Cody Slater, then 24 and attending the University of Alberta, thought he might become a professor of astrophysics or an anthropologist. But his career path took an unexpected turn when a friend who worked in the oilpatch showed him a device for detecting poisonous gas in oilfield operations.

The gas-detection instrument had been made in the United States and designed to be used in a plant setting. Companies had to adapt it for use on drilling rigs - a comparatively dirtier and harsher environment. The drab-looking instrument was bulky, expensive and had a hard-to-read display.

Slater had a keen interest in electronics and had repaired television sets while in high school. "I looked at this instrument and said, 'Jeez, I could do a better job of that,'" he recalls.

Customers quickly embraced Slater's initial product, the Rig Rat, the first solar-powered, wireless gas-detection system for drilling rigs in remote locations. So the world lost a budding astrophysicist, but it gained a stellar entrepreneur whose innovations revolutionized the gas-detection industry.

"In our industry, the products that are out there have tended to be very maintenance-intensive," Slater notes. Traditionally, he says, a typical single-gas detector requires its settings to be adjusted when turned on. An expert needs to calibrate or reset the instrument every 30 to 90 days, and replace the detector's battery every month or two.

Slater teamed up with Barry Moore, a graduate from London, Ontario's Fanshawe College in industrial design, to produce the industry's first "zero-maintenance" portable gas detectors. BW's new generation of zero-maintenance detectors, the GasAlert™ family, builds on this achievement. Each GasAlert unit is equipped with a tiny clock that tracks the instrument's lifespan, including remaining battery and gas-sensor life. "When the customer gets the product, they (simply) turn it on," Slater says.

BW currently sells about 4,000 units per month of its most popular zero-maintenance product, the portable GasAlertClip™ for monitoring poisonous hydrogen sulphide or carbon monoxide. "It's something the user wears. It's there to protect them if there's an accident or an incident. Other than that, they don't have to think about it or worry about it," Slater says.

Until BW Technologies launched its portable multi-gas Defender product, gas detectors typically had small, dot-matrix displays that were hard to read in poor light or at bad angles. On detectors that monitored for up to four gases, the display would scroll one-by-one through each gas and its detected level, if any. If the instrument's alarm went off, the user would have to wait to see what gas triggered it and what the concentration was.

BW's Defender put an end to that potentially hazardous situation. Half of the Defender detector is a big, easy-to-see liquid crystal display that shows all four gases at once.

Other BW innovations include more powerful and reliable micro-controller technology inside detectors, back-lit displays that automatically illuminate in low-light conditions, and a rotary-vane pump for sampling gases that is electronically monitored for blockage or malfunction.

Perhaps the most ingenious BW innovation to date is the method for shielding its gas detectors from interference from radio frequencies.

The tiny chemical gas-detection sensors in handheld safety instrumentation work by producing minute electrical currents that can be disrupted by radio frequency interference - from a walkie-talkie or cell phone, say. Traditionally, the industry has protected the detector from this interference by surrounding the instrument with a metal housing. This makes the instrument bigger, heavier and bulkier, Slater says. "And people want smaller, lighter, easier-to-use."

In earlier products, BW responded to the technical challenge by using plastic components embedded with metal shielding, or by essentially spraying frequency-sensitive plastic parts with nickel. But those methods added manufacturing steps and costs.

BW's research group solved the problem by using stacked layers of electronic circuit boards inside each instrument. Most of the four to eight printed circuit boards used in each detector are, in fact, metal shields that protect against any radio frequencies. "We bury all the signals (from the gas-sensor) inside this little metal housing that is the board itself," Slater explains.

The unique solution enabled BW, with its GasAlert™family, to use highly engineered, highly visible, bright yellow plastics-injection molds for the instruments. "It allowed us to make a much nicer, much lower-cost product for customers, yet actually gives them better radio-frequency protection so that they're less worried about these things going off by a radio."

Slater and Moore put tremendous emphasis on designing and engineering BW's products before they reach the manufacturing floor, and then following them after they go out the door.

The first multi-gas monitor produced by the company required 11 hours of labour to manufacture. BW's current GasAlertmax™ multi-gas monitor, which is half the size and does four times as much, takes only 20 minutes to make. Thanks to cost-savings in manufacturing, the entire GasAlert™ line is priced at nearly one-third less than instruments made by American or German competitors, Slater says.

B. Sinaga, tactical coordinator for the Duri Well Works in Indonesia, says: "BW's GasAlert line is a breath of fresh air in the gas-detection industry."

Dave Sitar, senior safety advisor for Burlington Resources Canada Energy, says: "Practicality and cost-effectiveness are the big things . . . we always get excellent after-market service from BW."

Slater says BW Technologies' current product lines can satisfy 80 per cent of the needs of a worldwide gas-detection instrument market that's worth about US$1 billion annually. Unlike many of its competitors, including some American firms that ship products to Europe fitted with an incompatible North American electrical plug, BW designs its products for the market in which they're sold. "If it goes to France, it goes with French manuals" and a European plug, Slater says.

BW's president and chief executive is proud of the fact that his public company has introduced a new product every year for the last five years. The firm is now bringing to market its zero-maintenance detector technology in a new product line - stationary carbon monoxide-detection systems used in underground parking garages and other commercial applications.

"At this juncture, the company itself is providing all the excitement and all that interest in growth and change that I was looking for before from astrophysics," Slater says. "Every year almost, BW is reinventing itself because of our growth, the new markets and the new territories."

Each year, Manning Innovation Awards presents $135,000 in prize money, distributed among four leading Canadian innovators, as well as $20,000 among eight Canada-Wide Science Fair winners. During the past two decades, the Foundation has awarded $2.75 million to encourage and recognize Canadian innovators.