How ‘stumbling’ into the tunnelling industry led this FEAS alumnus to co-founding his own company
Glenn Mongillo, Co-founder and President of DynaMEK Group Ltd. describes his career in the tunnelling industry as an accident.
“I had no idea about tunnelling at all. I started at Lovat as a design engineer working in machine design, and then I kind of stumbled into various areas of the tunnelling company,” explained Mongillo. “They were a large company with about 400 people doing a lot of engineering work on big projects. I was just not familiar with it coming from a smaller automation background, but it was a great opportunity, and I’ve stayed in the tunnelling business ever since.”
Graduating from FEAS’ Mechanical Engineering program in 1998, Mongillo began at Lovat about 5 years after graduating, following a stint in welding automation. The engineer stayed with the company after it was purchased by Caterpillar Tunneling Canada Corporation in 2008 until the operations closed in 2016. After the closure, Mongillo wanted to take matters into his own hands. He and four of his colleagues decided to start DynaMEK, an engineering and sales company that supports the underground construction and Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) industry. Mongillo explains how the name comes from a mixture of the word ‘dynamic’ while the latter half is a nod to the founders’ mechanical engineering background.
While the alumnus didn’t expect to go into tunnelling after graduating, Mongillo always knew he was looking for a challenge. Luckily, he says that he’s been able to find that challenge by exploring the underground world, which continues to fuel his passion for tunnelling today.
“A lot of people don’t even know that there’s tunnelling going on underneath the city. I was ignorant to the whole industry, but then I started discovering that there is a vast world that exists underground,” said Mongillo. “I’ve had so many opportunities to be underground and see these machines in action—it’s like a veritable factory running underneath us.”
“When you do everything underground, it makes things much more challenging, but it’s what excites me. You’re in this kind of subterranean world, and it’s almost otherworldly in a sense. It drew me in, and I’ve wanted to stay ever since.”
Reflecting on his academic and professional career thus far, Mongillo’s advice to FEAS students after graduation is to keep your options open.
“Engineering is so broad, and I never stopped learning after I graduated. I’m a proponent of being a lifelong learner, whether it’s formal based, on-the-job training or through the associations in the particular field that you desire to get into,” he said. “Don’t limit yourself. I’ve had to transition many times from being in design engineering to taking on management roles to starting my own business. If I wasn’t willing to adapt or learn, those transitions wouldn’t have been possible.”
