Episode 18: Black History Month

On this episode of Engineering the Future, host Jerome James, P.Eng., speaks with Matthew Davis, Manager, Capital Projects and Program at the City of Toronto. Matthew discusses his journey to P. Eng, and what he found best prepared him for his role today. 

Transcript

Jerome:             [00:00:01] This episode of Engineering The Future is brought to you by BMS Canada Risk Services, OSPE’s trusted insurance broker for member liability coverage. BMS understands the risks that engineers face in their practice and provides OSPE members access to leading insurance products, advice and support from experienced brokers, as well as risk management resources. For more information on how BMS can help protect you and even your business, visit OSPE’s website [00:00:30] or ospe.bmsgroup.com.

Sponsor:           This podcast is brought to you by OSPE, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, the advocacy body for professional engineers and the engineering community in Ontario.

Jerome:             [00:00:51] Welcome to Engineering The Future. A podcast presented by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers. I am your host, Jerome James. Today I’m joined by Matthew Davis, Manager of Capital Projects & Program, Transportation Services at the City of Toronto, and a member of the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, OSPE.

                          Matthew, to start us off can you tell us a little bit more about yourself; what motivated you to become an engineer in the first place and did [00:01:20] you have any role models in your personal or academic life that motivated you?

Matthew:          [00:01:26] Sure, thanks. So why did I want to become an engineer? I actually told this story at my P.Eng. initiation here for PEO, so I’ll repeat it again for folks that may not have heard it.

Jerome:             [00:01:41] Excellent.

Matthew:          [00:01:42] I grew up in a small town in New Jersey that was – it’s a suburb of Philadelphia in the United States and there was a lot of oil refineries and the town that I lived in; we had our high school that was I guess you would call it north of the tracks. All of the folks that I knew for the most part that when we walked to high school we lived south of the tracks. And the tracks actually cut – they literally [00:02:10] bisected the town because those tracks were feeding the oil refineries on the Delaware River, right.

                          So we would have trains that were about a mile, two miles long – OK, well I have to say miles because, you know, we were here in the United States – and they would park. And we would literally have times where we would go to school, this huge train would be parked in-between us and the school and we actually would have to get late passes from the train conductor to let us go into school on time – or to give [00:02:40] us an excuse for why we were late sometimes. And I started looking at, you know, what could I do as like an engineer to try to fix this, right.

                          Like the road was fairly small and the area was built up around it so there was no bridge or tunnel going at that point but there was another road that was a little bit closer to the river, a little bit closer to the refineries that you could actually engineer into a bridge.

                          And so I actually had that on my – I mean if I had showed you my yearbook [00:03:10] from 19 – I’ll just blur it out – what you’ll see is I actually say this in my yearbook when I’m about to graduate that I want to do something, to put a bridge there somewhere in town to eliminate that issue. So I think that sparked it. They actually did build a bridge ultimately, like after I left and then graduated –

Jerome:             [00:03:31] Amazing [laughs].

Matthew:          [00:03:32] Yeah. So I think I was ahead of my time a little bit.

Jerome:             [00:03:36] Very nice.

Matthew:          [00:03:37] But so that was a big part of it. But it also spoke to if – and I don’t know how it was here in Canada at that time but in the United States we had, you know, histories of redlining for example. And so a lot of folks that I grew up with were living south of the tracks for a reason, right.

                          And so it kind of sparked my interest there like why is it that every city I go to, folks that I’m living with, folks that I’m hanging around with are near railroad tracks or near a dump [00:04:05] or near, you know, something that’s not necessarily desirable for, you know, everyday living, right. So it’s the engineering side but it’s also the decision-making side that really got me curious into this field. So I think those were the two drivers for the most part.

Jerome:             [00:04:19] That’s an interesting story. Some people would kind of draw parallels to the whole Eight Mile track kind of story that was made popular by the movie Eight Mile and Eminem story, knowing that things could be drastically different from one side of a road to the other and that’s interesting that that motivated you.

Matthew:          [00:04:42] Yeah, absolutely.

Jerome:             [00:04:43] Can you tell us a little bit about what you believe the value that engineers bring to society at large?

Matthew:          [00:04:52] Yeah. So, you know, this has changed over the years for me, right. Like when I first started in engineering I – I mean I’m a civil engineer, a lot of civil engineers start out wanting to build bridges, I was one of them. And then I hit structural analysis in university and it just wasn’t nice to me, so I changed gears and went into transportation. And I think that – you know, so speaking from my experience in transportation [00:05:20] it brings a ton of value and I guess I’ll touch on a couple of things.

