he was doing, the more she thought she’d prefer to be in one of those roles even though she didn’t know much about the field just yet.
“My mom was a teacher, my dad was a banker. Engineering wasn’t a career I had exposure to in my childhood.”
She started applying for schools and was accepted to engineering at Queen’s University.
“I thought – why not give it a shot. In the first geology lecture of my engineering degree, the professor asked the class – ‘what is engineering?’. Most kids started laughing, but I was listening intently and taking notes because I really didn’t know much about it yet,” Robyn laughs.
After getting further into her degree, Robyn could quickly see engineering was a good fit, having always been interested in puzzles and problem solving. When it came time to start looking for jobs, she opted to come back to Alberta and work in oil sands mining and in particular, tailings.
“Some people saw continually taking tailings roles as pigeonholing yourself, but for me it’s been the opposite. From the planning side to the operations, there are so many opportunities to solve different challenges, to innovate and to learn.”
One opportunity she found particularly interesting was on a mine that was just getting its start.
“Just before the mine was to start up, we discovered birds nesting in the area we were to pour tailings. That meant the area became a no-go, and we went back to the drawing board to quickly find an alternate location.”
The team worked together to come up with a wide range of options that rapidly moved through iterative reviews with higher levels of management and all stakeholders until a viable solution that met all needs was found.
“It was a good exercise in figuring out how to meet the economics of a project, while mitigating and managing the environmental challenges. The two are not mutually exclusive.”
This is just one example of many in Robyn’s career where she’s been faced with problems without precedent or a prescribed solution. They required creativity, an open mind and a need to connect with people who have different skill sets to solve.
“Growing up in, and now as a resident of Alberta, you feel a particular drive to help solve these problems in the oil sands. To help the processes and techniques evolve. It’s about being involved in your legacy and how you want to leave things when you’re done with them.”
By the time COVID came around, Robyn had two very small children and after transitioning to work from home, decided to pivot further and take some time away from work to care for her children. Having entered the workforce again in 2024, she’s grateful for the new perspective she’s gained since being away.
“Becoming a parent changed my perspective and how I approached work. I think I’ve had success working as a mom because I found solutions that have worked with where I’ve been at each point. I try to be honest about my expectations and commitments and see them as an opportunity rather than a barrier. I cannot approach work in the same way as I did when I was fresh out of school, and I am embracing different ways of working. My commitments outside of work have indeed increased but so has my efficiency and that, along with a renewed perspective, have becomes significant assets.”
Robyn credits her ability to be malleable partially to some advice she received early in her career.
“In one of my earlier roles, a mentor took me through a mapping exercise of career development. They talked about the ebbs and flows of a career and how there will be times when you want to take the stretch roles and try something different, and other times when a stretch role might not be best. It’s helpful to balance one with the other and tie that to changes in your life outside of work. There will be periods of your career where you deliver and provide meaningful work, but maybe the hours are more predictable, or the learning curve isn’t as steep. You can use that time hone your skills or provide more energy to other areas so that when you do take those stretch roles, you have the ability to deliver there as well and maintain balance. This conversation has helped me be patient with myself, more open minded and honest with opportunities throughout my career but especially while navigating work as a parent.
That’s the mindset Robyn encourages those starting out in the field to take.
“I think it’s helpful to remember that while it’s great to have a plan, it’s important to be able to pivot. If you’ve put the energy into really giving something a shot and it’s not working, give yourself permission to redirect. When I think back to what I thought I was going to do versus how it evolved, nothing really went to plan and it has been so much more rewarding than I could have predicted. More often than not, the path we think we’re going down changes and that’s wonderful!”
