Comrie-Picard delivers the keynote address at WMTS 2013.

EDMonTONThe Western Manufacturing and Technology Show (WMTS) kicked off Tuesday in Edmonton with a homecoming of sorts.

Andrew Comrie-Picard, a professional rally car driver, and native of the area, returned home to deliver the keynote address and impart some of his manufacturing wisdom on the audience.

Comrie-Picard, or “ACP” as he’s often called, has a unique background from which to draw on. After growing up racing and breaking all his moms cars in a rural area outside Edmonton he left to pursue a degree at Oxford University.

Later on, he would take a job as an entertainment lawyer in New York, but the pull of racing drew him back, and he wound up doing everything from competing in the X-Games to appearing on the TV show Top Gear America.

In his speech Comrie-Picard spoke at length to the audience about how solutions to manufacturing can come from the unlikeliest places, and how experience in the field can help you innovate through the concept of “intuitive engineering”.

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One example of this he gave came during a race in Oregon to qualify for X Games, wher one of the pressure hoses blew because of a pinhole exhaust leak.

“The pinhole exhaust leak kept slicing this hose, and I came into the service area and one of my crew guys – a non-engineer – figured it out.

“He started rifling through the cupboards (of their trailer) and told the cook, ‘we’re having spaghetti Bolognese’ (tonight),” said Comrie-Picard.

“Turns out the diameter of the larger size tomato can slipped perfectly down around the exhaust manifold and served as a heat shield and stopped the hose from slicing that’s what we call engineering in the field.

“The field forces you to think creatively, because you don’t have time.”

Comrie-Picard used an example of a crew member using a can of tomatoes to help him win a race.

The speech drew on a number of other examples, and taught other lessons, such as embracing your intuition – like the theme of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink – and gaining confidence from your experience.

Comrie-Picard recalled an instance when he was racing the in rural Quebec in March. The  weather was good and an older competitor of his, who was in second place, chose to put on snow tires wher Comrie-Picard chose gravel tires.

As it turned out, the stages were held at a much higher altitude, and despite the nice weather, there was snow and slush at the higher altitude.

“He crushed me, because he made a better tire decision – because he’d been racing 30 years more than me,” said Comrie-Picard.

“I never made the same mistake twice.”

He also spoke about the importance of intuition and the value of not letting “the technical answer override your feelings.”

The lessons were all simple ones, and drew on the theme that basic solutions to problems exist everywher around us, and that it can sometimes take outside the box thinking to get the problem solved.

WMTS runs between June 4-6 at the Edmonton Expo Centre.