Dock Member Series: Polar Engineering
Ian Welle is the Principal Engineer and Founder of Polar Engineering.
Polar creates regrigeration systems for savings, for efficiency, and for carbon reduction.
1. How long have you been a Dock member? What attracted you to theDock?
Polar was attracted to the Dock as it allowed us to work and share ideas with other forward-thinking leaders in the community. From the first day we arrived, it has felt like a place to call home. We really enjoy the social events which allow us to share ideas, grow, and have a lot of fun. Plus the 2% jazz coffee is some of the best coffee in town. The coffee alone makes me want to come into the office on a cold winter morning.
2. Introduce your organization in a few sentences – what do you do, what’s your purpose?
Polar Engineering is a comprehensive engineering, design, project management, and commissioning engineering consulting firm. At Polar, we focus on engineering refrigeration systems based on our client’s needs to save energy and deliver a great product for a reasonable capital cost.Our clients are made up of industrial food processing facilities, hockey arenas, curling clubs, large buildings such as hospitals, and developments which employ district energy systems.
At Polar, we focus on engineering state-of-the-art refrigeration systems. This process has allowed us to become world leaders at integrating refrigerated arena floors with heat recovery systems that provide 100% of the energy for many recreational facilities around BC.
In parallel with this work, Polar enjoys working with TSBC and WSBC to ensure all our state-of-the-art refrigeration systems are constructed and maintained to the strictest standards. This reduces our clients operating downtime and increases the safety of the systems Polar engineers and installs.
3. What is your favourite part about working for your organization?
At Polar, we get to work on HUGE greenhouse gas reduction projects. Over the last year, Polar was able to install energy recovery systems that will reduce our client’s carbon footprint by more than 2,000 tons of CO2 per year. We are growing and hoping to double this by the end of 2023.
4. How has Covid impacted your organization? Any surprising challenges and wins along the way?
In early 2022, half of the Polar team caught COVID while home for the Christmas break. This caused a few project delays and forced us to work even closer together to ensure our clients received good quality work. The term, growth through adversity comes to mind. Through this process, Polar was able to build several processes which have allowed us to deliver better products and serve our clients more effectively in the future.
5. How did you adapt this past year?
To effectively respond to the climate crisis and ensure Polar is having the maximum possible impact, Polar has been required to grow very quickly over the last few years. This had stressed the team and forced us to be in a constant state of evaluating our processes and throwing out anything which does not allow us to effectively stay on task. Through this process, I am proud to say that we are stronger than ever and positioned to take on more challenging projects in 2022 and 2023.
6. What is your team most excited for in 2022?
We are honored to have been asked to work on some very large, over 1000 tons of CO2 reduction per year, greenhouse gas reduction projects. Polar is looking forward to being part of a team that is making a difference in the climate crisis.
7. What are some bonus fun facts or info about you?
When I am not working on greenhouse gas reduction projects, I enjoy spearfishing and kiteboarding. I gained this adventurous spirit by living in the jungles of Nigeria when I was younger with my parents who were helping bring fresh water and create schooling systems for remote villages.
Want to learn more about Polar Engineering?
Check out their website.
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