Today’s up-and-coming leaders are helping to shape tomorrow’s energy future. Whether it’s new thinking, fresh attitudes or technical solutions, showcasing their work and vision is of tremendous value to the entire energy industry.

Daily Oil Bulletin’s Rising Stars Class of 2019 is a showcase event of the excellent work done by young emerging energy leaders.

Today, we profile Dani Moore, Radium Technologies Inc.

Click here to see this year's Class of 2019.

Dani Moore
Manager of Projects
Radium Technologies Inc.

Growing up in Pilot Mound, Manitoba, where her four siblings and parents made up a full one per cent of the total population, Dani Moore’s ticket to big city life and a meaningful career was an engineering degree.

Several certainties marked Moore’s journey. She knew from grade 10 that she wanted to become an engineer. After training in the Rocky Mountains as a provincial-level downhill skier during high school, she knew she wanted to live in Calgary. And she always knew that her Metis heritage would remain an important dimension of who she is and how she gives back to the community.

Moore didn’t see herself as an “engineer in a cubicle,” so she chose Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Calgary (that discipline no longer exists at U of C).

“It’s like mechanical but more focused on processes and procedures of things — not so much technical,” Moore explains.

Her first job during summer break was as a heavy-haul rock truck and earth-moving operator. She interned with Kiewit Energy on Canadian Natural and MEG projects after her third year.

Upon graduation, she stayed on with Kiewit at Imperial Oil’s Kearl froth project, both in the module yard and on site.

After that, Moore decided to gain some client experience and took a job with Laricina Energy but eventually realized that she preferred the contractor side. Her next move brought her back to energy construction services in 2013, this time with Radium Technologies.

“It took me about 10 years to get from field engineer — which is kind of the bottom of the barrel, working in the field, taking shifts no one else wants — to this point where I’m comfortable managing projects between $50 million and $300 million,” she says.

Moore describes managing construction projects in terms of a balance between safety, quality, cost and schedule so that “no one is too angry about anything.” Open communication, “being personable” and tenacity are her go-to skills for ensuring that balance.

Having just completed a Masters of Management degree at the University of British Columbia this summer, Moore has set her sights on becoming a manager of project managers.

Moore leverages her Metis heritage to help strengthen the communities in which Radium works. Oil and gas projects in remote areas across western provinces increasingly recognize the value of working with local Aboriginal communities. Radium Technologies puts the emphasis on developing work skills and providing meaningful employment.

“We do specific on-the-job training with First Nations communities around our projects. What we don’t do  — if they just want a check– is say, ‘Here you go.’ We want them to work. We arrange their transport. We put them through a new mentorship program called the Green Hard Hat Program. They get an experienced tradesman to mentor them so they can figure out if they want to be a welder, or pipefitter or, if they want to stay as a labour—that’s cool too. We do that with probably four or five nations,” she says.

Moore volunteers with Alberta Metis, doing workshops, presentations and career fairs. She is also active in her home community of Inglewood in Calgary, where she helps out with good-neighbour initiatives and cleanups.