                          One of the first things in terms of value that it brings is it always – engineering, at least in the transportation side, informs so many types of decisions that go into – as I mentioned a bit earlier, they play into all kinds of parts of people’s everyday lives, right. How do you get to work, you know, how do you make it to the doctor or hospital when you’re sick. How [00:05:50] do you get your groceries, how do you buy necessities that you, you know, absolutely need for everyday life, right.

Jerome:             [00:05:56] Right.

Matthew:          [00:05:57] And which way can you do it, how much is that going to cost you. Do you need to buy a car, do you need to invest in a transit pass, perhaps you’re walk – like there are so many things that like you don’t really think about because they come second nature to you, right. You wake up, you know you have to do these things.

                          But without an engineer, right – and I would give some credit to the planners as well, but without an engineer in the background, right, a lot of these things remain either undefined [00:06:25] or I think worse you end up with facilities, transportation facilities that may not be able to fully manage in a safe and effective way the type of activity that you would experience on a road or street. So I think the value is that it really contributes to the quality of life of the general public.

                          I think it contributes to the safety of the general public and I think ultimately it serves as a check and balance – and [00:06:55], you know, we can get into this or not, but it serves as a check or balance to, you know, aggressive zoning, aggressive development because if you don’t have engineering there to say hey, you know, you want to put up this, you know, 100-storey tower, you know, in the middle of something – like an engineer will have to come in and say, “I’m sorry, like that’s just out of context and it will, you know, really burden the network,” whether it’s transportation [00:07:25], water, whatever.

                          So that’s why I say these things – sorry, these things that we sometimes take for granted I think are some of the things that engineers bring the most value to, right.

Jerome:             [00:07:37] Right.

Matthew:          [00:07:38] And if I can just add one more thing, I guess. In my current work that we’re doing here at the City of Toronto – and this is why I say this has changed over time because now at the stage that I am in my career like I’ve done a lot. You know, I’ve been in the business over 20 years, I’ve done a lot that I’m proud of. I’ve also seen some parts of the engineering world that I’m not so proud of, right, and what I’ve been able to do in my current job is look at things through an equity lens and look at it as an engineer, right.

                          And some people [00:08:10] don’t really put those two things together, right. Like how are you an engineer or trained engineer but you’re applying equity lenses to, you know, all your projects and your, you know, planning – your project planning and programming. But I feel like sometimes and, you know, again everybody has –

Jerome:             [00:08:25] And that gives you a particular perspective while –

Matthew:          [00:08:30] Yeah.

Jerome:             [00:08:30] – doing your job because you’re looking at it through a different lens that someone may miss the issues that you’re taking into consideration.

Matthew:          [00:08:38] That’s exactly what I was going – I was heading to, right. Like if you’re – you know, I could be any other – you know, I could’ve taken any other career path and may still have arrived at a place like where I’m at now, but I wouldn’t have that perspective of knowing the engineering side, the planning side of these things.

                          So to know the trade-offs, right, because people – the engineers like myself we do trade-offs all the time in a scientific and an engineering level. But when you bring the social – sort of social aspect to it, you kind of have to have [00:09:10] a bit of familiarity in all of those areas in order to make effective trade-off decisions between how you apply equity and what it means to the engineering and science part of it.

                          So it’s a huge – like I’m biased too, right. I went to school for engineering and, you know, I’ve been in the business 20 years, but it really feels like it brings a ton of value in a lot of different ways, so yeah.

Jerome:             [00:09:32] Excellent. I’m going to hold you to that. I want a specific example that you bring to the table, but before –

Matthew:          [00:09:39] OK.

Jerome:             [00:09:40] – from a diverse lens. But before we hit on that, I’ll let you think about that example for a moment. Can you tell us exactly where engineering takes place in a civil project so to speak?

                          Because I feel like most of the public sees roadwork and civil projects and they interact with, you know, the [00:10:10] dump truck that’s going down the highway or the guy that’s holding the sign saying slow, stop, slow and they don’t necessarily see what part like the paperwork and the engineer is doing. Is he on this worksite, is he a project manager, where is the engineer, the P.Eng., the guy that’s creating the concepts, where does he come into play?

