Bringing 25 years of experience to Prism

From opportunity identification and concept design to implementation and final review, mechanical projects at Prism often leverage the talents of a team of people through collaboration. Recently, we were fortunate to have Hamid Samani, P.Eng., LEED AP, join our mechanical team. “Hamid has a breadth of experience in the technologies and industries where we do the most work,” says Mechanical Team Lead Stephen Kooiman, “he is a key technical resource in supporting our team with detailed engineering designs.”

Hamid’s 25 years in the industry have encompassed a broad range of projects; he brings a wealth of accumulated experience and expertise to all projects and is adept at negotiating the complexities and operational parameters of working within commercial, educational, institutional, and residential developments. His experience includes sustainable design, energy compliance analyzing and energy modeling, project management, HVAC system design, plumbing and fire protection systems design, specification writing, and construction reviews. As a LEED Accredited Professional, he is dedicated to implementing sustainability in his work. 

His interest in designing systems started at a young age, growing up in Iran, “My father was an electrical technician and I used to go work with him,” says Hamid, “then later at high school, I was pretty good at math and physics and that moved me down a path towards engineering.”

“Really it was just an interest in making and creating things—in the end, that’s what it’s all about,” he says.

Outside of work, Hamid enjoys gatherings with friends and family—his wife Maryam, daughter Sara (23 years old) and son Parsa (16 years old). He has also enjoys carpentry and home projects, having just finished putting in an irrigation system in his backyard.

It’s clear his curiosity is still fueling his work and he emphasizes that as an engineer you have to be continually developing your knowledge, “From new technologies to new codes and standards, we need to understand how to use them in our designs.” 

Hamid says what drew him to Prism was the focus on energy saving, “Being in this industry you get to know how much building systems, especially mechanical systems, consume in electricity and fossil fuels. If we can design a system that uses less energy, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be doing so.” He adds, “”I’d like to keep this earth for the future!” 

Since joining Prism, Hamid has already started working on implementing a heat recovery chiller upgrade project at a Vancouver hospital, and a chiller plant capital renewal and energy project for a BC mine with an anticipated energy savings of 60% for the chiller plant.

We’re grateful to have Hamid Samani on our team and we look forward to introducing more new staff in the coming months. We’re always on the lookout for talented people who share our core values. Find our latest postings here.

Women currently account for only 13.1 per cent of engineers in Canada. With International Women in Engineering Day coming up on June 23rd, 2019, we’re taking the opportunity to reflect on how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go as an industry.

Prism Electrical Designer Alison Bodine shares a few thoughts on being a woman in the engineering field in this short video clip.

How are we supporting women in engineering at Prism? There is more to be done and we are determined to be better.

Prism President Robert Greenwald shared these reflections:

Probably the most important part of our culture is how we treat all people with respect, regardless of our differences, including gender. We don’t differentiate between the work of a female or male engineer nor do we treat our co-op students, young Engineers in Training, or Professional Engineers differently based on gender. This applies to wages, responsibilities and opportunities. We do work with our staff with young families on how we can adapt their work life with a young family, and that typically does apply more to our female staff. We are also nurturing a “culture of care” where employees can feel comfortable bringing up issues or concerns.

We provide time at work for staff to volunteer at events that encourage girls and women to consider careers in STEM. It’s important that we do this throughout the year and not just during days or month to encourage Women in Engineering. Last year, we participated in “diversity circles” relating to the 30 by 30 initiative, a target by Engineers Canada to increase the ratio of newly licensed engineers who are women to 30% by 2030 (BC is at 15.2% now, Canada at 17.9%). According to Engineers Canada, “”thirty percent is universally held as the tipping point for sustainable change””. This diversity circle was focused on how educational institutions can support the initiative. 

More recently, Prism signed up as one of 49 sponsors and members for 49Women in Science Circle, an initiative by Langara College designed to encourage and celebrate women in STEM.  This will provide an opportunity for one of our women engineers to be part of a community of 48 other technical women.  I expect that our whole company can benefit from these experiences.

In addition to women in STEM, we need to encourage women in leadership positions in our industry. At Prism, our leadership team is richer due to the participation of women. Various project lead and key client relationship positions are led by women and we are encouraging more women to get involved in leading service areas as we grow.

International Women in Engineering Day is an annual festival developed and coordinated by the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) to celebrate the achievements of women in engineering and inspire younger generations. Established in 2014 as a UK-wide event, INWED went global in 2017 with international support.

Find resources for organizing an event via www.inwed.org.uk/resources.html