I had already set my sights on the noble goal of making a contribution in writing to the world of engineering, when my fellow university alumnus (a.k.a. ‘super senior’) asked me to write about the day in the life of an engineer. It was needless to say that I jumped at the opportunity. The term ‘university life’ contains two words that should never be put together. Freshmen everywhere may find this particular idea something of an enigma, but my best advice would be to enjoy it while it lasts. Engineering can be quite a fulfilling and rewarding vocation with the right attitude and a solid foundation in the basics of the discipline.
Almost everyone should be able to relate to the packed classroom with background chatter, and the drone of the teacher or the lecturer. If this is not the case, then I would hasten to ask you not to slight whatever learning platform or vehicle in which you are currently engaged. This is the bedrock that will guarantee your future success. The vast majority of young people naturally possess an inextinguishable curiosity which needs to be nurtured and cultivated. I have found my passion in engineering, and you can too.
If the world was perfect, how terribly boring and moribund would it be! The operators of the plant have been complaining about a particular aspect of a plant upgrade that I had championed and managed. The company ownership recently changed, and a massive architecture migration was cancelled leaving us in a situation where we had to act. Enter Mr. Murphy. Murphy’s Law dictates that “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong…”, and as we have added in the field, “…and at the worst possible time.”
An operator workstation failed, and the older operating system was not allowed on the new company PCs. The communications driver for the main software could not work on the new operating system, so it had to be abandoned and another substituted. However, this meant that the entire networking architecture had to change to accommodate the new driver. All of this had to happen in “real time”, because the operators were running “blind”. Safety is of paramount importance in the industry, and has an inextricable relationship with its cousin ‘production’. The latter is what makes it all worthwhile.
Getting the job done safely and to your customer’s satisfaction is not for negotiation. This attitude will guarantee future success for your career as an engineer. When you fall short of this ideal, you have an obligation to yourself to understand why it happened, and to make sure that the outcome will be better the next time around. Delegation is not always what it is cut out to be, and sometimes you need to do the dirty work yourself. There is a mixture of discomfort and pleasure at having to go to the field myself and having to complete a critical part of the upgrade myself.
Execution is everything. I visualize the end result, and then imagine and write down all of the tools and resources required to achieve the goal. At the beginning of your career, you may stumble often here, but it gets better with practice. Before starting the job, I must first follow the company’s “Permit to Work” protocol, so that all the different stakeholders have been informed, and necessary precautions implemented. We are now in the field, permit and authorizations in hand, ready to bring the cup home. The next step is evidence gathering. This evidence can be both anecdotal and physical. During the evidence gathering phase, verbal and communication skills are essential in helping to understand the challenges that the operators face.
For the aspiring engineer, the engineering principles found on the pages of the book that you used as a pillow in the library will serve you well, because without it, these machines could not have been designed, built or kept running. The job is made much less of a challenge when your tool kit is heavy with technical competency and communication skills.
I had discovered that there were ‘typos’ in the configuration in the software, and the hardware program was clumsy and not in compliance with our other plants. Compliance is a ‘big deal’ with many companies, because higher efficiencies cannot be achieved or maintained without it. Compliance allows a company to consolidate and minimize its resources across a wide geographic area or across a wide variety of machine systems, which is a major benefit.
Having anticipated that some of the end devices of the system were faulty, I was able to confirm this once on site. This would go into my report to enable the plant maintenance team to take action subsequently. The manufacturer’s documentation, and the plant ‘as built’ documentation for the machines and the systems is an invaluable resource, because it is not always fun, to be stumbling in the dark and then causing a major process upset or loss of production. With the right documentation, troubleshooting is just much faster, and maintenance less costly.
The Golden Rule.“Do unto others, as you would have them do onto you.”
Document the work that you do, and communicate it so that future troubleshooting will be easier for the next team.
I made a commitment to the operators that I would not leave the plant until they were happy with the system, and I am just a few hours away from my goal. The operators here are good natured, but it is not always like this. There are some environments that are literally hostile, where the field has extreme physical conditions with many hazards, and operators with counter-productive behavior. It can be tiring, with little sleep sometimes, but I find it hard to find a replacement for the euphoria of finding the root cause of an issue, and contributing to improving the reliability and safety of the plant.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
John O. Brathwaite
John O. Brathwaite is an electrical engineer with over twenty years experience in industries spanning from oil and gas and manufacturing, to cargo handling. Specialising in instrumentation and Controls systems, he also has a solid background in all aspects of the asset maintenance life cycle.
Published: 2017-12-15