Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

With less than a fortnight before I relocate 40 miles up the road to Kinloss I thought I’d give a quick update on my life as a mechy.

Flowserve.  I had a look at what I was achieving here and quickly came to the conclusion that the limited gain I got from it was not commensurate with the travelling and general faff that came with it and as such have pretty much removed myself from the project.  My lasting legacy?  Communication has improved between Flowserve and Woodgroup and I produced a small piece of paperwork (TMR length) on sticking points from a Flowserve perspective that was greatfully received from the BP management.  It was essentially a constructive critique of Phil the package engineer – who sits opposite me within WGPSN and is technically very competent but personally a bit of a knob and as such can be a real hindrance to the project.  His abrasiveness and unwillingness to communicate has greatly stalled things but understandably he is not without blame.  Anyway, with over £500k of project variations and the expected completion date now 6 months to the right I’m not unhappy to be letting that one go.

Sparging.  My sparging pipe (OK, Swift’s sparging pipe really) is looking pretty good.  We had the design review last week and I’m currently doing check calcs in Finglow to ensure the vessel into which it is being installed is suitable.  It blatantly is, but it’s good for me to be doing the calcs.  I did my own designs for connection methods and ran them up on Autocad too (I figured I needed to become proficient in it sooner or later) so that was good.

Pressure Vessel Calcs.  I’ll be spending tomorrow and maybe Thursday reviewing some pressure vessel calcs against ASME VIII.  These are for the Lube Oil Skid on the PWRI Pump – a beast I can’t escape!

SPA work.  With the TAR due to start in a month I’m still chasing round BP engineers to get projects signed off.  This is a common occurrence with all SPAs as the BP management realise that yes, they too need to take some accountability for the modifications.  All going well though.

Touching children’s minds.  Imran and I have been down the local school teaching kids how to build cars from shoe boxes and dowel.  We’ve done two sessions now and go back next week (they’re decorating them this week) to see how they fair going in a straight line down a ramp.  This is part of the primary engineer programme, stimulating interest in Britain’s future engineers.

Test run before the race next week!

Next Week.  As well as an obligatory leaving drinks/dinner in town and the car race at Kingswells Primary School I’ll be mostly handing over my Mechy and SPA work and reminding myself what I’ve done since last April so I can impress the IMechE panel on 1st August!

And away from work.

• Been swimming with dolphins in the North Sea – the water’s actually quite nice once you get used to it but the dolphins had disappeared by the time I got far enough out.
• The move to a quarter in Kinloss “seems” to be sorted and we’ll be moving in in a fortnight’s time.  Housewarming on 13th July if anyone fancies it?
• I officially smashed the Edinburgh marathon with a time of 2:56:54, raising £550 for Combat Stress – that’s over £3,000 for the charity in the last year!
• And Imran’s found himself a new line of work… having been asked to see Pete (Head of Projects and Mods) yesterday he thought there may be some high-level project work for BP on the horizon.  Turns out that Pete was after someone to dress up in “Army rig” and do a little display on Beaver Camp this coming weekend!  Get in!!!