There are essentially two sides of the Plains Midstream Canada (PMC) structure - Commercial and Operations (which includes Engineering). Feedback from those working on the Commercial side is generally positive. PMC grew very quickly via a Marketing first business model which successfully launched them into the relatively impressive size they are today. Regardless of their official stance, following their rapid growth PMC has managed to stay true to their core strengths of a Marketing first business model. The Commercial half runs the company (which makes sense). However, this has come at a cost. While this strategy may have worked well for a startup/small company, PMC has grown and acquired numerous assets such that they can no longer be considered nor operated like a small company.
PMC continues to place importance of "strategic" marketing decisions above all else including operational feasibility and safety. While this business model proved well when the only assets of significance PMC owned and operated were small storage sites, it cannot be safely implemented when operating larger facilities. Reactions to sudden changes in the market require sudden changes to a facility's process, resulting in significant process upsets and therefore cause an unsafe and unnecessary toll on equipment. This is just an example of the kinds of issues the Operations half of company has to deal with on a weekly (often daily) basis. The Commercial half is too used to the flexibility they safely had access to as a small company with few and simple assets but currently, simply do not have the background to understand the impacts to operational process and safety these commercially strategic moves introduce. Individuals in operational leadership (i.e. Operations upper management) also fall in to this category of naivety. Blame for the resulting negative impacts tends to consistently fall on Operations who are left to clean up the mess. Rinse and repeat until the next opportunity arrives the following week.
Again, the Commercial half runs the company. It is of no surprise that the Operations half has a budget for less than a skeleton crew. It has been like this since pre-2014 so this fact and the oil crash appear to be independent. As a result Operations side employees are very clearly dissatisfied with the immense individual responsibility expected by each employee with no path forward from upper management on how to mitigate this ongoing issue. The Engineering department is shockingly slim. Operations and Engineering staff turnover is very high with what appears to have been a mass (voluntary) exodus over the past few years. It is of no coincidence that the Fort Saskatchewan facility lost over 90+% of their Operations Technicians staff over this time due to resignations. It is of no coincidence that the Sarnia facility has had an Operations Shift Lead job posting unfilled for over a year - a position that would typically be filled instantly at most other facilities.
The transition of a company from small to medium sized will result in growing pains. There are two types of companies that result from this transition. One: from this era, a company experiencing the growth will make mistakes, learn from them as an organization, re-tool their core competencies and adapt to their new niche in the market. Two: those who count on their past success and hope it works out the same in a new and inexperienced environment. Plains Midstream Canada appears to fall into the category of the latter as it has been far too long since their transition from small to medium began over a decade ago with few signs of striving to become like the former. Those who were around at the beginning of the transition appear to have recognized the direction the company was heading and have nearly all since moved on to be a part of PMC's competitors such as Pembina or Secure Energy.
