Profile: John Van der Put

Welcome John Van der Put, the new Director of Pipeline System Design, effective August 2, 2001. John brings over 18 years of industry experience to his new appointment, with 11 of those years at TransCanada PipeLines Limited/Nova Gas Transmission Ltd. John has gained experience in many different parts of the industry, making him a valuable part of the TransCanada family.

Immediately prior to this appointment, John completed a seven month assignment with TransCanada in commercial strategy. In late 1999, John took on the position of General Manager of Operations in Santiago, Chile for TransCanada International. John thoroughly enjoyed living abroad for a year and found his Chilean colleagues to be among the nicest and hardest working he'd ever had the privilege to lead and work with.

From mid-1997 to 1999, John was the Regional Director for Northeastern Alberta. Although John came into the position under difficult circumstances, the overall experience turned out to be quite successful and rewarding. One experience he'll never forget was staying up all night in the emergency operations centre monitoring the progress of a huge forest fire in the Slave Lake area as it came within yards of meter stations and a compressor station.

From 1994 to 1997, John was Director of Engineering Resources Planning & Development. In this role, John and his co-director helped to change NOVA's engineering organization from a collection of functionally focused teams to a more efficient team where all of the people resources were pooled together and deployed to projects on an as-needed basis.

In John's first four years at NOVA, he worked in the same area as his current appointment - System Design. John held a number of supervisory assignments in volume forecasting and facilities planning. He was also involved in the development of a new hydraulic simulation tool called HART, still being utilized today. One of his main accomplishments during this time was to work with industry to reduce the lead time required to provide new service to customers on the NOVA pipeline system from the original 27 months to as few as three months in some cases - making for a more customer-focused company.

John is very familiar with the issues facing TransCanada's producer customers. Prior to his time with TransCanada/NOVA, John worked for seven years at Exxon in California and Houston. During his time at Exxon, he took on three very significant assignments within the company: 1) Development of new oil and gas fields in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska; 2) Implementation of a new accounting system for the company's exploration and production functions; and 3) Development of computer tools for engineering applications, including the use of artificial intelligence systems.

In John's current role of Director, Pipeline System Design, his mandate is to ensure that TransCanada has the correct pipeline facilities to meet its service requirements for customers, both for today and in the future. His priority is to ensure we have the right people resources with the right tools at their disposal to continue to excel in that mandate. "My role is to provide leadership to the Pipeline System Design team making sure team members have appropriate opportunities for training, the information systems needed to carry out their jobs successfully, and to ensure that all employees are satisfied in their jobs," says John.

For more information, please e-mail John directly or call (403) 920-2023.