There will soon be a new director of engineering in the City of Weyburn, as the current director, Jennifer Wilkinson will be officially retiring this week.
“I think a lot within this last week is obviously just making sure everything is progressing as it will be,” Wilkinson told Discover Weyburn. “I probably won’t see a lot of things finished before I’m gone, but as I told my department, it’s not like I won’t be keeping tabs.”
In her 4 ½ years as the director of engineering, Wilkinson has overseen a lot of projects of varying scope and visibility. This includes large-scale water projects, and road work, as well as things such as storm drain replacement.
“We have a brand new lift station over at Lift 3, one that we replaced was on that was from the 60s, then obviously the road work and the sidewalk work is a little more noticeable,” Wilkinson commented when asked about what some of the highlights of her job have been, adding it is hard to just capture the highlights.
One of the biggest projects that she has had a role in is the reconstruction of 1st Avenue, which is currently underway.
“I definitely know 1st Avenue will be wrapping up soon, but then I also know that they’re going to be starting on Railway (Avenue), the new lights are going to go in at 16th and 1st, so although I feel like we’re only midway in the construction season, we still got lots to get done before the end of the season.”
Wilkinson has been part of a special team in Weyburn, as well. The engineering department in Weyburn has had a strong core of women, something not usually seen in a male-dominated field. This is something that she has been proud of.
“There’s still a lot of strong females around here to run the city,” she chuckled.
With retirement coming at the start of August, Wilkinson is looking forward to having the time to spend with her family
“We are a farm family, so we’ve already started harvest, so we’ll definitely be out in the fields and busy with that,” Wilkinson said. “Then, my kids have already started hockey, so chasing them to a rink, and then hopefully we can just get a little downtime before school rush starts.”