Matthew:          [00:10:37] That’s a good question and you may kill me for the answer, but the answer is actually in all of those segments that you mentioned but let me be a little bit more specific, right. So when we start like a regular, you know, roadway project, I will say – and I always have to give credit – because I used to work in city planning and I did a lot of work in the planning realm.

                          So I have to give a lot of credit to planners because a lot of planners work with [00:11:05] engineers like myself to develop what we call like conceptual designs, right, and conceptual layouts for new roads or to retrofit roads with, you know, let’s say like a cycling lane or a bus lane or something like that because there’s a bigger picture that you need to consider, right.

                          Like it’s not just your street and your road – especially in a city like Toronto it’s not just your street or your road, it’s how your street and your road interact with the larger network, right, and you need to be mindful of that. And I think that’s where some people [00:11:35] – and I stopped using this term. I used to use the term plangineer, but it’s I don’t really do it. You’re an engineer or you’re a planner, you just might know, you know, one or the other but – or you might know a little bit of both.

                          But I think it starts there, right, and I’ll just give a bit of personal context to this. When I was in university – and I went to school in North Carolina, North Carolina State in Raleigh, North Carolina – you know, I had a great mentor down there who told me [00:12:05], he said, you know, “Look, you know, we’re in this civil engineering. I’m going to teach you roadway design, I’m going to teach you traffic engineering, I’m going to teach you planning.”

                          He was like, “If you want to” – I’ll never forget this advice, he said, “If you want to keep the lights on in our house, right, and you don’t want to take a risk, do the roadway design, right. Take something from conceptual all the way to 100 percent design and then you have – you’ll have a job for life.”

                          You’ll, you know, bid – you know, you’ll help with the bidding, right, and there’s engineers [00:12:35] on the side, like you mentioned on the construction side that will bid for a project that’s been fully designed, and then you have construction engineers who are also civil who actually go out, design plans to build, you know, any piece of infrastructure. So that was his advice, but he also said, he said, “But if you want to be in those rooms where the decisions are made to even start with those roads or what those roads are supposed to look like, then your career takes another track,” you know, and I feel like I followed [00:13:05] that track.

                          So you have as engineers which – and I think in my old sort of lifetime before working at the City of Toronto, we used to call that pre-construction. So everything dealing with all types of issues prior to the people you see in dump trucks and everything like that, that is all a skill set of – the people have these skill sets of planning, they have preliminary design and then they start the process, right, for [00:13:35] advancing the design from preliminary to 10, 30, 60, 90 percent design and ultimately full delivery.

                          And then again you have the other side which, you know, is more visible where you have folks out there – you have resident engineers, right, like on-site like you mentioned who are civil engineers who manage the construction and the progress for these projects.

                          So we’re everywhere so to speak and it’s a shame that people in pre-construction don’t really – like I’m not [00:14:05] out there in front of anything for the most part or in major – or in big projects, but I kind of sit back and I say OK well I know I had something to do with, you know, something that launched that project and allowed it to become, you know, what it ultimately was – what it ultimately was meant to become, right.

Jerome:             [00:14:24] Right, right.

Matthew:          [00:14:25] So all over the place I think we are.

Jerome:             [00:14:28] Excellent. It’s good to know, good to hear. I’m going to revisit that diversity lens piece. Are you ready for an example that –

Matthew:          [00:14:37] Sure, sure.

Jerome:             [00:14:38] OK, great.

Matthew:          [00:14:40] So you want an example – so you want an example of how we bring diversity into an engineering project, is that what the question is?

Jerome:             [00:14:50] As a black man in construction, in the planning piece, how have you seen – how has your diversity lens lent to a better outcome or a perceived inclusionary piece that may have been overlooked if someone else was in that role?

Matthew:          [00:15:14] Alright. So I don’t know how long you have in your podcast but like we could really start talking this up a bit. But I’ll start with one example and if that’s not enough I have plenty more.

                          So one of the things that we’re doing at the City now and this is where I talked about the engineering lens has to be combined with again whether – like I have some lived experience in this field, right, being a black engineer, but also like just some knowledge of sociodemographics in a particular [00:15:45] area you kind of have to be aware of this too. But I’m going to give you this one example.

                          So in the City of Toronto what we’ve been doing – in Transportation Services what we’ve been doing is trying to say we spend, you know, a pretty decent sum of money every year, in the millions, dealing with our roadway network, right, be it roadway maintenance or we use the maintenance – we call it State of Good Repair program. We utilize a State of Good Repair program [00:16:15] because, you know, it’s ongoing and we’re constantly fixing roads to identify opportunities for enhancing roads even, right.

