Partner and Chief Engineer
Mr. Prescott has over 30 years of engineering and project management experience on
design, installation, and testing of mechanical and process systems in various areas
including military, petrochemical, and electric power production industries. Mr.
Prescott has particular expertise in vulnerability assessments and pilot testing
of control facilities for mussel biofouling control. He has experience with many
clients throughout Canada, U.S.A., and overseas and is currently a partner and senior
project engineer at RNT Consulting Inc.
Academic Background
- Master of Appled Science, Mechanical Engineering (University of Waterloo)
- Bachelor of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering (Royal Military College)
Professional Experience
Mr. Prescott has diverse experience in engineering including the following areas:
Design Engineering and Project Engineering
- Project Engineer for power plant vulnerability assessments posed by aquatic invasive
species at hydraulic dams, power plants and pumping plants in Brazil and USA, and
nuclear plants in Spain and USA.
- Project Manager for installation and evaluation of zebra/quagga mussel control systems
in nuclear and fossil plants in Ontario.
- Project Engineer for design and installation of aquatic weed control system in a
nuclear plant in Ontario.
- Specified design and performance requirements for rotating pumping machinery for
high reliability applications in nuclear power plant designs. Managed technical
aspects of subsequent equipment contracts. The equipment contracts typically ranged
from about $ 0.1M to $ 7M in value.
Construction Engineering
- As Resident Engineering Manager at a nuclear power plant construction site in South
America costing approximately $600M, he set up and managed a program to approve
and implement site design changes and to prepare as-built drawings of the power
plant systems. The plant design comprised approximately 21,000 drawings. The drawings
and design documents were reviewed, updated, approved and delivered to the plant
owner over a two year period. The resident engineering team comprised 12 professionals
and was delegated design authority to resolve field engineering problems from the
head office.
- As Construction Manager for a refractory engineering company that designed and supplied
linings for high temperature process lines in existing and newly constructed petrochemical
plants and pulp mills, he was responsible for planning, constructing and installing
linings. He supervised the construction of the process lines and the installation
of the refractory linings at construction sites with crew sizes from 5 to 15 refractory
brick masons. Refractory installations included brick, cast-in-place, gunnite and
ceramic fibre linings. He also supervised installation of acid resistant linings
and fireproof coatings at petrochemical plants. Contracts were of various sizes
ranging from $10K to $1M. Most contract installations were required to be done during
routine plant outages requiring careful planning, innovative pre-assembly and strict
attention to detail.
Management
- Business Operations Manager and Partner in a Consulting Engineering firm specializing
in failure and loss analysis in the transportation industry. The firm has a per
annum revenue of $1.1M and consists of 4 engineers and 2 technologists. Over a period
of 3 years, Prescott has introduced new work systems and streamlined the company
operations, reducing overhead administration expenses from 10% of revenues to 3%
of revenues while meeting revenue targets.
- Managed a Computer Aided Design and Drafting (CADD) operation for Atomic Energy
of Canada Ltd. (CANDU Division), a large Canadian design and build engineering organization.
The CADD operation had an annual operating budget of $1.3 million. This system expanded
from 5 to 34 workstations under his management over a period of 5 years. Also, he
moved the design and drafting capability from traditional manual methods to effective
3-D CADD between 1985 and 1989. This included dealing with the many cultural issues
that accompany technological change. One design project now underway with a team
of 100 technical staff has no drawing boards and uses 3-D CADD for all design and
drafting. The 3-D CADD program has input and output links to many other aspects
of the design including stress analysis, safety analysis, bills of material, and
specifications for procurement.
- Supervised a staff of 15 engineering professionals who specify software requirements,
evaluate commercial software, modify the commercial software to meet specific design
needs and then train the design staff how to use the applications effectively. Where
commercial software was not available, these engineering professionals developed
in-house applications programming in "C", Fortran and Informix Relational Database
languages. About 40 applications programs were introduced about one fifth of which
were in-house developed software.
- Advised a committee of Senior Staff at the vice-president and general manager level
on information technology strategic planning and initiatives. Prepared annual plans
for allocation of funding and staffing resources for approval.
- As operations manager for the mechanical component design department he was in charge
of 4 managers and 80 design staff. The department work included design and analysis
of pressure vessels, materials handling systems and remote tooling design for hazardous
work areas. The work was characterized by a need for high quality products that
were extremely reliable and safe. Delivery of designs on time and within budget
were also key success factors. To this end, he designed and introduced a successful
PC-based engineering work control system which allowed the work units to identify
their engineering deliverables and to control costs.
Professional Memberships
- Professional Engineer (P.Eng.), Association of Professional Engineers Ontario
Publications and Presentations
- Prescott T.H. November 2009. Vulnerability Assessment of Zebra and Quagga Mussels
on Facilities from Intake to Discharge. Presented at the Sligo Institute of Technology
Water Quality Issues Conference, Athlone, Ireland
- Prescott T.H. February 2000. The Proposed Use of Continuous and Intermittent Ozone
for Zebra Mussel Control at Ontario Power Generation. Presented at the 10th International
Aquatic Nuisance Species Conference, Toronto, Ontario.
- Prescott T. H. February 6-7, 2008. Dealing with Engineering Experts. Presented at
the Osgoode Hall Law School Professional Development Program.
- Burroughs, J. W. and T. H. Prescott. 1990. Advanced computer methods to design,
construct and maintain CANDU reactors. Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference,
Canadian Nuclear Association, p. 3/11-18.
- Prescott, T. H. 1989. Application of CADD to construction of CANDU power stations.
Presented at the Canadian Electrical Association Spring meeting.
- Prescott, T. H., Sayles, C. D. and E. D. Wessmann. 1989. CANDID integrated design
system. Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference, Canadian Nuclear Society, vol.
2, p.3/8-14.