Monthly Archives: December 2011

Getting to the Plant from the Office – What are you complaining about?

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In Richmond, there was a lot of complaining when we had to move people from the field offices to the Admin Building, moving people away from the process units they work in.  We had even more complaining when we had to move the Capital Projects and Drafting Department folks to the off-site building at Marina Way.  I tell people it could be worse but they did not hear me – moving to the new locations made it more difficult / more time consuming to do their job.

Well let me tell you how much worse it could be.  In Tengiz it takes ~45 minutes to get from the office to the process units.  The average engineer and supervisor takes the bus to the process units.  It takes little less than 10 minutes to walk to the bus stop from the Designs Enginering offices, and then just over 30 minutes on the bus to the process units.  If you have a meeting scheduled at the top of the hour in the plant, you must leave about 40 minutes before, and then you are a few minutes late for the meeting.  The buses are on a schedule (leave every 30 minutes for one plant, every 60 minutes for the other) so you need to time your site visits, and pay attention to the time.  There is a canteen out at one of the plants so you can grab lunch there if you have several things to do.

You can take a taxi but need to schedule in advance.  This usually works if you have several folks needing to see something in the field or all going to the same meeting.  You sometimes can arrange for the taxi to wait for you but they are so busy that many times you get the taxi out there and then take the bus back.

One thing I have noticed is that most people sleep on the bus or taxi.  I have a natural tendency to want to talk to people that I might not normally see, engage them in some work discussion.  For those that know me, I don’t handle silence well.  But now that I have been here a while I can see for those working 12, 13, 14 hour days, a little down time on the bus is to be expected.  So I bring something to read, or shut my eyes as well.  My problem is I just start to drift off when we arrive at our destination.

It’s So Cold My Eyeballs Hurt

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Returning to Kazakhstan in mid-December I expected it to be cold, but it’s really cold.  I continue to walk between the living accommodations (SV) and work location (TCOV) each day, but when it is cold AND windy my eyeballs hurt.  I wear a sweatshirt, heavy jacket with hood, beanie, and gloves.  On a couple days I even wore my insulated coveralls (that you use to go into the plant with) home.  But you still need to see where you are walking.  I have resorted to wearing my safety glasses when I walk, to keep the wind from driving into my eyes.  I guess I could bring some ski goggles, but that would seem pretty nerdy.  So instead, if it is really windy, I take the bus.

Another Schedule-Driven Project

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We had an unplanned shutdown of a propane dryer skid earlier this month – several pieces of equipment, piping and instruments damaged – have another “schedule-driven” project that I am involved in, if you know what I mean.  Not the biggest incident I have been involved in but we still need to go through all the steps of incident investigation, assessment, demolition, purchase materials before you know what is damaged, develop design packages before you know what needs to be replaced, and build everything back as quick as possible – just the way some of us like it – all phases all the time.  A couple small pieces of equipment will take 6 weeks to fabricate, and we will cut back some home run cables and install some intermediate I&E junction boxes; should have it all back together in early March.  Makes the time go fast.  What is different is no need to figure out who is working this weekend, who needs a day off – everyone works every day here.  But you do need to pay attention to who is rotating in and who is rotating out, need to make sure the various action items and work move forward.

The other interesting aspect is facilitating a daily rebuild coordination meeting with Reliability, Engineering, Operations, Maintenance and HES – lots of people, various perspectives, and two languages.  My solution is to use a conference room that has two in-focus machines and two tranlators.  I facilitate and scribe the meeting in English, have a translator handle the verbal translation, and then another translator who is following my meeting notes and converting it to Russian during the meeting.  It seems to be going well with this approach; I can see that the Russian speakers are reading the notes in Russian and are bringing up issues for clarification.   It also makes the meeting go faster because people can read the agreements in either language and we do not need to meticulously translate verbally between the two languages.

Christmas Dinner

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I had Christmas Dinner with the Maintenance Manager and Process Engineering Supervisor tonight in dome 3 canteen.  Not many of the locals here celebrate Christmas but they do like holidays because it means people getting together and having a special meal.  So they decorate, and have a nice spread on the holidays here – there was shrimp and lobster, ham and turkey, and some good cheeses.  I usually eat my dinner in my room at night but it was a pleasure to socialize a bit, particularly on Christmas.  But now it’s back to my room, as tomorrow is another work day.  I worked most of the day on Christmas – facilitated a meeting, did some follow-up, wrote the meeting notes.  Just another day in Tengiz.

