Tom McCaffrey, executive director of the new Alberta Logistics Centre of Excellence, joins Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins to discuss the centre’s role as a hub for collaboration between industry, technology providers, government, and academia. Michael Higgins: The federal government is awarding $1.5 million to Mount Royal University for this initiative. What exactly is the Centre of Excellence? Tom McCaffrey: The Centre of Excellence is an organization started through Mount Royal University and the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Mount Royal. It’s an organization that comes together to support transportation logistics companies throughout the province. We’ll have different levels of programs we want to deliver, and we’re going to be helping companies adopt technology and execute their growth strategies over the next three years. MH: What gap does this aim to fill in our province? TM: Logistics is pretty ubiquitous in everything we do, everything from your dentist’s office to your local food store, to the house you may be building. Those are all personal ways you interact with logistics without even recognizing it. Obviously at a higher level across the economy. Oil and gas, through new opportunities and critical materials, are all going to be highly dependent on how well we do as a province in continuing the growth of our logistics sector, and they’re facing great challenges. So why now? Well, there are different geopolitical issues that have been going on. Obviously during the pandemic we became acutely aware of how challenging it can be for our logistics organizations to continue to meet the demands amongst those types of challenges. As much as these are strong companies enabling us to live the lives we currently lead, they need help too. We are one of the resources at their disposal. MH: How hands-on will you get? TM: The programs we will be delivering will take personnel from these companies, managers, vice presidents, supervisors, and our focus will be to support them to achieve the goals they’ve set for themselves as an organization. Technology can be adopted in many ways. These organizations have a keen eye for what it is they need to get them to the next level. We are a neutral and excellent resource for them to tap into to help them to achieve those goals more quickly and more efficiently. That can be the challenge they are all facing, the day to day challenge of running their businesses. Sometimes those growth plans, technology adoption plans, can get stalled out. The Centre of Excellence is here to help make sure that doesn’t happen. MH: How do you maintain neutrality in the guidance you’re providing? TM: Being able to focus specifically on what these companies are doing to achieve growth, how they operate, and the upskilling of the individuals. Lots of new technologies are coming on to the market. They have excellent staff members and likely need some sort of boost. We are not there to sell them on any particular technology in and of itself. These companies aren’t technology experts. Sometimes they need help in not necessarily the development of the strategy, but the execution component. Again, there can be gaps. Whether that is in the need to upskill, or maybe it’s just in the need for certain kinds of advice an organization like ours has to offer, both through the expertise we employ, and also through things like our advisory panel that’s here to help guide us along the way. MH: Why is now a good time for Albertans to have a better understanding about what’s happening on the supply management side of transportation and logistics? TM: It’s rare we see the outcomes of a really large challenge, and that is because in a lot of ways our logistics companies are the best firefighters in the world. If you want to put it in a simplistic way, they’re good at understanding Port X is closed to them for a while, so they’re going to go to Port B for a while. They’re good at understanding, ‘This road is washed out, I have to find alternatives to get what my customer needs, where it needs to go.’ There are new opportunities here. We tend to focus on the challenges. We focus on what’s blocking us. We focus on things that are very significant for us from an economic and a geopolitical standpoint. The reality is there are opportunities in all of those challenges, and sometimes those opportunities are obvious and sometimes they’re not. So an organization like the Centre of Excellence is really there to support those companies. If they know where they’re going, to help them achieve the goals they’ve set. We’re here to support them to achieve the goals they have and get to the growth and the supply chain resilience that are both important to our economy, but also important to Albertans. MH: How critical is it to be launching the Centre of Excellence right now? TM: All one has to do is look at the news to see all of the different things we are faced with as a country. Our trade partners are shifting their focus. There are just so many different things. It feels a bit cliche to talk about how all of these things are stacking up and how this is a time that is faster moving than ever. There’s probably people that said that a year ago, and we’re saying it even more so today. I don’t think you can really refute the amount of challenges in the system, and so timing really couldn’t be better. I don’t want to say there’s not many more things we could face in terms of challenges. But I think an organization like this should be hopefully really well received and well timed. We’re here at the starting line at the right moment.
