Trouble shooting has been something Albert Koehler, newly appointed city councillor, has always done.
In the late '80s, someone mentioned they wanted a screwdriver where you could change bits with one hand. After spending all night at his drafting table and using his engineer's brain (he has a doctorate in engineering) Koehler designed EasyChange, the multi-bit screw driver. The initial prototype cost him $13,000. The next day he went to a patent lawyer to register the innovative product that won Canada's New Product Award in 1992.
Every multiple bit screwdriver that came after it, stemmed from Koehler's initial creation. Patents expire after 20 years, "so you have all that time to mess with it and make it better," said Koehler.
As he and wife, Uta, started to get the word out about the newly-styled screwdriver, they did the shipping and handling of the product themselves.
"We called it our second shift, as we worked all day and then well into the night packaging and shipping the screwdrivers," Koehler explained.
He had planned to make the product in Prince George and still run Tribotec International Ltd., the engineering company he started in Vancouver and branched out to Prince George.
It finally came down to the crunch, time to go big or go home (with a fistful of cash).
Koehler was made that once-in-a-lifetime offer - an offer he couldn't refuse - and sold the rights to the patent before the product exploded onto the market.
"It was a very nice deal and I'm still happy that I sold the rights to the patent," Koehler smiled.
Between the pay-off for the patent rights and assets from his engineering firm, Koehler said he doesn't need to work any longer and for the last four years has given back to the community that was so generous to him.
As president of the Northern Technology & Engineering Society of B.C., Koehler is determined to bring a full complement of education in engineering to Prince George, similar to the idea of the medical program at the University of Northern B.C. The premise is, doctors who graduate in the North are more likely to stay in the North and Koehler said the same should be applied to industry in the North. Koehler firmly believes value-added products need to come from the local area. Raw product should not be shipped out. The next step should be followed where area engineers take the product, create something with it, then present it to the world. Like he did almost 20 years ago.
