Sara Squires, project manager at Resource Innovations, speaks to the Rotary Club of Corner Brook Thursday.
One Corner Brook-based business that has been quietly creating work, not to mention a name for itself on national and international stages, is Resource Innovations.
The company, formed in 2007, is a consulting firm that provides forest and environmental management and planning services that promote healthy forest ecosystems, sustainability and environmental stewardship.
Sara Squires, project manager at Resource Innovations, spoke to the Rotary Club of Corner Brook about what the company does Thursday.
Some of the company’s past work at the local level has included doing ecological and land classification for the Maritime Link project. Internationally, Resource Innovations has been working with clients on natural resource management projects in Caribbean countries Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua, Jamaica and Barbados.
“We’re helping them build their internal capacity through transferring the technology we use here down to them,” Squires said in an interview before her speaking engagement with the Rotary Club.
“They would be able to manage their resources pretty well from any geographic location.”
Among the technological tools Resource Innovations uses are unmanned aerial vehicles. Squires said using drones is not only a time saver for such things as surveying agricultural land, but also makes some work, such as inspecting bridges, much safer.
Resource Innovations has six Transport Canada-certified drone pilots available to conduct work from the air.
Besides consulting and participating in projects, research and development is a major component of what Resource Innovations does.
To that end, the company has fostered partnerships with educational institutions.
It is currently is sponsoring a masters student at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., whose work is focused on finding suitable locations for cranberry farms in Newfoundland and Labrador. Resource Innovations has also partnered with the Marine Institute on an internship in Antigua to help a project there develop a database for nesting turtle sites.
With the wide range of exciting projects being taken on by the 11 full-time employees, Squires did not hesitate to agree to speak to the Rotary Club about the company’s work and successes.
“You never know from one project to the next what you’re going to be doing,” she said.
