- I'm Lieutenant Navy Alicia Schick from Pickering, Ontario,
a Marine Systems Engineering Officer currently serving onboard HMCS Montreal.
A Marine Systems Engineering Officer is responsible to the Commanding Officer
for the technical state of the ship.
We're responsible for pretty much anything that makes a ship float and move.
To do that, we of course have a whole team that actually gets in there and makes this happen.
In the engineering department, we have a team of Marine Technicians
with both mechanical and electrical backgrounds,
that actually, from the bottom up, act as on-watch personnel 24/7,
manning and doing rounds on the equipment to ensure it's operating as it should,
as well as maintainers and technicians
that either maintain the equipment to prevent any failures,
or should we encounter any problems, go in there and try to rectify them.
My job is more to act as a translator then for the technicians
who are the experts on the equipment,
and essentially translating what they're seeing and doing
to the command team in a manner that makes it more approachable and understandable
what the impact is to them in the operations.
- Warships are fighting ships
and Marine System Engineering Officers play a role in that, too.
As damage control officers,
they coordinate the repair of damage from fires, floods or explosions
while maintaining essential equipment
so that the ship can continue to manoeuvre and fight as necessary.
- Missile away!
- We're also responsible for anything that makes it more like a floating city
or your home away from home:
power generation, sewage treatment,
freshwater production and distribution.
If you don't have functional sewage treatment
or fresh water provided to the crew for basic food services and showers,
it becomes unsustainable in very short order.
- It's a huge area of responsibility.
Marine Systems Engineering Officers
lead a team of over 55 crewmembers on the ship.
With more than 250 people on board,
that's a large component of the ship's daily activities under their watch.
- I like what I do every day here,
and I find it's that much easier to put time into it,
get to know the systems and interact with the people working on those systems.
And I find that's part of what makes someone a good engineering officer.
This job can take you throughout the country
to places that you might not otherwise have seen.
I got the chance to explore some of the communities up north,
which would be pretty hard to get to otherwise,
or across the world where I had the opportunity
to deploy to the Mediterranean in the Black Sea.
Seeing places like Crete and meeting the people there,
interacting with the other navies
and just seeing a different country
and how things are both the same and different from home.
- On completion of their military and occupation training,
Marine Systems Engineering Officers will be ready for their first posting
to a Canadian warship or submarine.
They'll be assigned as a member of a ship's company sailing out of
either Halifax, Nova Scotia or Esquimalt, British Columbia.
They'll spend a year as a junior officer in the Engineering Department.
During that year, they'll acquire extensive system knowledge,
learning a bit about the administrative side of the job,
and taking on some very basic divisional responsibilities.
That first year is typically followed by a shore posting on the east or west coast.
This could be working at a coastal Fleet Maintenance Facility,
teaching new engineers at the Naval Fleet Schools,
or providing their expert engineering assessments
towards new ships and equipment purchases for the future fleet.
This shore posting is followed by another one-year posting on board a ship,
this time as the Assistant Head of the Engineering Department.
It's an opportunity to focus more on the leadership and management parts of the job
and to learn how to run your own engineering department.
After that, the career progression can include both land and sea postings.
There can also be opportunities for engineering specialization
through fully funded post-graduate education in Canada or abroad.
- Part of what I'm looking at doing in the future
is potentially doing an engineering management degree.
With that, there's lots of opportunities within the military
to go for further post-secondary education.
And that's the one I'm looking at.
Part of the things I like about being in the Navy as Marine Systems Engineering Officer
is the variety of positions available
and that you never feel stagnant with any of them.
So, there's still lots of things I get to go try after this
that I haven't been exposed to yet.