Page 28 - CEA-Alberta-Innovators-2024

SYLVIA JUNGKIND
One of those things just so happened to be working on the company’s insurance portfolio.
“Of the major things that changed my career path, it was the boss coming out of his office and dropping this hunk of papers on my desk and basically saying ‘here, take this,’” Jungkind says. “It was the insurance and he wanted me to start helping him with it.”
Shortly thereafter, Jungkind accepted another off-the-cuff opportunity. This time it was to attend a risk management conference on behalf of the company. It was there, she says, that she realized what she wanted to do with her life.
“When I got to the risk management conference
and I heard all these conversations from people deeply embedded in the industry, I was just really attracted. That was it for me,” she says.
Jungkind was sold and with the support of her employer, she enrolled in night classes at the University of Alberta and the then-named Grant MacEwan Community College where she earned her Canadian Risk Management designation in ’04 and her Chartered Insurance Professional designation through the Insurance Institute of Canada in ’06.
Of the major things that changed my career path, it was the boss coming out of his office and dropping this hunk of papers on my desk and basically saying ‘here, take this’
Sylvia Jungkind
Three decades later, Jungkind has moved through the ranks to become the Senior Contracts and Insurance Specialist at WSP Canada, after the company acquired the geomatics and engineering firm in
2014. But her dedication to the field hasn’t ended there. She’s served on the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies (ACEC) Business Practices Advisory Committee, represented ACEC on the Canadian Construction Documents Committee (CCDC) since 2011, has been vice chair of the CCDC since 2016, chair of the CCDC Insurance Sub-Committee for several years and was a panel speaker at the 2017 and 2019 ACEC national leadership conferences.
These contributions to the association and the consulting engineering industry earned her the 2020 Chair’s Award.
Despite her haphazard route to the role, it’s a position in which she’s found a great deal of passion and meaning.
“I love it. It’s really become my career,” says Jungkind. “Working in industry on contracts ... with architects, engineers, owners, specification writers and contractors, and supporting Consulting Engineers of Alberta, so that, in the end, you have something more fair and balanced.”
With all of that under her belt, Jungkind’s using
her experience of growing from humble beginnings
to advising, negotiating and reviewing large-scale engineering contracts at the upper echelons of industry, to help mentor the next generation. “When
I had my 25th work anniversary, the company had an article about my career in WSP’s “In the Spotlight” ... I had a message [for] the next generation of women in the industry and that was to never say no, because you never know what it’ll evolve into.”
“After years of reviewing and negotiating contracts, my favourite thing today is sharing that knowledge, my favourite words to hear are ‘Sylvia, every time I talk to you, I learn something new,’ it doesn’t get better than that,” she says. AI
28 ALBERTA INNOVATORS