Maintenance was my favorite job from childhood. And I am still
enjoying my career as a maintenance engineer. It provides challenges
and brainteasers. Crisis management under resource and manpower
constraints stretch your thinking on ways to circumvent the problem.
While I was working on an oil processing platform as maintenance
superintendent, there was not even a single day I was free and every
day I confront a basket of problems with varied difficulties and
importance. One of the important lesson I learnt was categorizing the
problems and attack the problem which seems to be very difficult and
time consuming.
At an Off shore platform, normally the day begins at 0700 am. The first thing I
do in the morning is to take stock of the previous days’
performance and list unfinished jobs. To this fresh complaints are
added and the total task is prioritized on the basis of urgency.
Since fresh in the morning, I used to attempt the most difficult job
first. This used to assure the availability of time and have an
unbiased look at the problem. Many a times some other jobs may
veer off your attention or even force you to suspend the job at hand due to urgency. Even while
attending same, one can think of the ways to trouble
shoot the problem which you have kept in abeyance temporarily.
