The practice
Built by someone who has stood the shift
Flintstone Technologies Inc. is a one-person practice, and that is deliberate. You talk to me, I walk your plant, and I write the document. There is no junior consultant behind this and nobody to hand you off to.
Richard Howes
Founder · Power Engineer 3rd Class · Systems builder
Certified Power Engineer (3rd Class), with hands-on experience operating and managing industrial boilers and process systems. That is the layer that decides whether advice survives contact with the plant floor: I know how the equipment behaves, and how it behaves when something is wrong.
Electronics Engineering Technologist, with hands-on industrial automation and controls experience — working directly with PLC logic, instrumentation and control systems, including reading and modifying them, not just the paperwork around them. That is what makes the condition call trustworthy when the drawings are out of date and nobody has understood the control logic for years.
Electrical Engineering degree, which means I can coordinate with engineering firms and vendors on their own terms, review what they propose on the technical merits, and help you negotiate the option that actually suits your operation.
The three together are what made the office side possible: work dispatching, preventive maintenance, procurement, energy use and capital planning — running on one set of numbers that the budget and the rolling forecast are built from.
That side was built, not advised on. I have sat with the spreadsheet that held the maintenance schedule, the purchase order that arrived after the breakdown, and the month-end figure assembled by hand from invoices — and then replaced them with something the whole operation could work from.
Design, specification and controls work are done in-house. Fabrication and installation are subcontracted and supervised by me. Over time the practice is built toward doing more of the physical work in-house.
Flintstone Technologies Inc. is based in Creston, British Columbia. Work is delivered across British Columbia and Alberta, and elsewhere in Canada, on site where the plant requires it.
Credentials
Power Engineer, 3rd Class
Technical Safety BC
Chief engineer of a plant at third class or lower; shift engineer in a plant up to one class higher; person-in-charge of a refrigeration plant of any size.
Electronics Engineering Technologist
Diploma of technology
Instrumentation, PLC logic and control systems — read, verified and modified, including control narratives checked against the equipment.
Electrical Engineering degree
Bachelor's degree
Review of engineering-firm and vendor proposals on the technical merits, and coordination with them on their own terms.
Background
Where the credibility comes from
Operator
Power Engineer, 3rd Class
Operated and managed industrial boilers and process systems on shift — including the inspections, the logs, and the 3 a.m. failures. I know how these systems run, and how they are run badly.
Automation & controls
Electronics Engineering Technologist
Automated those same systems. Instrumentation, PLC logic and control strategy — read, verified and modified where required, not just the paperwork around them.
Engineering & systems
Electrical Engineering degree
The education to sit across the table from engineering firms and vendors, review their proposals on the technical merits, and help you negotiate the option that suits your business.
Method
Verify, then connect
The equipment, the documentation, the process as it is actually run, and the office work that depends on it are all checked against reality first. They rarely match — and checking them together is what closes the gap between them.
The organising idea
One person on both sides of every handover
Information stops at every boundary in a facility — the floor to engineering, engineering to the office, the office to the budget. I am qualified on both sides of every one of them. That is the point of the three credentials above: not breadth for its own sake, but the ability to stand at a handover and tell you exactly what is being lost across it.
So the plant floor, the process as it is actually run, and the office work that depends on it are assessed together, in one engagement, by one person. That is what closes the gap rather than documenting it.
Operating principles
How the work is conducted
Safety and compliance first
No recommendation that quietly weakens an inspection regime, a lockout practice, or an operator's ability to act on what they see.
Vendor-neutral
No reseller margins, no referral fees, no platform loyalty. If the right answer is to configure what you already own, that is the recommendation.
Evidence over assertion
Findings are grounded in your equipment history, operating data, and what the crew actually does — not in benchmark averages.
Written to be acted on by someone who was not there
Plain enough that you can hand the document to your manager, your board, or your next contractor and they can act on it without me in the room.
Systems that outlive the engagement
A system nobody maintains is worse than none. Everything is documented, trained, and handed over to run without external dependency.
Your data stays yours
Systems are built in your own accounts with your data portable out of them. No lock-in, and nothing stops working if you stop working with me.
Talk to someone who knows the plant
A first conversation costs nothing and stays technical. You reach me directly — phone, email, or a time on my calendar.
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