Team Spotlight: Dave Grills, Director of Engineering Project Management

Scaling a first-of-its-kind industrial process means navigating a constantly evolving network of chemistry, materials science, process engineering, and fabrication. That’s where Dave Grills, Brimstone’s Director of Engineering Project Management, comes in.

With a background spanning chemical engineering, controls, and automation—plus experience at companies like Redwood Materials, Stantec, and Samuel Engineering—Dave specializes in transforming big-picture concepts into detailed and executable engineering roadmaps.

His responsibilities at Brimstone lie at the intersection of theory and execution: partnering with teams to design and validate new technologies, and ensuring that every aspect of the Brimstone process is grounded in first principles and built to scale. For Dave, Brimstone presents rare technical challenges with real global stakes.

“We're chasing a moonshot to create a truly new technology—one that has a measurable impact on climate change,” he says. “Brimstone’s potential for impact, plus the fact that I don’t need my head in the clouds to look at the economics, is 100% where I want to be.” 

Where are you from?

I'm from Pueblo, Colorado originally. I went to college at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, which is right outside of Denver. I currently live in Reno, Nevada.

What first led you to engineering project management?

Despite the name of the school, most of my education coming out of Colorado School of Mines was largely focused on petrochemicals. I went for a degree in chemical engineering, and as I came out of school, the available jobs were largely in electrical and controls, so I went into controls. I went from a process design background into an automation field with a process focus. 

Tell us about your day-to-day responsibilities.

There’s really no such thing as an average day for me. My scope of responsibilities is taking our higher-level targets—or the concept that we need to finish—and breaking that down into all of the individual parts to make it happen.

We need to evaluate that this technology is valid. So, I’ve come up with a technical validation roadmap to break that down into the individual parts for that technical validation. This technology is reliant on flow rates, kinetics, chemistry, temperature, and solid-gas-liquid contacting, so we have to evaluate the variation of each part of the system. We'll look at that with equipment, experimental design, and theoretical calculations for each of those variables. Then, break each of those down into determining what each experiment needs to cover. For instance, how do I know that I've covered that operational spread? Then, we come up with our ideal operating points to validate or update our modeling.

From there, I consider what the equipment needs to look like so that we can actually have it built or if something similar already exists. I break that down into the individual departments and assign each department the individual pieces they need to build to make that work happen. That’s the general scope of my responsibilities, and I work across every technical discipline—process, electrical, automation, and mechanical.

Why did you decide to join Brimstone?

Brimstone has one of the coolest stories I’ve seen out there. Most of the time when you look at a project, the impact is fairly small. Brimstone is the first time I’ve seen a company mission that actually has a measurable percent on a global basis. So the idea that we can go from 8% of the CO2 for the whole world and, just from the concept, bring that down by 60% before considering efficiency—that’s absolutely fascinating.

The other piece that I really like about Brimstone is that we're approaching it with the maturity of saying that our solution needs to be cost-competitive. Because we have a big goal with a realistic outlook on expectations, it feels like a moonshot that actually has grounding. Brimstone’s potential for impact, plus the fact that I don’t need my head in the clouds to look at the economics, is 100% where I want to be.

What’s your favorite part about working at Brimstone?

My favorite part about this is that the problems aren't already tackled. I love constructing the approach to be able to break down things for something that hasn't been done. I thrive and seek ambiguity—I would get bored otherwise.

What are some of the biggest challenges you encounter in your work, and how do you push through them?We're applying technologies from various different industries all at once. We’re using an oil and gas solution—co-production—in a mining space because it fits what we're doing better. This is a very specific challenge that I find to be absolutely awesome. The challenges at Brimstone are a lot of fun to think through because you have to dig down and think, “What are the first principles of how we would execute this?” “What is my critical component to run this system?” It's a full-spectrum way of looking at things.

And the other piece that I think is kind of neat is that we’re bringing back technologies that weren't something worth considering at a different time. The abundance was there, and as we go farther into scarcity, we have to sharpen our pencil more. So some of these older processes that weren't valid at a certain point, we can modify to make them relevant.

How would you describe your work at Brimstone?

We’re chasing a moonshot to create a truly new technology, one that makes the whole of a rock usable. By starting with that thesis, we can look at things more holistically—the whole of the resource profile. The other piece of it is, we are pursuing one of the very few climate technologies that has a measurable percent of actual impact. It would be a massive reduction globally, which is absolutely phenomenal. The alumina portion is honestly a pride-of-country piece, where we can potentially bring the alumina supply chain home to the U.S. That unlocks a whole new way to get aluminum for the U.S.

What is your favorite thing to do outside of work? 

I have four boys, so I spend all my time with them trying to bring up the next generation of critical thinkers. I live right next to Tahoe, and the area is fantastic for hiking. I love doing stuff outdoors with my kids.