Alumni spotlight
Proudly sponsored by TD Insurance
Alex (Sandy) Cummings, BSc (Civil Engineering)
A couple of ‘Plan Bs’ lead to an A++ career
Civil engineer spends decades as project manager with Parks Canada
When Alex (Sandy) Cummings, BSc (Eng)’81, started university in the early 1970s, his dream was to be a park warden. But his high marks weren’t quite high enough to transfer into one of the only two forestry programs in Canada at the time.
So, he thought again.
“I pivoted,” says the semi-retired civil engineer. “My dad was a project manager and estimator for heavy construction, so I figured, ‘well maybe I'll take a look at engineering.’”
It was an excellent decision.
By far the biggest benefit from going through engineering is being able to assess the situation and see what the issues are and then start thinking critically as to ‘okay, well, how do we fix this?’
Alex (Sandy) Cummings, BSc (Civil Engineering)
After graduating from civil engineering, Cummings followed in his dad’s footsteps and worked in heavy construction for a few years. But when he heard about a couple of job openings at Parks Canada, he applied for both—a highway engineer and a project manager. “I wanted the highway engineer position, but a friend got that one. I got the project manager position, to be a problem solver for difficult projects, and I've been there ever since.”
Over the last 34 years, Cummings has provided civil engineering advice and assistance to national parks and historic sites across the west, from the Pacific Ocean to the Manitoba-Ontario border, up to the Arctic Circle. “I've been doing engineering work to assess assets, to help develop projects, to fix various types of assets and then go out and manage the projects,” says Cummings.
Cummings developed an asset management system, modernizing how Parks Canada tracks its vast array of infrastructure. “Parks Canada is one of the larger holders of public infrastructure in the country,” he says. “It’s infrastructure like buildings, roads, trails, utilities, bridges, any sort of the infrastructure required in the town sites that are in the park, any sort of built asset that supports the operation of Parks Canada.”
He led another giant project, a $60M, five-year initiative rehabilitating the Whistler Campground in Jasper National Park, one of the biggest non-road projects in Parks Canada’s history. The campground was, thankfully, spared in the recent “brutal” wildfires that ripped through the park. “They've already started looking at the rebuild, which is going to be a long process, but they're not waiting around at all, it's already started,” says Cummings.
And he’s playing a role in the massive rebuild. “One of the things I'm working on right now is a cost database to help estimate replacement costs or develop estimates for projects that they're going to have to do.”
While Cummings is pleased to continue supporting his beloved national parks, his career didn’t launch exactly the way he had expected. Decades later, he’s pretty pleased with how it all worked out. “What I ended up doing was extremely rewarding,” says Cummings.
And he’s never forgotten what he learned at Schulich. Over the decades, he’s continually applied critical thinking and problem-solving skills he learned while studying engineering.