For Michael Ukachukwu, a typical workday might start with coordinating a complex engineering project in the morning and end with him answering customer support emails by afternoon. Michael is a Project Management Professional at S&C Electric Company, and he’s also not afraid to jump in and help customers directly.
Originally from Nigeria and now based in Canada, his journey spans two continents and a lot of learning. He leans on Lean tools like Kanban boards and the Kaizen philosophy to keep projects on track, all while keeping the customer’s perspective front and center.
Building an Engineering Foundation
Michael’s career journey began in Nigeria, where he studied electrical engineering for his undergraduate degree. Growing up in Lagos (a city known for being industrious), he was surrounded by engineering influences from early on. After university, he started working in his family’s logistics and trade business, where he got his first taste of project coordination. “I was coordinating shipments and handling technical issues right out of college,” Michael recalls, “That experience kind of pushed me to think beyond just engineering. I was solving problems and managing timelines without even realizing it was ‘project management’.”
During these early years, Michael took every opportunity to learn. He attended workshops on project management and even dabbled in process improvement techniques. He didn’t have the official title of Project Manager yet, but he was already picking up the skills. Looking back, Michael notes that starting in an environment where he had to handle multiple roles in engineering, logistics, and even business development taught him to be adaptable. “In Nigeria, resources can be limited sometimes, so you learn to improvise and coordinate with what you have,” he says. That scrappy approach laid the groundwork for his formal project management career later on.
Moving to Canada and Joining S&C Electric
After a few years gaining experience in Nigeria, Michael made a big decision: he moved to Canada to further his education and career. He enrolled in a Master of Engineering program at Western University in Ontario. “Going back to school was a huge shift for me,” Michael shares. The Canadian academic setting introduced him to new technologies and ways of thinking. He also got exposure to more structured project management concepts during his graduate studies, which he found exciting.
Armed with a fresh M.Eng degree and a broadened perspective, Michael landed a role at S&C Electric Company in Canada. At S&C, he started out supporting project teams and quickly grew into a project coordination role. He even took on an unusual combination of responsibilities: along with project management, he handles part of the customer support function.
It’s not the typical single-track job description, but Michael embraced it. “Honestly, I enjoy that my role isn’t just one thing,” he laughs. “In the morning, I might be updating a project schedule, and by afternoon, I’m on a call helping a customer troubleshoot an issue. It keeps me on my toes.”
Moving countries also came with adapting to a new work culture. Michael notes that project management in Canada had more defined processes than what he was used to. He had to get familiar with project management software, formal Agile methodologies, and the expectations of being an Engineer-in-Training (EIT) in a new country.
“The first few months, I was learning as much on the job as I did in school,” he says, “but my background from Nigeria helped me. I wasn’t afraid to ask questions or speak up, because I had learned to figure things out in tough situations back home.”
Taking the Lead
One of the first major projects he led at S&C Electric involved coordinating a cross-functional team to deliver an electrical equipment upgrade for a client. It was a complex project with many moving parts, including engineering design, component procurement, installation scheduling, and ensuring the client’s operations wouldn’t be disrupted.
Michael relied heavily on Lean project management tools to keep everything flowing smoothly. “My Kanban board was my best friend,” he says, describing how he used a Kanban system to visualize tasks and progress for the entire team. By laying out every task on the board (whether it was designing a component or shipping a part), it became easy to see bottlenecks. When one part of the project got delayed, Michael would spot it on the board and rally the team to address it.
He also embraced a Kaizen mindset throughout the project, constantly looking for small ways to improve the process.
For example, after noticing communication delays between the engineering and procurement teams, Michael introduced a brief daily check-in meeting. That little change made a big difference. “It was a simple Kaizen move,” he explains, “just a 15-minute stand-up meeting each morning, but it cleared up so many little misunderstandings and saved us time.”
The project was still challenging, but using Lean tools and continuously improving as they went helped the team deliver successfully. Michael’s takeaway from that experience was that no project is ever static: “You have to keep tweaking and improving as you go. That’s how you finish strong, especially when things don’t go perfectly at first.”
Balancing Project Management with Customer Support
One thing that makes Michael’s role unique is that aside from coordinating projects, he also spends time in customer support. Not many project managers have to handle an interesting balance, but Michael sees it as a benefit. Working directly with customers has given him insights that feed back into how he manages projects.
“When a customer calls, you hear the real pain points,” he says. “It reminds you that the project isn’t just about hitting milestones on a chart. It’s about delivering something that actually works for the person using it.”
Practically, splitting time between project duties and customer support requires good time management. Michael blocks off parts of his day for focused project work, but he remains on-call for certain high-priority customers in case issues arise. He notes that sometimes it’s tough to switch focus, especially if he’s deep in planning mode and then has to address a client’s urgent problem immediately.
Yet he finds the crossover helpful: the coordination skills from project management help him stay calm and organized when addressing customer issues, and the empathy from customer support makes him a more considerate project manager. “I’ve learned to see things from the client’s perspective because I literally talk to them when things go wrong,” Michael explains. “That means when I’m planning a project, I’m already thinking about how the end user will experience the result. It’s like having a built-in reality check.”
A Matter of Approaches
Having worked on different types of projects, Michael has gained experience with various project management methodologies. He’s comfortable with traditional Waterfall planning and with Agile techniques. In fact, he often finds himself blending the two. “Not every project neatly fits one methodology,” Michael says. “At S&C we deal with hardware and engineering projects that have clear stages, so that part is very Waterfall. You can’t assemble a piece of equipment without finishing the design first, you know? But we also have R&D and iterative improvements where Agile thinking comes in handy.”
Michael shared that one internal project (upgrading a team’s workflow) started as Waterfall with a set plan, but he soon realized the team needed more flexibility. He shifted to a hybrid approach, breaking the work into smaller chunks and holding bi-weekly sprint reviews like in Agile. That hybrid method worked better because it allowed for feedback and adjustments while still keeping an overall structure. From his perspective, the key is not to be too rigid about sticking to one framework. “I’ve taken pieces from Agile, like daily stand-ups and sprints, and mixed them with Waterfall elements like a clear Gantt chart timeline,” he notes. “What matters is delivering the project, not ticking a box that you did pure Agile or pure Waterfall.”
Michael admits that not everything went perfectly in the beginning. “The first time I tried to run a project in a pure Agile way, it kind of backfired because some people were not used to it,” he says, laughing. After that, he learned to gauge the environment. Sometimes a more formal plan is needed, and other times you can iterate as you go. In the end, Michael believes in being flexible and pragmatic: use whatever approach gets the job done and keeps everyone (team and client alike) confident in the process.
