Lessons Learned...a life in Engineering (part 5)

Now then...it’s difficult getting back into the swing of things when you’ve been otherwise engaged for well over a year, so landing back in the office after all that time in the steelworks came with a bit of a bump...no overtime, no weekend working, no night-shifts, and much less stress ! Our new house by this time was feeling more like a real home as the overtime payments had been rolling in and we had plenty of furniture, proper carpets and stuff, and I now had the ability to spend some time there. It’s funny but when I look around the house, even now, I remember the jobs and projects where the overtime paid for certain bits of furniture...and I’m sure we’ll get to the conservatory soon enough, there’s a story there too as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now.

Not long after the steelworks job finished I did a little bit of work in a paper plant in Aston, near Birmingham. I came out of the plant after a long day and set off for home and on the way back to the A38 I had to drive over a humpbacked bridge, and I thought it might be a bit of a laugh to drive over it very quickly...I hadn’t reckoned on a line of stationary cars at the traffic lights about thirty yards over the bridge and I damaged four cars that day...to be fair, not one of the other drivers had a go a me when I got out of my car (being 6’4” helps, I guess...). Lesson twenty-three, the brakes don’t work when the car is in the air...next vehicle was a blue Peugeot 405, nice.

So, back in the Manchester office for a bit, I get asked if I fancy a bit of project design work, as part of the team doing the new baggage handling facility for Heathrow Terminal 4. Never one to shy away from something different I say yes, and get settled at my new desk, and then someone puts this computer thing on it with a big telly and a spreadsheet. Now, this wasn’t the first time I’d ever used one of these things but it was the first time I’d had constant access to one...the daily conversations revolving around shit like 286 or 386 ?, SX or DX ?...oooh you need a DX for AutoCad, Windows 3.1, and all of that nonsense...it did do Minesweeper as well, mind you...

So, I'm now responsible for the Emergency-Stop system for the air-side baggage handling conveyors in Terminal 4 at Heathrow, and the brief is that any particular Emergency Stop button will stop any conveyor that you can physically (as opposed to mentally...) see from said stop-button position. Simple...not, when you consider that the conveyor layout in the baggage hall is like a bowl of spaghetti and we are interfacing into and modifying a partially existing system. Anyhow, experience was telling me that the "as designed" version of this system was never going to be the final commissioned system so I made it as "configurable" as I could, in anticipation of doing the commissioning myself, and knowing how the airport works...open and operating from early morning to late night every day, and allowing a limited overnight period every night for any works to take place. I'm thinking that the commissioning of this is going to be a bit of a nightmare...in more ways than one !

Well, the long and the short of it was that I never got the opportunity to commission the installation at Heathrow because I got collared in late summer 1993 to get involved in another “prestige” project, this time on the island of Jersey. This was always going to be relatively long term too, and a real departure for me as it was something I have never been involved with before, and looking back I have absolutely no idea why I was asked to do it (I think someone must have confused me with someone else)...if there was a comfort-zone, it certainly wasn't on the same island as I was now marooned on. Jersey was once described to me as 100,000 alcoholics clinging to a rock, well now it was 100,002 because I took the wife as well, and now I was deeply involved with revamping the 33kV primary power distribution system around the island. The Engineer in me relished the challenge...as I always say "it’s only Ohm’s Law or a variation of it"...but the Mr. Sensible part of my head was saying “WTF am I doing here...?” Lesson number twenty-four...listen to the Engineer in your head, and take the experience ! It never did me any harm. 

The work for me started the week after the 1993 holiday season ended although some of our guys had been there throughout the summer installing the new switchgear, and the place was empty, bleak, cold and wet. The ferry journey across from Weymouth was horrendous and took forever, not because of the sea conditions...we could have taken a 45 minute plane ride, however because of Mrs. M's claustrophobia that was out of the question. It was at this point I learned that she didn't have sea-legs either, and most of the sea crossing on an English Channel that was like a mill-pond, was spent with her head in a plastic bag or down a toilet. Lesson number twenty-five...the best cure for sea-sickness is to sit under a tree.

Anyhow, after a few days in a faceless, corporate type hotel we found a smashing little family-run hotel that cost next to nothing in comparison where we would make our home for a massive chunk of the next two and a bit years.