                          So if we’re going to go out and repave or reconstruct the road, wow OK this is a good opportunity to put a bike lane there, right, or do something, widen the sidewalk. You know, something like that. So we took a look at what we call pavement quality, right – that we call Pavement Quality Index and that’s literally just a measurement of how good, you know, the asphalt is. You know, what the quality of the [00:16:45] asphalt is on a particular road.

                          If you see it really cracked up and it’s, you know, cracking apart and you’re getting potholes, the Pavement Quality Index or PQI is probably very low and we need to schedule it for some type of intervention, be it a reconstruction or resurfacing. Obviously the opposite is true, if you have a pretty smooth ride the quality is high, no need to really schedule any reconstruction. So here is where I’m going to bring this all together.

                          So the City of Toronto [00:17:15] has what we call Neighbourhood Improvement Areas, and they were identified through the City of Toronto’s Strong Neighbourhoods Strategy. These are areas where it’s been identified where you have significant populations of people perhaps with low income, perhaps you have overrepresentation if you will of visible minorities or new immigrants or – you know.

                          Something that – you know, some part of the – what I like to call like the Ontario Human Rights Code protected person sort of thing [00:17:45], right, where you have all these people congregating or living in an area and for one reason or another – and it’s not because they are visible minorities or because of low income. Whatever the reason is, where they’re living we need to do better in terms of supporting those neighbourhoods, right.

Jerome:             [00:18:03] Right, right.

Matthew:          [00:18:04] Those Neighbourhood Improvement Areas, we did a – this is when I came on to this job, we initiated what we call like a baselining of our Local Road and Major Road program. While doing that what we were able to find is that there was – and because – so that’s why I want to bring this all to you in one hopefully nice bow.

                          What we saw was that we looked at the past 10 years of spending and, you know, sort of looked at that in parallel to the Pavement Quality Indices [00:18:35] in roads that were in Neighbourhood Improvement Areas versus non-Neighbourhood Improvement Areas and what we found and it’s over 10 years is that there was a difference, a 7 or 8 percent difference on average of quality degradation in the Neighbourhood Improvement Areas, right.

                          Now and I’m going to be fair to you, especially coming from the United States, you know, we have cities down there that, you know, that disparity would be like 10-20 percent, 30 percent [00:19:05] and it’s, you know, not a good situation. So on average, an 8-9 percent difference is actually not terrible. But, right, I managed a capital program, I’m responsible for making sure that our money and our investments are basically coming out and delivering equitable outcomes across the city so when I see this, right, what do I do.

                          I see this information; I start talking about it with my senior management [00:19:35] and the other managers that are responsible for asset management dealing with the pavement quality and we start to put together a program to make this more equitable. And this is why this is going to be [point?].

                          When I say make it more equitable what I mean is what level of effort do we have to apply so that two or three years from now, or maybe five years from now, whatever horizon we have, we can make – we can bring the disparity down between [00:20:05] Neighbourhood Improvement Areas and non-Neighbourhood Improvement Areas, right, so that the road quality is on par.

                          Now the last thing I’ll say on this. The reason why this is so important, right, because some people – so like this is the engineering side and people are probably, you know, glazing eyes over, but this is why – this is where I brought this lens into this.

Sponsor:           [00:20:25] We hope you’re enjoying this episode so far. At OSPE we’re here for you making sure government, media and the public are listening to the voice of engineers. You can learn more at ospe.on.ca.

Matthew:          [00:20:40] When we start to talk about pavement quality, if we have pavement quality that is, you know, suspect or low, that inhibits that type of improvements we can do, right, in terms of putting a cycling lane or a bus lane or things like that because we can’t just paint over, you know, bad asphalt –

Jerome:             [00:20:59] You have to fix it first –

Matthew:          [00:21:00] Exactly.

Jerome:             [00:21:00] – and then do that and that could set back projects and planning years.

Matthew:          [00:21:08] Well and that’s what happens, and this is where – like so we’ve done this baselining thing. This baselining exercise on a number of capital programs in the City of Toronto in Transportation Services and this – by applying that lens that you were asking me about where you know – like I know, like I know that maybe not in Toronto but I’ve been around long enough and I’ve worked in enough cities to know that there is going to be some disparity.

