little bits of of my life story in marine oil and gas industries

Here is some facts about my work in early days from 1976 to 1989, so you can understand a little about me and my work.

Earlier days i did many work and soon developed the habit of completing the jobs early. In 1989, early completion executed perfectly, by me. i was freelancer, Instrumentation Engineer. Project was completed ahead of schedule. i practically fixed all the instrument problems, for the plant and for the vendors. At that time, we only used safety belts, not harness. i am in very good terms with the Esso site suprintentdent, managers and engineers, so i used to apply permits and climbed up to the large pipes to remove temperature, pressure and flow instruments, disconnected cables, labelled them and everything other stuffs. i re-orientated actuators of 12, 24 inches control valves, so that thay can be installed in between the large pipes and tested them and calibrated them locally at site. These faults due to engineering mistakes by client and main contractor. The Esso supt. scolded the his engineer from the office to the site location, where i showed him the Bettis actuator valves, laying on the ground because they cannot be installed due to wrong orientation. It was about $88,000 each. Later, i checked the instruments and get the vendors to supply them urgently, to site, to replace the damaged ones, which were not included in the engineering stage. Two vendor service men and the sales engineer was at site with problem of replacing the steel lining of a 36 inch valve for the boiler. He asked me for help. With my experience in marine work, i was able to fixed it for them. These news went to the top guys in the company. The construction manager and project manager were at logger head with each other over the mistakes, but i was the one who solved all of them, due to my expert experiences, with the marine works. And i taught the client engineers a few things, like completing the instrument loop tests way ahead of the piping team, which was flushing the pipelines and having replaced the valves with spools. i have the energy and strength due to regular exercises, many which i picked up during military training days in SAFTI (Singapore Armed Forces Training Institute). My team was champion in road relays. This was due to running training during school days. When the project was ending, the Japanese engineer came and asked me to join the Company. i told him that i will consider. Few days later, the Japanese second director came to site and asked me to join the Company. i was honoured and joined the Company after project completion.

In two projects, the control valves were not responding. The engineers and workers were unable to figured out what went wrong. i tested the valves. They blew away my power supply. That's where i begin to trace the pneumatic tubes. The tubes were installed in the wrong ports of the actuators, for all the valves. When i told the Owner's manager, he was in disbelieve. He was in a situation where there is cost and schedule impact. He was worried for himself facing the superiors and asked me if i could help. i told him to reuse some of the tubes with slight correction/ bending. And installed only one new tube for each of the actuators. And the contractor was able to do that and cost was put into overtime work, without materials cost. This saved the manager from facing the pressure in the meeting, which i hightlighted as pressure lost in the regulators due to air supply.

Many stories in the marine/ship works, which cannot be completely told in this notes. But i can tell some which came to my mind. My experiences with the managers and Engineers in the shipyards in Sinagpore. i shared many things with them. Once i was send to a ship which was about to sail in a few hours, and the workers were still struggling with many instrumentation work. When i boarded the ship, a technician came running to me and said he cannot remove the latch which was holding the thermocuple in the huge main engine. i saw that the thermocouple was quite big. i told the technician to move aside. i lifted my right leg and gave a front kick with the heel of my safety boot. The latch came off, exposing the thermocouple. The technician was shocked, because this showed his weakness. He showed me another one and i kicked the latch off again, easily. And i told him to remove them, himself. i went to see another one which the stupid navy guy was doing. The thermocouple was stuck. i told them to look for long pipe, like those for scaffolding. They managed to find two pieces. i jammed the 12" spanner to the thermocouple lock nut, slot the spanner into the 5 feet pipe, and get the guys to push the pipe, in a manner using our body weights. we heaved a few times, and the thermocouple was freed. We went round doing the next two, and then there was no more time for us, because the ship was about to leave the shipyard to open sea. We left the ship. Once, a technician cannot find some cables for the ships alarms points. He led me to bottom of engine room. He did traced the cables but they were lost under the gratings and some oil. Seeing that i took a metal bar and dug into the black oil and was able to fish out some cables. i told him to clean up the cables and checked them. He did it and the alarm points were tested to be working. This ship had went to many ports and they cannot be fixed. Only when it came to Singapore to find us. Marine work is tough and vulgar languages, swearings and shoutings were common. Its not for anyone.

i got many jobs for the company when i visited the ships and fixed many problems for the ships. Once we completed some jobs, and i went to the ships office. i was surprised to see the Vice president of the American President Lines, sitting in the office with his cowboy hat and boots on the desk. We exchanged greetings. He told me, the technician, next to the desk was trying to get him to stamp the reports. We laughed and joked. i told the technician to give me the service reports, and wait there. We talked a while and later talked about having more jobs for my company. He did not have his business card, so he scribbled his full name, John W. ...., the direct line and company address in the US, on a slip of paper. i came across the slip when i was clearing the old stuffs from my house for Chinese New Year, probably, 2012.

i got many jobs for the company. Once we needed 20 guys urgently to rewire 440Vac cables for the huge tanks in Jurong Island. i was inspector for the main contractor. The Korean company's chief inspector and finance officer, requested me to help urgently. I informed my director friend, Remy. He was able to supply the workers for 2 weeks to finish the job. My gate pass got no expiry date. Remy was able to come in and out easily because he became friends with the guards at the gate. And i searched for S.S. tig welders until the whole Jurong Island welders know me. Ha,ha.

i got so many jobs from the ships owners, during my work in the marine companies. i got colleagues that can chat with the ships crew until they became very good friends. The chief cooks from many ships, invited us to eat lunches in the ships mess rooms, but we prefer to eat dinner outside, to get some cool air. Sometimes we worked till 3am. Probably, i enjoyed the challenge to fix the problems. And for betterment of lives, as the statement goes for all service persons.

In 1976 till 1978, i was calibrating aircraft instruments in the Air Foce instrument lab. Gun-sights, cabin presuure controllers, auto-pilots, gyroscopic instruments, etc. Testing and calibrating the Auto-pilots and Gyro compasses (balancing) took hours, and very interesting. I like to do these instruments. And gun-sights calibration were even more challenging, because the pilots will shoot wrong target if I did wrong. ha,ha. Stripping motors and generators in the electrical lab, were boring. After servicing, like changing brushes and polishing to ensure smooth run with least sparks and checking the efficiencies, power factors,etc. Then reassembled them after servicing. I remember bringing a very old amplifier set(vacuum valves type, probably made after the WWII) and speakers to the lab. We tested them and it worked perfectly with very good sound.

In 1977 to 1980, i was attached to hangar(site). i removed and installed instruments and electrical motors, generators in the aircrafts. Sometimes, i flew to the fixed locations for compass swing/calibration. And did some 1st line work like checking aircrafts very early in the morning 5.30am. We marshalled aircrafts out to flight and in to parking spaces, but we finished work before 12noon. We get our lunch at 11am and then to locker rooms to get towels and headed to Changi beach for sun and swim. The beach is just outside the airfield, about 100metres walk and out at the side gate at the airfield.

Life was just fun, fun, and fun, in the Air Force(1974 to 1980), tell you all later, in next article.

Presently, i am still fit, and can still take on tough jobs for many years, God willing.

Note:Thanks for reading. My articles were written straight from my memory. So, there is no planning and got many grammatical mistakes. It could have been more interesting if i add details. ha ha. Please forgive.