- Environment Primarily indoor/office work
- Education Post-secondary diploma
- Average salary $52,000 to $84,000
Career profile
Schedulers are senior employees who are primarily responsible for creating, maintaining, and delivering an integrated schedule that facilitates secure, reliable, and efficient work execution through careful planning and organization to ensure safe, cost and time-efficient operations. Schedulers typically collaborate within a team, and a key aspect of their role is the application of technical knowledge across various departments, including engineering design and technology, to support the successful completion of broader projects.
Schedulers often specialize in specific areas, which can include:
- Project scheduler: This role focuses on developing strategic approaches, planning, scheduling work, managing material flow, and adapting schedules throughout a project’s lifecycle, from initiation to completion. In sectors like oil and gas, projects can be massive, spanning several years and involving multi-million-dollar investments.
- Production scheduler: In this capacity, professionals oversee workflow and material requirements for product manufacturing. They develop overarching plans and schedules that align various departments within a company, ensuring the seamless production process.
- Turnaround scheduler: Turnarounds are planned shutdowns in large facilities like upgraders and refineries to facilitate maintenance. Turnaround schedulers are responsible for developing, optimizing, and progressing integrated schedules for these complex operations.
- Maintenance scheduler: This role involves the planning and scheduling of routine maintenance activities within industrial settings, such as mines and facilities. Ensuring that maintenance tasks are efficiently scheduled and executed is a core responsibility.
In this occupation activities may include:
- Reviewing documents such as production schedules, work orders, or staffing tables to determine personnel or materials requirements or material priorities.
- Leading the creation and implementation of the integrated schedule structure for a project or department to maximize efficiency from a labour, time and cost perspective.
- Revising production schedules when required due to design changes, labour or material shortages, backlogs, or other interruptions. This requires collaborating with management, marketing, sales, production or engineering.
- Adhering to enterprise scheduling standards for development and implementation of schedules, ensures standards are current and met.
- Compiling information such as production rates and progress, materials inventories, materials used, or customer information so that status reports can be completed.
Education
- Completion of secondary school is usually required.
- Often a technical diploma or university degree may be preferred by employers, depending on the size and scope of the Scheduler’s responsibility.
- Several years of experience in the area the Scheduler is working in is usually required.
Certifications
- Certification is not required, as there is currently no legislation regulating this occupation.
Additional Requirements
- Specific health and safety certifications may be required, determined by location of work and company requirements
- This is typically a senior position, with employers requiring significant experience and knowledge of the oil and natural gas industry.
- Proficiency with scheduling software such as Primavera is often required
- Travel likely required
- Primarily indoor/office work
- Work not physically demanding
- Work away from home/in camps
You are a master of multiple systems, from the engineering systems that make it possible for products to be produced to the information systems that track documents through the scheduling process. You also understand how to maximize efficiencies while maintaining the quality of the products being produced and the safety of the employees producing them. Because, like any good choreographer, you need to make sure no one steps on anyone else’s toes.
- Application of Engineering Design and Technology
- Information and Document Management
- Production and Processing
- Writing, Technical Writing, Document Production
- Managing Personnel Resources
- Coordination
- Building a Successful Team
- Managing Conflict
- Planning and Organizing
- Attention to Detail
- Collaborative
- Administrative