                          Now whether it’s 7 or 8 percent in pavement quality or whatever, what ends up happening is [00:21:38] underrepresented communities end up with underinvestment of infrastructure and it could be due to access to, you know, government, it could be people not wanting to report, right. If you have an area where you have a lot of new immigrants, they may not feel comfortable, right, talking to officials.

                          And like there are so many drivers behind this and this is what – so this is why I wanted to give you this as the first example. And if you want to another one, we can talk about it. But the reason why I wanted to use this one [00:22:08] was because as soon – the engineering work is let’s review, you know, what we did out in the field, how much we spent, what the Pavement Quality Index resulted in after that we put in these efforts.

                          But as I can – as you hopefully can tell and hopefully the folks listening to this can tell, the outcomes that come – that spread out from that finding are just like so numerous and you would never even think about them [00:22:38] unless you apply this diversity lens like as you called it or an equity lens as we call it in the City to that type of work.

                          So I will submit that as an example where we were not looking at that before my unit was created and we started it as soon as I got here. And I just want to again thank the folks that work with me on my team because it took literally a village of folks to bring all this data together and synthesize it in a way that allowed us to reach these conclusions and to start setting the path to improve things [00:23:08] in the future.

Jerome:             [00:23:09] Right. That’s an excellent story. And the way you ended it, like you have to bring data and statistics and put it together in a way that shows unequivocally the disparity to upper management and that they have no other option to act and make things – turn things around.

Matthew:          [00:23:33] I like to say we make their job a little bit easier, right, they don’t have to think about it. But yeah, absolutely.

Jerome:             [00:23:38] Excellent, excellent. Yeah, that was a great example and I’m sure that there’s more down the pipeline and you’re doing great work to infuse those equity ideas into your everyday work. I want to move on to another question.

Matthew:          [00:23:57] Sure.

Jerome:             [00:23:59] What kind of advice would you give black students today that are in high school, finishing high school, first-year university that may be playing with the idea of becoming an engineer, looking at careers in STEM. What did you do right, what would you have changed in your academic career, what kind of advice would you give?

Matthew:          [00:24:26] Sure. So I’m going to – in full disclosure I am not – I didn’t grow up here, right, so I’m learning – I have a 13-year-old daughter right now who’s going to transition into ninth grade next year. I’m learning about the Ontario school system, right, and how people historically have been, you know, streamed into – what’s it, like academic versus applied or all kinds of different levels.

                          And [00:24:55] I got to be honest as someone outside looking in it was kind of shocking to see that go on at a system – it’s at a system level where literally if folks don’t have their act together by ninth grade like it just changes their trajectory pretty much for – basically forever, right.

                          So I wanted to say that because I don’t want to give advice – I’m going to give advice but I wanted to make sure folks understood, right, like if you’re in school [00:25:25] and you have taken this approach where – or you’ve been streamed into an approach where it does not get you to university, you know, my understanding is you have – you can fight back, right. Like you can push back. If you’re working with your parents, you know, and you’re demonstrating the aptitude, you can get out of that stream, right, and I didn’t know that.

                          Like I’ve literally been on the phone with guidance counsellors all across like southern Ontario because I’m, you know, looking to move and things. I’m thinking like how [00:25:55] do we do this and they’re all telling me, “Please” – you know. Like my daughter is – you know, luckily I’m lucky that my daughter is very intelligent and she loves school, but at the same time it’s like, you know, not everybody is coming from that background and you may get – you know, you may either have been a result of being streamed earlier or, you know, perhaps you’re not doing all that well in school now.

                          All I’m saying is for the high school students that are in – you know, that could be listening like if this is something that interests you [00:26:25], you know, civil engineering first don’t limit yourself to – and I’m not cracking on you, Jerome. But like don’t limit yourself to what you think you see out there as this is civil – I’m going to advocate for civil engineering because I’m a civil engineer.

                          Just because all you see is dump trucks and cranes, that is not the full thing. If you need to – if you really want to know more, right, ask someone [00:26:55], right. I always offer – like before COVID I used to be in night meetings all the time as part of the City and I used to offer this all the time. Like, you know, we’d do our project and then afterwards I’d say hey – you know, people would come to me and say, “You know what, I didn’t know” – and I’m speaking – I’m going to speak directly towards black students.

                          There are people who go to community meetings, and they’ll say, “I didn’t even know what you did was a job,” right, like, “How do I get into that,” and I will give them my card and, you know, I’ll do as much as I can [00:27:25] with the limited resources I have to kind of just put them on a right path.

