Thursday, February 25, 2010

Tunneling in Iran...






Well, global economic meltdown, or not, I think this "Tunneling Director In Iran" job may be a tough one to sell, what do you think?


"Hello? Is that Super A1 recruitment agency?"
"Hello, yes it is."
"Ok, I hear you specialize in tunneling experts?"
"Certainly sir, we are known for it." - thinking, oh this sounds like a good commission.
"And placements in the Middle East are no issue?"
"Certainly not... the tax benefits can be very lucrative to candidates." - hmmm, could this be for Dubai Metro?
"Well, it is a senior level job, a tunneling director for a huge scheme"
"Really..?" - kerching!
"Yes, actually it is for a tunnel scheme in Iran"
"click! [phone is hung up]"
"Hello? Hello? No really, it is. It is for a proper scheme like Qumrud or Esefan...."
[dial tone]
"Hello? Helloooo..?"

You have to feel for the recruiters with this commission, no matter what you stance is on the is it / isn't it, is the Iranian governement using tunnels / aren't they using tunnels row surrounding Iran as the country has a contemporary and ancient history of ambitious tunnel schemes. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is a civil engineering graduate and is said to have worked in tunneling.

Mind you, they only require 15 years experience and I'm guessing they'll pay a premium. Maybe I'll spruce up my resume a bit...





Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Meeting etiquette

Now, the "Little Blue Dude" over at Mining Man has come up with an interesting article that got me thinking. I'm not sure I really agree, in fact I'd say a bigger problem is Blackberries / PDAs. I think truly effective meetings should have all phones etc turned off. Or maybe have a limit on the number of participants...



My issue (and I'm not one to take a laptop unless I'm presenting) is the flaw that he assumes all laptop users generally use them to take notes (which can be taken alternatively, but in a working meeting the chair can do rough minutes as you go, but the blue one is taking issue with other attendees) or to read messages.

I have found that some people take a laptop to a meeting in order to have a searchable pdf there when discussing contracts / scope for example or to reference other drawings. In fact, given the intent to save paper these days, this can be a good thing.

Having said all that, I couldn't agree more with the poor running of meetings, lack or courtesy / respect etc. being huge issues. Only recently I have twice been in meetings involving senior stakeholders with a standard format and pre-distributed agenda, when one of the attendees (the same in both instances) has asked if we could disregard the agenda and do their items first as they were busy and had other commitments. Won't be happening again!

Solution; well the person should have queried prior if we could re-jig the agenda or asked for a different meeting time if that was not possible. They could have delegated (and there is another huge topic, because delegate really does mean send a surrogate empowered to make certain decisions within levels of authority you give them, not send a spy to report back what was said, but not be able to contribute to the topic of the meeting if a commitment must be made). Everyone is busy and some things have to be done to enable a process to continue and not stall.

The assumption should be that everyone has important stuff to be done, but that the topic of the meeting is important enough to hold a meeting, so it should be worthwhile doing it properly to make the most of everyone's time...


P.S. in this day and age, I think it is better to accept meetings may include gadgets and have protocols to address this as otherwise how do you ensure full participation for web based meetings which are fast becoming the norm?

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Giant steps are what you take, walking on the moon...


(photocredit: The Sudbury Star)

This article underlines some of the creativity that mining people can demonstrate.


NORCAT (Northern Centre for Advanced Technology) is involved in testing rovers for lunar (or Martian?) missions in the crater of a volcano in Hawaii - yes, I imagine that was a tough project to attract people to work away on!

Commendably the team even used a student chef to help prepare meals, which seems quite a fair way to assign plum roles, rather than the usual cronies.

One of the things I found most impressive was the modular multi-tasking of the rovers. I wasn't surprised they can be equipped with a scoop or drill or ground penetrating radar. What surpised me the most as a cute adaptation to the expected environment was the scoop can be used to transport material for transport to a solar concentrator (think magnifiying glasses and ants - yes, I know, it's terrible, but own up, you've done it) where water and oxygen is cooked out of the rock.

In-situ resource utilization (ISRU) is where its at apparently. Think of it as extreme sustainability. The article estimates that to "
land one litre of water on the moon would cost a space agency $100,000 a bottle".

Now mentioning ants was intentional above as the rovers are programmed to work in groups in a collaborative manner like ants do. They adapt to problems or mission issues as a team and if one rover is immobilized, the others will push it out of the way.

Oh yes and if anyone is in the market for it, NORCAT even makes and sells its own lunar regolith (moon dust) substitute, although like the real thing with dangers if inhaled and retailing for $40,000 per ton it may only be found in the most discerning sand lots...

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

What did IKB do for you?



IKB, Isambard Kingdom Brunel
,

the diminuitive Victorian engineer who was a giant among giants.


I saw a
newspaper report about a proposed statue of IKB in Rotherhithe, London, UK, where IKB distinguished himself by completing the first tunnel underneath the River Thames in 1843 - surviving at least one inrush along the way.


What was quite telling was one comment from a resident: "Barry Duckett, chairman of the nearby Canada Estate Tenants’ and Residents’ Association, said: “It’s too big and it’s not in keeping with the area. It’s just a load of wire thrown together. It’s our council flats that are going to look at it – nobody around here will be able to miss it. A lot of local people say it’s a waste of money. He [Brunel] never did much for us."




Oh dear, send in the crack troops from the BTS and ITA to enlighten the fellow!

(photocredit: Forge Architects)

Now personally, I think the statute looks as ok as many others. It actually does a pretty good job of representing the top hatted, frock coated, engineering multi-tasker as he juggles projects as diverse as tunnels, railways, steamships and bridges.



This is really related to my post about creativity in mining. Engineers working in mining or underground construction all provide a great service to society, whether it be material resources or infrastructure and it seems from Duckett's comment (and many experiences of my own) that this point is not really getting across to people.


Poor old IKB, what did he do for us?

Well among his list of achievements we can count:

  • the Thames Tunnel
  • Clifton Suspension Bridge
  • the Great Western Railway (GWR) with all the associated tunnels, bridges and viaducts - it was wider gauge than standard for faster, more comfortable journeys, but was eventually narrowed to standardise rolling stock with the rest of the rail network
  • the world's first iron-hulled, screw propellor (previously had been paddle steamers), steam powered passenger liner
  • the first trans-atlantic steamship
  • at the time the biggest ship ever built
  • a prefabricated hospital for the Crimea

and if there is still any doubt, take a look at this, this and this.


"Get a big top hat if you want to get ahead."



Monday, February 1, 2010

History of Mine Safety in USA

Found a video on YouTube about the history of mine safety in the USA.

It is more coal (or evaporite) focused, but has some great images and video clips, as well as being generally informative for any type of mining or underground construction.

With today's focus (and encouraging results) on "Zero Harm" it is good to see how far we have come.

The video discusses the impacts of closer supervision for safety and production, as well as the tradeoffs with mechanization, i.e. the equipment made some aspects safer, but equally required larger openings which gave stability issues.