Steven J. Keays, M.A.Sc., P.Eng.
Founder and CEO
Steven Keays, M.A.Sc., P.Eng., is an entrepreneur, executive, author, keynote speaker and consultant in major projects, modularization & construction, innovation programs, digital-industrial transformations, and technology development. He is a four-decade veteran of the aerospace, construction, defense, energy, infrastructure, Oil & Gas, and space industries. He is a professional engineer (Canada), a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada, founder & CEO of NAIAD Company Ltd, The Institute of Advanced Management, KPO Ventures, and the KPO Group.
Mr. Keays has written extensively on project management, innovation and technology, and digital strategies. His published works (all available on Amazon) include Le Big Bang Canadien (1993), by Les Editions Arion, Investment-Centric Project Management (2017) and Investment-Centric Innovation Project Management (2018), by J. Ross Publishing (USA), and The Binary Firm (2020), by Taylor and Francis.
Mr. Keays is also accomplished mechanical engineer with several US and Canadian patents to his name. His expertise comprises equipment design, structural analysis, system engineering, failure analysis, full-field (4D) non-linear finite stress analysis (FEA), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and modular fabrication.
Dr. Ehab Shaheen, Ph.D., M.Sc. P.Eng., PMP
Managing Director – Development
Dr. Shaheen brings more than two decades of experience in the trenches of project execution in the oil and gas and real estate development industries. Dr. Shaheen has managed projects, led project delivery groups, and been involved with every aspect of capital project delivery, from design & engineering to construction & integrity assurance, procurement & contracts to logistics & regulatory, and everything in between. He has managed projects for asset owners and ECPM alike, working on billion-dollar CAPEX investments ranging from on shore and off-shore pipelines, mining equipment failures, marine terminals, rail / truck offloading facilities, and residential/corporate construction.
Dr. Shaheen is an active member of the Project Management Institute (PMI). He is a researcher and lecturer in fracture mechanics at the University of Calgary (Canada); he has lectured on project management at Northeastern University (USA); and is a professor of construction management at Florida Gulf Coast University (USA).
Dr. Michael Leamen, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Director- Construction
Dr. Leamen brings two decades of construction management expertise on large scale capital projects mainly in the Oil & Gas industry, known for the arduous complexity of construction. He completed his engineering B.A.Sc. and PhD at the University of Waterloo (Canada).
Dr. Leamen began his career as a sessional lecturer at the University of Waterloo. He later moved from academia to the Oil and Gas sector, where he focused on design, process upgrade implementations, and safety system analysis of sour gas and SAGD facilities. He joined the Canadian construction industry in 2009, working as engineer and project manager on pipelines and small gas facility projects.
His experience as construction manager of large cap projects includes projects with Spectra Energy, Suncor, Keyera, Enbridge, Pembina, Tidewater Midstream, Encana, Crew Energy, Kinder Morgan and Cenovus. His most recent activities were focused on the massive Trans Mountain Expansion Project and the North River Midstreams Growth and Developments division.
Richard Maillet, CD, B.A. Hist.
Director – Supply Chain & Logistics
Mr. Richard Maillet is a seasoned executive and Canadian military veteran. He is a retired Lieutenant Colonel with a decade of experience in mission critical logistics of support operations in Haiti, Somalia Dubai and Europe. He has led logistics and supply chain organizations within National Defense numbering 700 personnel, and was COO another 3000-employee operation mandated with logistics, infrastructure, security and personnel functions.
Upon his retirement, he spent the next two decades in private, public, and municipal industries, starting with the role of strategic procurement & supply chain manager for the City of Calgary (Canada) – overseeing a procurement budget of $1.2B. Next, he moved on Shell Energy Canada as Contract Manager with Shell Energy (Canada), with oversight of key contracts valued at $100M or more on the Albian oilsands project. At Shell, he also worked as Portfolio Manager for the development of several infrastructure projects tied to Shell’s widespread oilsand operations in Canada.
After Shell, Mr. Maillet became an international strategic consultant to SNC Lavalin, PetroChina, Compass Group and TC Energy. His latest mandate, with TC Energy (North America) saw him provide strategic outlook and contractual execution for remote accommodation in support of all major projects, with a budget P&L oversight of $100M in contracts.
David Song, P.Eng., M.Eng., pmp
Director – Risks
Mr. Song has spent more than three decades in the challenging world of risk and project management, on multi-million and billion projects in the Oil and Gas, LNG, Energy, Construction, Transportation, Petro-Chemical, and Mining industries across the globe. In the Oil and Gas sector, he is a recognized subject matter expert in the complex management of budgets, schedules, risks, and performance audits. He is a specialist in risk quantification, modelling, and simulations of large-scale endeavour spanning years of development.
His track record includes a Who’s Who list of global behemoths such as WSP, WorleyParsons, Suncor Energy, AMEC, Foster Wheeler, Canadian Pacific Railways, PetroChina, and Sinopec. In nearly every case, Mr. Song was intimately involved with the planning, scoping, budgeting, scheduling, execution, and control of massive projects that involved complex engineering design and multi-year construction phases, where risk management is the overwhelming driver of project success. His more recent roles have also extended his expertise to the realm of logistics and supply chain management, with, once again, an emphasis on risk analysis and mitigation.
Margaret E. Olenska, M.Comm
Director – Compliance
Ms. Olenska is a corporate management expert, honed from three decades of in-the-trenches mandates in finance & business process analysis, management of change, project auditing, forensic diligence assessments, budgeting, cost control, and quality management. Ms. Olenska excels in the essential but unglamorous world of process design, communication efficiency, organizational transparency, and structural accountability. She has been an entrepreneur, business founder, start-up consultant, and executive coach.
She began her career as credit analyst for ING bank and Deutsche Bank in Warsaw (Poland) then emigrated to Canada in 1997 to go beyond her limits. From there, she launched her freelance consulting career with such clients as TransCanada Pipelines, Colt Engineering, ATCO Pipelines, WorleyParsons Canada and NAIAD Company Ltd., where she stepped into her first C-suite role as COO. Ms Olenska has always been involved in the financial / management intricacies of her clients’ organization, in a variety of roles that include project control, financial analysis, business process engineering, organizational analysis, strategy planning and recovery.