                          But I want to go back to the actual advice. Like find out everything you can about a particular interest area that you have. You may be struggling grades-wise now, right, but it doesn’t have to always be like that, you know, and you can take steps, you can move forward to get yourself in a position, a better position to go to university, right. But [00:27:55] what –

Jerome:             [00:27:56] And it’s all about understanding that you can reach out, you can get supports, it doesn’t necessarily – I think they thought in their mind that we’re doing a service almost, like we don’t want these children to suffer in too difficult of a class and feel stupid and all that kind of stuff. But making them feel like they’re not adequate is bad on the other side, that –

Matthew:          [00:28:25] Absolutely.

Jerome:             [00:28:26] – they can never achieve something. I just wanted to say like a little personal anecdote.

Matthew:          [00:28:31] Yeah, yeah.

Jerome:             [00:28:31] I remember when I was getting ready to start grade 11 and I went to a guidance counsellor meeting and I – at that point I was thinking about sciences and thinking about engineering. I was like OK at math and I was like OK I can do this and there’s nothing else that much interesting. And I was advised to take university college math [00:29:00] instead of the UC fully university classes and I’m like – at the time I was like thanks but no thanks.

                          Like I walked out of there being like he doesn’t have my best interests at heart, like he doesn’t know what my motivation and drive is, I need a path forward, I want support to get me there. And I just remember thinking that was the worst advice, but people take that advice in [00:29:30] and they’re like, “Well he should know what I’m capable of.”

                          And at that point, if it doesn’t align up with your goals, you need to get a second opinion or find out ways to make your dreams happen whether that be trying to get a tutor or finding out other opportunities after class or to, you know, get those extra credits because it’s the kids that go get the extra [00:30:00] credit that succeed in the world [laughs].

Matthew:          [00:30:04] Absolutely and they have the work ethic, right, and they demonstrate it early and that work ethic can carry you through all types of troubles, right. But I guess just to – with the advice. What I was going to say for young folks just to like kind of put a bow on this one is ultimately I just want to make sure people understand that you cannot – and it kind of echoes what you were saying.

                          You can’t take one person’s word as law [00:30:35] and as guiding your life. If you have a passion for something like this or if you have an interest, number one explore it because you may find for example, “Oh, I want to be a civil engineer” and then you start to look into it and you say, “No, that’s not for me,” you know. But you cancel it out so it’s not a waste of time, right, to understand what you don’t like. So like that, I think that’s a big thing.

                          And I think that when it comes to school – and again, I’m speaking [00:31:05] as someone who is just sort of being indoctrinated into the Ontario sort of way of school. I’m going to say this and people might not like it, but it is you all have it so easy here [laughs], right.

                          Like I was talking to a guidance counsellor who told me that you have this system where when you get ready to graduate, you know, it’s like clearinghouse for applications, right, for all Ontario universities and you don’t have to take an SAT or an ACT test like we do [00:31:35] in the U.S. to, you know, get – like if you all understood and maybe you do because I know perhaps some of the listeners are either – they may have went to a university in the United States or whatever, the SAT is such a hurdle.

                          Like I’ll tell you when I was growing up and, you know, not embarrassed to say didn’t come from a lot of means, one of my good friend’s mother paid for my SAT test because I couldn’t afford to take it and it was only through her that I was able to actually get into university [00:32:05], right. But what if I didn’t have him as a friend, right, like I don’t know what would happen.

                          So like understand that you have opportunity here – I’m just going to speak for Ontario. You have opportunities here that in many other developed nations you don’t get, and I would just try to take advantage of those, right. And I think the – and I would say don’t – you know, there’s going to be a lot – and again, we could have – I told you, we could have a lot of time on this podcast [00:32:35], Jeremy – or Jerome, sorry.

                          There are so many obstacles that will get in your way even if you do – or even if you are successful in making it to university and I would tell you like I am standing right here as an example. It took me about six or seven years to finally graduate in a bachelors, I transferred schools. But, you know, I had some personal tragedies, you know, going on at the time but I didn’t stop [00:33:05] and my family –

Jerome:             [00:33:06] You didn’t let that limit you.

Matthew:          [00:33:07] Yeah. Yeah, you got to keep going. My family supported me throughout and ultimately, you know, here I am talking to you in Canada, right, a Jersey guy from a refinery town. So don’t give up on it. And then the last thing I’ll say is if you make it through university, right, and you get that job, please, please, please, please – and I say this every time someone asks me this question, Jerome – take the time to get your license.

