Jennifer Maurice – Quality Control Technician

During the past two summer seasons, I have had the privilege of working for Miller Group’s Northern Paving Division in Ontario, Canada. I first found out about employment opportunities through my city’s local job fair in New Liskeard and was initially hired as a paving crew flagger as that was the only available position (which involved coordinating traffic safely with the use of a radio and various hand gestures along with appropriate signs). It wasn’t the position I was looking for, but it got my foot in the door for the next upcoming opportunity within the company’s quality control laboratory technician crew.

I was soon transferred to the quality control department when a laboratory/field technician position opened up. As my education received from Sir Sandford Fleming College fit the job criteria, I knew it was finally my chance to seize the job opportunity using my Earth Resource Technician Co-op program experience and was rewarded with many different tasks in work settings oriented around all aspects of construction covered by Miller Paving Northern for sampling/testing concrete, asphalt, and aggregates.

Over the course of my employment with Miller, I continually obtained field aggregate and granular material samples. It was also my responsibility to conduct physical analysis/testing on these materials for the company’s contracts. These tests depended on the client’s requests but would typically involve determining fine and coarse aggregate densities, sieve analysis for grain size distributions, sand equivalency values, and sometimes hardness, uncompacted void content, and/or compaction values via proctor or loose & rodded density tests. There were a number of smaller physical tests I performed on a regular basis such as moisture content determination, percent loss by wash, percent of flat & elongated particles, percent of crushed particles, and percent of asphalt coated particles when applicable.

I occasionally conducted laboratory testing on concrete cylinders hot & cold mix asphalt samples, asphalt core samples, and aggregate/soils samples from third- party contracts concerning investigation/discovery projects.

Under my supervisors’ tutelage, I worked as a laboratory and field technician and obtained my certification for Aggregates Laboratory Tests, Concrete Field Testing, as well as Hot Mix Asphalt, Marshall & Superpave Technician recognized by the Canadian Council of Independent Laboratories.

With those certifications, I carried out many laboratory procedures for all three material fields (the slump and air meter tests for concrete, aggregate field sampling and laboratory testing, as well as on-site asphalt sampling for paving contracts followed by laboratory testing). Most of my laboratory testing however, was oriented around asphalt compliance depending on individual mix designs and individual aggregates testing.

The asphalt aspect of the job, I have to say was the most intriguing and interesting as it entailed determining the asphalt cement content, grain size distribution, bulk specific gravity in relation to the theoretical maximum specific gravity of loose asphalt, the percentage of air voids in relation to the actual voids in the specified upon aggregate for that mix design and the overall lifetime expectancy (sensitivity to moisture, maximum and minimum temperature analysis, and hardness) of that particular mix design of asphalt.

My favourite part of being a laboratory technician was the asphalt testing as it is generally the same routine testing on a weekly basis. I can positively state that the comfort of a laboratory routine challenged me to refine my testing skills methodologies to reduce time consumption while still maintaining precision to increase overall productivity.

In my opinion, this experience has allowed me to increase my overall success and knowledge in the geoscience sector as a major asset aside from a safety oriented mindset is the ability to prioritize individual tasks and work at them simultaneously to meet tight deadlines.

Although I really enjoy working in the road construction field, the days sampling materials outside have me dreaming of being outside most of the time. If the opportunity were to come up, I think I would work in the mining sector at some yet-to-be-determined-level to learn more about the geological sector.