Day 7: Why am I here?

A co-worker asked “Why are you up at Kearl Lake, I thought you were an office guy?”. Fair question. I am a construction engineer. I provide engineering support to industrial construction projects. Engineering support can involve:

• Preparation of crane lift studies.
• Verification of fall protection anchorage points.
• Preparation and approval of pneumatic test procedures.
• Design of customized rigging equipment.
• Review of procedures for structural steel erection (Ha ha! I said erection)

(Note: If any of these things interest you, apply here…if we don’t already work together)

The way my good friend Mark, a manager at a refinery in Edmonton, describes his job, is also a description I could apply to my job:

I perform miscellaneous engineering tasks as required.

I do many of these things from my office in Edmonton. For the Kearl Lake job, an engineer from my department is onsite…except for this week. In order for my colleague to take his vacation, someone from the office had to come to the job site to take on his roll for a week. That person was me. 

Day 3–We Have a Winner At Dinner!

I visited the “Cardio Gym” tonight for a run on the treadmill. No pictures though, no one wants me taking pictures of them working out. 

 

I needed to run. I think I’ve been overdoing it with the cookies in my lunch, and the sausage rolls, and the pastries, and more cookies.

Dinner

Wooooo! I ate light after my workout, just some vegetables and roast potatoes with caesar salad. The salad had a prepackaged dressing from Kraft, so nothing really special. The vegetables were actually pretty good, and it looks like they were prepared fresh, not cooked from frozen. There were squash strips in the mix as well as 2 different kinds of string beans. The potatoes were outstanding! Perfectly cooked and perfectly seasoned, not too greasy, not too soft, not too hard…just perfect!

 

Laundry Night

Doing laundry is easier than bringing extra clothes. Tonight it was do-or-die, if I didn’t do laundry tonight I wouldn’t have gonch for tomorrow. 

Each floor has 5 washers and 5 dryers. They’re actually quite nice, they look fairly new. If you’re coming up to site, set a timer on the dryer, don’t go for the preset dry time. 

 

Day 3–The Office

My name is Dean, I work at site (that’s funny if you’ve seen this video). Seriously, there is an office at site. The office consists of countless ATCO trailers stuck together to make some sort of complex that wouldn’t be out of place in some sort of post apocalyptic survivalist movie. It’s not too bad though, I work with some fun people, there’s free coffee, a few fridges and some microwaves.

This is my superfun office mate, Brandon. I can just barely see the top of his head over the monitors. Sometimes I talk to him only to realize he’s not really there.

Here’s a little secret…sometimes I wear tie-dyed socks under my workboots.

Day 1, Wapasu Lodge-Evening

4:45pm Depart Kearl Lake Jobsite

Before I can actually begin my evening at camp, I have to leave site. It looks to be roughly 200–300 people lining up for the buses back to camp. I score an awesome seat, with nobody sitting next to me!

5:47pm Dinner

A leisurely trip back to camp at a maximum speed of 60 km/h brings us to camp just before 6pm. Dinner is a fabulous array of meats and starches with a few vegetable thrown in the mix. Something out-of-place is the couscous salad, which looks untouched. I get rice, beef stew, pork, mixed (frozen) vegetables, spinach salad and some sort of cake thing.

Dinner is acceptable, but barely. I’d rate it as Denny’s or Smitty’s quality. My dining companion made the meal that much more enjoyable.

Smiling Ola is a from Nigeria. He has a degree in architecture, but he decided to pursue a career in industrial construction instead. It’s nice to have dinner company. I think Ola got the same dinner as me. He was critical of the quality as well, but suggested that it’s better than getting back to camp and having to make your own dinner.

6:13pm Nightshift

I’m covering for Matt the Engineer, but nobody is covering for Dean the Engineer back in the Edmonton office. After putting in a 10 hour workday, I get ready for around 2 hours (I hope) of extra work.

7:43pm Call Home

I call my girls. They’re just getting ready for bed. I talk to them about their days, I tell them about my day, and I tell them I love them and I miss them. I know there are a lot of people in camp, a lot of them with families and I suspect similar phone calls are happening all over camp this evening.

So…that’s day 1. Any questions?

Problems at School

My daughter is excels in school. When the course work isn’t challenging her, she challenges herself. She’s not having problems with school, I am.

I recently completed a knowledge management course at the University of Alberta in the Engineering Management program in the department of Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Touraj Nasseri was an excellent instructor, so I have no problems there. The course material and course work were appropriate and helpful, again, no problems. The students were keen and eager to learn; no problems. Many of the students had entered into the Engineering Management program straight from their undergraduate studies. Most of these students had little or no experience in the workplace. This was a problem.

The students are taking Engineering Management, presumably, to learn about management in the engineering field. I get that. Other programs exist in engineering management where students must have at least 5 years of experience in the workplace. In the situation at the University of Alberta, a mix of students may be appropriate. If half of the students in my knowledge management class had at least 5 years of experience and half of the class were fresh from undergraduate studies, I think class discussions would have been more valuable. The mix of experience and fresh perspectives could have generated new ideas and improved discussions.

I should say that a group presentation was involved in this class and the members of my group had little or no engineering experience but performed exceedingly well. They were eager to learn and willing to try new ideas.

That’s just my opinion though, others may disagree…

The Ultimate Engineering Tool

Linux has a substantial following of arrogant, self riteous fanatics. Mac users are akin to religious zealots. Many engineers will use nothing but an Hewlett Packard calculator. I have an HP48GX, which replaced by tragically short lived HP48SX (rest in peace…or rest in pieces, I should say). Other calculators are mere toys when compared to the might of the HP48 series calculators.

What does Wikipedia say about the HP48GX? Find out here. When I read the Wikipedia entry, I hear “blah, blah, blah” in the back of my head. Yes, the HP48 calculators have impressive specs. Yes, the HP48 calculators are sturdy (but still can’t survive being run over by a car…whoops). In my mind, the strength of the HP48 calculators lies in the Reverse Polish Notation(RPN) entry system. I can enter 100 number on the HP48’s stack and perform separate operations on each number or pair of numbers or sequence of numbers.

In my line of work (construction), the units library is also invaluable. Measurements of mass, force, energy, distance, etc… can be converted quickly and easily. The HP48 series calculators also recognize SI prefixes such as k (kilo=x1000) or M (mega=x1000000). This means I can add 3kN+55.2N+450lbf and get an answer in pounds force, an answer which can be quickly and easily converted to Newtons or any other unit of force.

In conclusion, HP good, others not as good.