My
D-day
Gopala
Krishnan, Ministry of Electricity and Water, Bahrain
As
a child, I used to watch my engineer uncle handling huge equipment
like electrical transformers, cranes and other heavy machinery.
He was my sole inspiration for becoming
an engineer.
"The morning ablutions followed
the customary cup of tea…”
The D-day, i.e. April 12th dawned as usual. The day started
off at 5:15 am with the ringing of my alarm clock. The morning
ablutions followed the customary cup of tea. Then after a
hurriedly-said “Thank You My Lord”, the 25-km drive took me
to my work place. As an engineer in
a major water production facility on the island,
on arrival I quickly logged on to my computer, checked the
e-mail box and forwarded material requests for fund reservation
and further processing.
Preparations began for the regular daily plant meeting, where
the status of the maintenance activities previously taken
up and the operational problems on-hand were discussed. The
next item of the day was the interaction with the Plant Management
i.e. MI (Management Information) sharing of the operational
information and discussions with the higher-ups. Activities
that required production cutbacks or needed temporary deviation
from the usual norms were examined and instructions were issued
to see them carried out.
Over the next half hour, I dealt with paper pushing, i.e.,
clearing of paper correspondence awaiting data, information
& response. In the meantime, I quickly had a brief tea
break – munching on a few bread slices and sipping
an invigorating cup of tea to keep
me going for the rest of the day.
This was followed by the preparation of an executive summary
report that highlights events & activities of importance.
The rest of the day involved my answering telephonic queries
relating to partial plant depreciation, elements of costing,
clearance for retention money and the like.
Other than these, we had to prepare ourselves for a
partial plant outage to fix a problem
with the fiber optic link that enables remote
control operation of the raw feed water pumps. Though it was
scheduled to be a short duration outage for four hours, the
preliminary preparations were a bit complex. In reality, the
outage lasted for nearly six hours, though the job was completed
successfully. I guess we needed to hone our planning skills
to make a more precise prediction of outage duration the next
time.
Tracing back, I can recall an activity that could be termed
as the ‘high point’ during that day. I stumbled across a
solution for a long standing
software problem. It was a missing library
file (DLL – Dynamic Link Library) which could be identified
and retrieved from another system. Tech Supports were unavailable
as the software had outlived its destined life according to
the vendor. Adding insult to injury, no detailed manual was
provided. It was an event by chance as there are numerous
DLLs loaded in a networked computer system loaded with hosts
of applications.
"Looking back…”
Right from my school days I liked to be an engineer for reasons
clearly unknown to me My parents advised me that to become
one like my engineer uncle in real life is to study &
score well in Math, Physics, Chemistry and English which I
did to my capacity. The real turning
point in my life came after my engineering
graduation, when I was
offered a chance to get enrolled in a prestigious scientific
research centre in India – the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre,
home to numerous world-renowned scientists. My one year apprenticeship
with the centre and the subsequent 14-year stint with its
associated facilities helped me gain greater insights
into facing real life situations both at work
and at home.
Written by Gopala Krishnan – Edited by Kavitha Arunagirinathan
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