2011 Evans Family Holiday Letter

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Greetings.  As some of you know we typically send out a “newsy” holiday letter, enclosed in our annual holiday card.  When the kids were little we were hard pressed to keep up with this but the last few years we reestablished this family tradition.  I’m excited this year to do this on-line; always wanted to have the option of tweaking the “letter” after the cards went out in the mail.  So anyway, here goes:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/66828995@N03/6488509215/in/photostream

As you can see, the kids are getting big.  The picture is from our summer vacation (late June) where we visited NYC and Washington DC (vacation pics posted under links in this blog), just before I departed for my first trip to Kazakhstan.  We enjoyed the tour of the Mint, purchased a few trinkets in the gift shop, and then took pictures of each child in front of the “growth board.”  Please note that both Grant and Andrew cheated a bit – Andrew is actually a 1/2″ shorter than Claudia.

Zack: senior year at Miramonte High School.  He got his driver’s liscense at the beginning of the summer and returned as a camp counselor at UC Berkeley Strawberry Canyon summer camp.  He drives himself and brother Grant to school each day, plus helps with drop-off / pick-up of Claudia / Andrew (this 3rd driver in the house is essential when I am away working in Kazakhstan).  Zack has lots of friends, does well in school, and is enjoying his senior year including his Sports Medicine and Physiology classes.  He has already been accepted to four PAC 12 universities (did not apply to the UC system) and is close to accepting addmission to the University of Arizona.

Grant: sophmore year at Miramonte High School.  Gets along well with Zack (finally), also has many friends and does very well in school.  His favorite sport is lacrosse which means he goes to summer camps, plays box lacrosse (indoor) in the fall and field lacrosse in the winter/spring (February to early May).  2012 will be his second year on the Miramonte JV team – there is a great group of kids and coaches involved in Miramonte lacrosse – and we have become friends with several families we met through Grant’s participation.

Andrew: 7th grade at Orinda Intermediate School (OIS).  His sport is also lacrosse.  Andrew plays for a local club – they have four teams in his age bracket this upcoming season. He also goes to camps in the summer, participates in a once/week skills and scrimmage training in the fall, and then practices 2/week with 1 or 2 games on weekends during the season (again, Feburary to early May).  Andrew can do well in school, but he sometimes lets his responsibilities slip without constant “encouragement” from his parents (and with four kids and a half-time single parent household he sometimes is able to dodge our check).  He really enjoys reading – we both got Kindles this year and share books.

Claudia: 7th grade at Orinda Intermediate School (OIS).  Dance, drama and shopping – Claudia has lots of activities and probably spends as much time in the car going to/from than the other three kids combined. She was in both the fall and spring productions (Snow White and The Wiz) while in 6th grade and fall production of A Midsummer Night/s Dream in 7th grade at OIS; we expect she will try out for the 2012 spring play which has yet to be announced.  Claudia really enjoys dance, having taken classes the last couple years.  This fall she joined a new dance studio, takes classes three evenings per week and will start paricipating in dance competions in 2012.  Even with this heavy activity load she does very well in school – our last child is very responsible.

As far as Karen and I, we are both doing well.  Karen’s physical ailments are at bay this year, both her back and foot are repaired.  Together we joined a health club a few miles from the house and enjoy working out together when I am home.

Karen continues to work at Kaiser in Walnut Creek – still at an 80% schedule.  She volunteers at OIS once per month plus handles all the house / kid duties of our family without complaint.  Karen typically handles the many dentist/orthodontist/doctor visits but I help when I am home (4 visits alone this recent rotation home).  She has also had to step up and deal with computer, car and furnace problems while I am away.  The flip side is when I am home I help get the kids out of the house in the morning, pick them up after school, and get them to / from their various activites – all without the distraction / stress of juggling work responsibilities.  Plus I get to work on “weekend” home projects throughout the week when I am home – this last trip home completed what it probably would have taken me three months to do.  I know this may come across as sexist as Karen and many other working moms juggle work/life responsibilities without complaint, but for me I am much more engaged with my family when I am home off rotation.

Extended Family News

Karen’s brother Bruce and family (Courtney and Cooper) are well in Portland.  We all got together in October to celebrate Karen’s father’s marriage to Cynthia Bishop (he met her in Sedona after Karen’s mom passed away in March 2009).  Her father is in good health after two knee replacements and continues to travel extensively.

My mother continues plugging along – she is now 84 and had a pacemaker installed this summer.  With my rotation schedule I am able to take her many medical appointments – we joke that I see her more now that I am working in Kazakhstan.  My sisters Robin and Joanne and their families are well and continue to grow.  We currently have two grand-nephews (Christopher and Carson) and one grand-niece (Rose).

Well that’s it for now.  Wishing each and everyone who reads this far a happy holiday season and a great 2012.

Marc and Karen Evans