Rick Senez joins Pilko with 40 years of experience in the refinery, petrochemical and oil sands.  Rick retired from Shell after 36 years working in a variety of leadership and technical roles.  His most recent role was as Reliability Transformation Manager on the Shell Albian Sands leadership team.  This role shaped the strategic reliability direction for the Shell Albian site as well as the implementation of the strategy.  The Albian site consists of two mines and extraction facilities. Prior to this, Rick worked as the Production Manager for Shell’s Scotford Upgrader.  He led the integration of a new world scale brownfield heavy oil upgrader with the existing upgrader.  Both roles required the ability to diagnose and act on complex organizational, technical and EHS challenges.

Rick has a proven ability to provide coaching and guidance to leadership teams in the implementation of work processes, turnaround scope development, margin improvement, reliability management and EHS.  Rick worked for three years as a Business Improvement Leader within Shell Manufacturing Excellence. The role included the responsibility of guiding three Shell Canada Refineries as they integrated into the Shell Global Manufacturing System.   The role required the ability to quickly gain the trust of leadership teams and influence their direction while the sites were undergoing major organizational change.

After Shell, Rick worked for three years with Northwest Redwater Partnership during the grass roots start up of the Redwater Refinery.  His role, which reported to the President, provided coaching to the refinery leadership team on reliability management, turnaround work processes and the investigation of complex reliability, operational and safety issues. His work with Shell and NWR provided valuable insights into the challenges of multi billion-dollar facility start up and stabilization.

Rick graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1980 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering.  He is a registered professional engineer in the Province of Alberta.