Profile MAN WITH A MISSION

He’s not listed in the Who’s Who of Canadian Business. Not many academics trained in the esoterica of rock mechanics are. But if his ambitious plans work out, Dr Marc Denis Everell certainly would deserve a mention on that list of con tributors to our economic well-being. A short, stout man in his forties, topped with jet black hair, Everell is the new, enthusiastic assistant deputy minister in charge of the Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology, better known as CANMET. When The Northern Miner Magazine visited his office on the 20th floor of the agency’s administration building in downtown Ottawa, he had a busy day ahead of him. That afternoon, he was to present CANMET’s new business plan to a small group of 25 scientists in one of the organization’s many sec tions — something he had been doing for a couple of weeks. And with nearly 800 professional scientists, engineers and technicians in the organization, there would be many more such pre sentations to make.

That business plan is the single most striking indication that, under Everell’s leadership, this research organization could change dramatically in the next three to five years. When he speaks, it is with the clear intonation of a man with a mission — one that is geared to making CANMET (an organization that costs Canadian taxpayers $75 million a year) a more efficient research and development organization.

Industry often knows little about the research undertaken by the agency or about the impact this research has on the private sector and the recent successes CANMET has had working more closely with the industry. Everell wants to remedy that and give the in dustry, as a whole, more bang for the bucks it invests in this research.

But this is not an altogether new challenge for him. Between 1981 and 1987, Everell was the director-general of the Centre de Recherches Minerales in Sainte-Foy, Que. In that position, he was responsible for 250 people, of whom only 55 were professional scientists. He did his job well — so well that when long-time director-general of CANMET, W. G. Jeffery, stepped down last spring to head up the newly-formed Mining Industry Technology Council of Canada (MITEC for short), Everell was approached to take over. “Because of the breadth of the organization, the problems are much different here,” Everell says.

Since its inception in 1974, CANMET has gone through many changes and fairly rapid growth. Originally (from 1907 to 1973), it was known as the federal Mines Branch. Today, it occupies laboratory space in six very different locations; the largest can be seen from Everell’s window. One of those structures, which houses the Physical Metallurgy Research Labor atories, was built in 1942 during the war. What goes on inside this less- than-glamorous building is the basic research that mining companies are using to wage a war — an economic war against replacement materials and competing countries.

Canmet’s other laboratories are at Bell’s Corners, a suburb southwest of Ottawa; a big new building in Devon, Alta.; another new building in Elliot Lake, Ont.; and rented office space at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ont., and in Sydney, N.S.

To provide the services required by the mining industry, Everell’s agency has created a new business branch and the business plan is the organiza tion’s first. It covers the 3-year period from 1988 to 1991 and includes the agency’s long-range plan for technology transfer, a policy Everell staunchly supports. There are also guidelines that scientists should follow to deal with clients, and extensive plans for marketing and promotion have been drawn up. These terms, typical of the business lexicon, were seldom uttered by scientists inside CANMET as little as eight months ago, when the agency was reorganized. Under Everell, em ployees are undergoing a cultural change to suit the times.

“Within three years, we should be 100% more productive than we are today at producing new technologies of use to the Canadian mining industry,” Everell predicts. “That’s not to say we have not been working hard in the past. It just means we will become more rigorous in choosing the projects we work on.

“Our scientists like to publish papers and do conferences. But I think publishing has become too important to them. We want to serve the industry and not just the global scientific community. So in the future you will see us become less involved in interna tional journals. The Canadian people pay our bills, so we want to be providing benefits to Canadians. We cannot be so naive as to think we can just show our research results to everybody in the world. We want to avoid other countries’ developing what was initiated at CANMET. It costs a lot of money to produce a lot of technology, so we want to protect that investment.”

The organization has many scien tific products on the shelf awaiting commercial use. With the new direction Everell is taking, that number should increase. And government funds available to carry out those projects are on the increase too. In six short years, CANMET has increased the amount of funding from a single such source — the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program — from just $1 million in 1981/82 to $21.5 million in 1987/88, according to Justyna Kuryllowicz, director of CANMET’s Office of Technology Transfer (see accompanying chart, page b ). That money is being used to fund 21 projects, seven of which are new starts in 1987.

Another way to raise the money needed for its many ambitious projects is to recover some of the cost of that work from the people who benefit from it. Canmet recovers only $1.5 million a year from projects in which it is the only participant. In order to be designated as a technology centre, it must increase this rate of cost recovery. Therefore, the agency will have to collect revenues from its clientele. Once designated a technology centre, the government will allow it to keep 20% of the costs recovered on a particular project. This money then can be used for other projects, enabling CANMET to grow at a time of government spending restraint.

In western Canada, researchers at the universities of Alberta and British Columbia, the Coal Mining Research Co. and CANMET’s Coal Research Laboratories at Devon are attempting to co-ordinate their research and development efforts by setting up a centre of excellence in surface mining. “I would like to see the coal industry participating more in the activities here, as well as greater integration between the three groups,” Everell says. The Coal Association of Canada is developing a business plan for its approach to R&D, and R. T. Marshall, president of the association, has recognized the potential of Devon as an internationally respected centre. “There are clearly great possibilities, and I am most anxious to see them developed,” Everell says.

Everell would also like to improve the exchange of scientists and engineers between the private sector and CANMET. “Not enough of this kind of scientific exchange is going on today,” he says.

For example, there are only four or five engineers from industry now working at the government agency on a temporary basis. Everell would like to increase that to between 15 and 25. That goes for CANMET scientists working in the industry and engineers from industry working at the agency. He is working on ways to spur such exchanges. “The idea is to make it interesting from a monetary point-of- view and to enhance the careers of those people involved.”

This all adds up to a more active role for CANMET within the industry, both of which, Everell says, must pull together for more effective planning and funding of mining research in Canada. “I am confident of the ability of CANMET to do all of this,” Everell stresses. “I’ve got some feedback from some ceos in the industry and they like what they see.”