James Coleman
Professional Experience
Dynamic Attractions
Dynamic Structures is a Canadian company with a long standing history of precision steel construction. I worked at Dynamic Attractions for almost 5 years mostly within the coaster engineering team. The largest project I had the privilege of working on was Mission Ferrari. This state-of-the-art SFX coaster features 7 LSM launches, forward and backward motion along with two track switches that carry riders in an exhilarating fashion between separate tracks. Throughout my time on this project, the majority was spent on-site in Abu Dhabi, UAE working through the commissioning of the attraction. These years on site allowed me to grow and expand my knowledge in profound ways learning everything from how to setup and test a pneumatic system to programming a variety of PLC systems. I am so proud to announce that this project opened to the public on January 12th 2023 and has been thrilling riders ever since!
Roush Entertainment Services
After graduating from Queen's University with my engineering degree, I moved to Detroit, MI to work for Roush Industries. Throughout my time at Roush I had the opportunity to work on animatronic figures, which was an exciting and unique change of pace. In this time, I was able to design and manufacture multiple animatronic figures for the Secret Life of Pets ride located at Universal Studios Hollywood. After that project completed, I began work on the ride vehicles for the second iteration of Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway which has now opened in Disneyland in California. This project posed a number of challenges but I am so happy to finally see the finished product opened to the public.
Queen's University - MECH 460 Capstone Project
For my fourth year engineering capstone project, I worked with a group of four other engineering students to continue with the development of a surrogate to test new waterslides. Working with our client, WhiteWater West Industries along with guidance from the ASTM F24 G-Force Task Group, our team was tasked to develop and submit a complete design package for the new surrogate with all necessary production drawings and testing plans. The most valuable aspect of this course is that it helped to refine my organization and team building skills. Given a very tight timeline of 12 weeks from concept to detailed design, this deadline forced myself and my team to develop a strict schedule utilizing every resource we had available to us. Secondly, this course gave me an opportunity to further enhance my writing skills in a professional setting as the course had a number of reports due throughout the semester. By the end of the winter semester our team was able to successfully deliver a complete design package, along with a working prototype that was rigorously tested and ready for use by the client.
WhiteWater West Industries
WhiteWater West is one of the world's leading water slide and water park development companies. Over the summer of 2017, I worked in the Product Development Department. My primary task for the summer was to perform research into the development of a surrogate that can be used to replace humans as test dummies for water slides. This research was conducted in parallel with the research being performed by other major amusement ride developers such as Disney and Universal Studios. To measure data about the performance of the different surrogates, a number of devices such as accelerometers and GoPro cameras were mounted to both the surrogates and humans.
Infrastructure Ontario
Infrastructure Ontario is a Crown organization responsible for assisting the Ontario Government with modernizing public infrastructure. I worked at Infrastructure Ontario for four months during the summer of 2014 after completing my first year of engineering. During my work term, I was placed on the team responsible for the management of the construction of three stadiums that were being built for the Toronto 2017 Pan American Games. During this work term, I gained valuable skills as I was tasked with looking through engineering drawings and I was given a site tour to help provide context to my learning.