AMEC Americas: empowering people for success.

• Author: Stewart, Nick
• Position: BEST PLACES TO WORK - Company overview

With a relatively young workforce and offices full of sharp minds, AMEC Americas Limited places a premium on employee freedom.

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So long as projects are completed and 40 hours are put in every week, staff at the Thunder Bay and Sudbury offices of this engineering and project managment firm are free to work however best suits them. Whether it's taking three-hour lunches, booking an afternoon to play hockey or working from home all week to tend to a sick child, employees have full flexibility in how things get done.

During the recent World Cup soccer tourney, staff would occasionally take afternoons to go home, or the company break room kitted put with satellite television, to watch their favourite team play.

"You realize pretty quickly that in the consulting business, your employees are everything, and they're entirely what drive your success," says Dan Cacciotti, manager of AMEC's Sudbury office.

"So we put in place all sorts of things to make them happy and we're very committed to that."

Since the Sudbury office's creation in 1999, staffing has increased from two, including Cacciotti, to 40 employees.

In the interim, AMEC's Northern offices have become involved with a wide variety of big-ticket projects as part of the company's earth and environmental division, handling what Cacciotti refers to as "bugs and bunnies." This includes handling and drilling soil samples, characterizing rock, bird and mammal studies, air and noise studies, and a vast range of other services relating to the environment.

Their reputation has developed to the point where AMEC now handles projects through from preliminary studies to the official opening. Examples of major projects tackled through the Northern offices in recent years include the likes of De Beers Canada's Victor Mine, Northgate Minerals' Young-Davidson Mine in Matachewan, as well as Detour Gold's impending mine at Detour Lake. It has also been working with Vale on the Totten Mine.

This kind of start-to-finish approach on major projects offers not only a high-quality working experience, but a plethora of opportunities to work in a number of roles.

"A person can actually see their career tracked with a mine's development," says Cacciotti.

With offices all over the world, AMEC often draws on its Northern Ontario staff to help with projects across Canada and beyond, from copper mines in British Columbia to the Albertan oilsands to Voisey's Bay in Newfoundland and work throughout...