                          Like if you’re [00:33:35] going to be an engineer do everything you can to set yourself up so that you ultimately get licensure because if you don’t – you know, if you don’t, you’ll get passed over for promotions all the time.

                          If you’re one of these folks where, you know, you’re looking at it like I’m black, I’m a black male, black female and look I’m not getting promotions because you’re black OK, you know, maybe – perhaps that’s part of it. No one’s going to tell you that engineering is not – doesn’t have racism in it [00:34:05], right, in anywhere, but what I would say is before you say that get your license first, right. And if you’ve –

Jerome:             [00:34:12] And set yourself up for success.

Matthew:          [00:34:14] Exactly. And if you get your license and you’re producing, you’re putting it out there and you’re not getting promoted OK, then you can probably start thinking like OK what are the other reasons why. But I can guarantee you, folks will hold that license or lack of licensure over your head as long as possible because you’re going to keep working, right.

                          You’re going to keep generating great work regardless of if you have a license or not and that – you know, if you’re working for a private firm, that’s billable hours, that’s over – you know, they’re making money on that regardless. So you make your money [00:34:45], right. Make sure you do what you need to do to position yourself for future success, get a license. I just plead with people to get a license, do not just let it go. And I’m going to tell you as a foreign graduate, getting a license in PEO is extremely difficult but ultimately, you know, after many tries I was able to get through.

                          It was that structures. Remember I told you about the structures, it was that structures that got me, but ultimately I got through. So I would say if I can do it, I’m pretty sure [00:35:15] others can. And I’m here too, right. Like I’m hoping that – that’s one of the reasons why I joined OSPE actually was to be able to like involve myself more in outreach outside of what I already do in the City of Toronto, right. So I’m, you know, here to help.

Jerome:             [00:35:32] So much good advice, so little time [laughs]. Thank you so much.

Matthew:          [00:35:38] No problem.

Jerome:             [00:35:38] One last question. Why did you join OSPE? And I think you touched on it a little bit at the end there, but give us an example of why you – the answer of why you’ve joined OSPE?

Matthew:          [00:35:50] Yeah. So part of it like I said was to participate more in the outreach side of professional engineering, right, and get outside the Toronto bubble if you will and I guess connect with a larger group of people. You’re not all civil engineers, right, you’re not all City of Toronto employees, there’s people from a wide array of areas.

                          I learned from – I learned about OSPE [00:36:20] years ago when I first came to Canada, but I didn’t have my professional engineers license. I had a professional engineers – I had 10 licenses back in the U.S., but I didn’t have a [P.Eng.?] so I couldn’t join OSPE, right, at the time so I kind of aspired to do so.

                          And then I’m going to give a shout-out to Andrea Carmona. She’s no longer with OSPE now but when we – I think I got invited to speak at an ITE [00:36:50] function down at – why do I want to say McMaster. But she was there with another one of her colleagues and talking to her about some of the initiatives that OSPE got into when it came to equity and it came to outreach, it really impressed me. And so it took me some time but after talking with – like talking with her really solidified that for me that I need to join, right, and I need to – you know.

                          There’s always a risk, Jerome, with like [00:37:20] putting yourself out there and being visible especially as a black engineer but you know what, like the benefits I think to the overall profession and to black folks looking to get into the profession far outweigh the risks. So OSPE is a bigger platform and I just felt like it’s time for me to – you know, I’m getting a little grey in the beard, it’s time for me to kind of share some information and share advice that hopefully others can pick up and take forward and use for their success.

Jerome:             [00:37:50] Excellent. Thank you so much for taking the time today. This podcast was well needed. I think the amount of knowledge and advice and lived experience that you’ve shared today will definitely help those coming up the ranks and thinking about a career in engineering from a diverse – from all diverse backgrounds. And hopefully we will see more equity [00:38:20] infused into everyday life through your engineering and other people like you trying to make the world a better place. So thank you so much.

Matthew:          [00:38:32] Thank you, thank you for having me.

Jerome:             [00:38:35] I have just been speaking with Matthew Davis, Manager of Capital Projects & Program, Transportation Services at the City of Toronto, and a member of the OSPE. My name is Jerome James, you’ve been listening to Engineering The Future. Thank you for listening.

Sponsor:           [00:38:57] From all of us at OSPE, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, thanks for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.

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