Lisa Rodrigue is a metal tester. Her work gives her a chance to try out every technique under the sun, something she finds fascinating. "In metallurgy, you do a little chemistry, a little mechanical stuff, and you study the structure of metals. It's always changing!" For the past five years she has worked as a Metallurgy Technologist at the Hydro-Québec research institute known by its French initials IREQ, in Varennes, Quebec, on Montreal's South Shore.


A Metallurgy Technologist overseeing quality control, Lisa ensures that materials used to make metallurgical products meet quality standards. Three types of tests are performed on various metals: mechanical tests such as tensile strength, fatigue, and hardness; chemical tests such as diffraction; and metallography tests such as X-rays and ultrasounds, to study the structure and properties of the metals.

Lisa works for IREQ, a research centre that studies subjects related to electricity. Although her job involves performing tests, her duties are quite different from those of a technician working in a manufacturing plant. "My primary role is to assist researchers in their work," she explains. "So I perform mechanical tests, such as breaking points and fatigue, as well as fault analysis on metals - mainly aluminium or copper compounds." She also conducts metallography analyses - observing the microstructure of metals. Once the tests are completed, Lisa compiles and analyzes the data and writes a report for the researcher. She also purchases the materials and equipment she needs for her work, always working within her budget allotments.

Most of the time, Lisa works for Hydro-Québec, but sometimes she gets a chance to work on outside contracts for IREQ clients, including mining companies.