On stumping up at the customer site, which is a power station on the outskirts of St. Helier...you can't miss it when you come in on the ferry, it has a huge chimney...I realise this job is going to be harder than the sea-crossing I've just endured. We have a Design Engineer feeding us hand-drawn drawings from a desk in the corner of the portacabin, and when I get to have a look around what is actually installed I find the protection relay panels are devoid of protection relays but our factory have actually installed all of the internal panel wiring to the missing components. So that has been properly factory tested then !!! We are not talking about a couple of components here. This project was one of the first in the world to use digital protection relays however unlike today where it is accepted that one relay will provide most, if not all, of the protection for a feeder we were in a belt-and-braces type situation where there were additional traditional relays to supplement the main digital component, I expect mainly because the confidence really wasn't there with this new-fangled stuff yet. At one point I get a call from DHL at the airport to come and collect some of the missing relays...and I'm also warned "oh, and there is some import duty to pay". I jumped on my bike, pedalled back to the hotel to get my car then toddled off to the airport to collect this shipment which turns out to have been sourced via Siemens in South Africa and the duty comes to nearly ￡10k, the credit card took some hammer that day ! This amount was only outweighed in the value-for-money stakes by the cost of a curry on the night of the 1994 World Cup final where instead of the waiter inputting something like ￡35 and the odd pence, he managed to make it ￡3,500 odd...out by a factor of x100. It took a long time to get the authorisation through from the credit card company but it got accepted and I only noticed the mistake when the credit card machine printed my receipt out. You know what lesson number twenty-six is then...check the amount before you accept the charges !!! All sorted with a phone call to the credit card company the following morning, but a bit of a sleepless night if I recall. Good job the beer was less than ￡1 a pint !

Anyway up, the first three months were a real battle...the job wasn’t good, the weather was worse and the Mrs. was homesick, which made it doubly worse. Rolls Royce were installing a new 45MW gas turbine in the station and we had to be ready with the switchgear and protection at the same time as they were ready with their new kit. In the run-up to the testing we needed to effectively changeover circuit by circuit (@33kV) from the old switchboard to our new switchboard and re-commission / test each circuit separately. One night (it was a Monday or a Wednesday and it was about 19:35...I know, because Coronation Street had just started...) I gave the instructions to one of our wiremen to remove a signal cable from a junction box and re-terminate it in one of the new relay panels, and I distinctly remember saying “but don’t do it until I tell you...”. Off I went to isolate the equipment (it was low voltage, 4-20mA, 24V kind of stuff, so not electrically dangerous) and just as I got to the other end of the cable all of the lights went out...and I mean all of the lights...St. Helier, St. Brelade, Grouville, St. Ouen, the bloody lot ! My Mrs. had just settled down in the hotel to watch Corrie and was well and truly miffed when she missed it. We even got a mention on the 10 o’clock Channel Island TV news that night, and ever since that day seeing as I was technically responsible (even though I didn’t actually do it...) I have been known as the Prince of Darkness. Well, I say “ever since that day”, that isn’t strictly true because a couple or three years ago one of my Engineers...now do I name him, or do I not ???...managed to black-out half of Lancashire whilst working in a Power Station and I let him inherit the title and had a lovely glass trophy made up to present to him. Monkey well and truly off my back, thank you very much ! Then, just like buses another one came along almost instantaneously when another of my team managed to shed the whole Station load and jettison about 800MW-worth of steam to atmosphere down in Southampton. The accolade was passed on for the second time in about 25 years as was the trophy, and I felt so good, even though we had managed to cause some issues. The customer also presented this chap...who will also remain nameless (in this version anyway...if I ever write a book he may not be so lucky) with a fabulous trophy to commemorate this act, made from a single crystal turbine blade which broke off when the incident occurred. 

Lesson number twenty-seven, then...would be to make sure your instructions are absolutely clear, and it is worth checking twice that everything has been understood. 

So, when it comes to finally synchronise and connect the new generator to the island supply, you can imagine there were plenty of twitching chocolate starfish...mine especially. I had gone through the synchronising scheme a thousand times, checked all of the phasing, the VT polarities, the breaker selection, we had checked it all with HV measurements / phasing sticks across an open breaker and I was 110% convinced everything was absolutely correct and working...then the Station Manager decided we would synchronise and connect at 19:30...and it’s Monday...bloody Coronation Street again ! To cut a long story short, everything was fine, it went straight in, no bother and the lights didn’t even flicker...job done. Lesson twenty-eight...don’t doubt yourself ! Confidence is the key... even if you’ve never done anything like that before.

So, we’re about three months in and we’ve got a two-section, double busbar, gas-insulated, 33kV switchboard powered-up from a temporary link to the old 33kV board, with the new generator and a couple of other feeders and station transformers connected. We still have another five generators, loads of feeders, a pair of links to the Queen’s Road Power Station, a new 11kV distribution station at Esplanade in St. Helier, and a 90kV undersea link to France to commission...but now it’s Christmas and we’re off home, with the plan to return in April...happy days, at least they will be once the homeward-bound ferry crossing is over.

More of Jersey next time, folks...