“Professions are characterised by a collective body of knowledge, and education process, standards for admission to the profession, standards of conduct, a recognised status, and collective values. A key value for professionals working with potentially hazardous infrastructure, is that public safety is paramount.”

This is from the recently published engineering practise guide: ‘Public Safety in the Pipeline Industry’, a document for which I was part of the author team. Those 45 words are really… dry, hard to interpret, and often skimmed or overlooked entirely. Yet they mean so much. That’s what the 25-page guideline is trying to bring to life.

I have a box full of t-shirts that I don’t wear anymore. They are from concerts and events, and, of course, marathons and Ironmans.

They are symbols of things I’ve done, been and represented. I can’t quite bring myself to dispose of them, but they do take up space. (A practical solution, which I’ll do eventually, is to take photos of each, and then turn them into rags).

The human need to have artefacts of things we’ve done, and places we’ve been, is an interesting quirk. With all the stuff in the world, we seem to still need symbolic souvenirs.

Continuing on with a theme around rhythms and structure to our life, work, music: it’s true that predictability and structure actually allows freedom and innovation (hello, jazz). 

Back in 2014, I remember going with my parents to the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario.  It features mostly Shakespearean plays. I’m not a Shakespeare aficionado, but I love a challenge.  We had a marathon attendance of five Shakespearean plays over 3 days, all of them stellar productions.

Afterwards, for a while, I ended up thinking in iambic pentameter. Weird, but true.  The lilting, rhythmic predictability of poetic language was hard to ignore.

I naturally lean towards structure and organisation. I like to know what’s on for the day, and having some autonomy over it, a little bit of control. And I mostly have that, most days.

I believe people perform better when there’s some predictability about outcomes, behaviour, and expectations. This works both ways in relationships – both work and personal relationships. When you know, for the most part, what’s coming next, there’s less anxiety and uncertainty.

I’m not naturally musical but having a rhythm to life is another way to think about structure and organisation. But don’t ask me to explain jazz.

I’m not ignoring the issues swirling around society in 2022 ….but I kind of am. Certainly 100 words isn’t enough to delve into them properly anyway. So, I generally don’t write about them here. I do think about them, of course, but it really needs to be background noise rather than front-and-centre.

And there is a lot of background noise right now. Energy systems change, pandemics, mandates, mental health, masks, protests, hydrogen, politics.

It’s difficult to be a Gen-X in the resources sector at the moment. But – we shall prevail. There’s still a lot of life left in us, right?

Who really knows what the year will bring; but with a steady mind, mild expectations, and a willingness to find joy, it will be a good year. That’s what I’m aiming for, anyway.

There will be ups and downs, lows and highs, successes and failures. Every year has those, in varying levels of importance and attention. Nevermind, the best we can do is keep forward momentum.

After posting all about me throughout December, it was nice to take a break for the full month of January. But it’s time to get back at it, 100 words a day and all.

As 2021 winds up, let’s look into that crystal ball and think good thoughts for the future. We’re not through this yet, but I do like to think ahead to what it looks like after (whatever “it” is, whatever “after” might be defined as).

I think there’ll be many new opportunities for all of us. Meanwhile, it’s valuable to take time to reflect on our achievements, and values, as well as how we can best interact while we’re facing a little bit of uncertainty about everything.

Be gentle with each other. Let’s connect in 2022, in whatever form we can!

Identifying as a project engineer puts us in an elite group of specialists. We’re specialist at being, well, generalists. Thinking both widely and selectively deeply about many things: that’s how to be a great project engineer.

There’s a sweet spot, between 8–15 years’ experience, to make a huge impact on your industry, and your career, by being an amazing project engineer. And it opens the door to so many future opportunities.

Some of my best work was as a project engineer. I’m looking forward to helping the project engineering discipline to become a community of like-minded, wide-ranging, interesting experts.

I’ve read quite a few competency frameworks, even developed a few, in which we’ve painstakingly written out the knowledge, skills, experience and behaviours a person should have, to be considered competent in that topic area. This is a good start, definitely.

It’s the next step that gets overlooked: guidance on what to do or where to go, in order to achieve that competence.

I’m looking forward to helping with that next step in competencies: providing the training where I can, but otherwise providing a facilitated clearinghouse of references, resources and tips and tricks on actually how to get the competency.

I’ve heard it called “copy-paste engineering”, or “find-and-replace” engineering. It’s a terrible process that has invaded the habits of good engineers everywhere.

We used to have to write out the design report or project report by hand, to be typed up by someone else. This meant that the content was original, and bespoke to that project. Nowadays, I’m pretty sure all of us in computer-land have done the ole ‘find and replace’ to produce a ‘new’ report.

I want to be helping to fix that. I want us to be more cognizant of the folly of doing engineering that way.

In the work world, I call myself variously an advisor, or consultant, or a trainer, or facilitator. Many labels for what I do, none of them using engineer. And yet, when I look through what I’ve done, and the roles I’ve had, I think they’re best labelled as project engineering roles. The responsibilities of project engineers include, and rely on, managing the project documentation. This includes risk, quality, and scope of the work.

Project engineers are linchpins on a project, and it’s time for there to be more support out there helping you project engineers to be great at it.

I set up my own practise in mid-2016, more by default than by desire. I hadn’t intended to run a business, or be a contractor; I actually, honestly, assumed I’d be a loyal employee. But three redundancies indicated to me that my loyalty wasn’t working.

An opportunity to do some contracting in a related industry came up, and so I took that as a sign. I got a “pty ltd” and set out on the solo journey.

The old saying “it’s a hard way to make an easy living” is always applicable. Sometimes it’s hard, but it’s really worth it.

Writing about principles is like writing about air. They’re essential, yet hard to see and hard to describe. And you know it when you don’t have it.

When I read codes of ethics or codes of conduct, I can’t help but just think how obvious it is and wonder why we have to explain it. Like air: we don’t need to be told how to breathe.

I’ve recently been involved in the development of a code of engineering practise for the pipeline industry. It’ll be published in the new year, and it’s something I’m very proud to have helped write.

My first role after university lasted almost 5 years in Calgary. Next, 6 years at the company that recruited me to Brisbane, though it changed names several times. At the 10-year mark I had a mid-career-crisis and changed 3 times in 4 years. Then two good stints of three and five years, both ending via redundancies. After that, going solo made sense.

They say Generation X was the first generation to not feel company loyalty. My parents were surprised when I left my first job so quickly.

It’s hard to know what a successful career trajectory should really look like.

By the mid-2000s, I was ten years into my engineering career, and was starting to get noticed. By asking questions, and actually listening to the responses, people noticed. This became my standard: ask questions and, more importantly, digest the answers and ask more questions.

That approach probably helped to get invited to join Standards committees. Now, I’m known for my contribution to Australian Standards. I chair several committees, and the facilitation role suits me. I also like the writing, the editing, and the amazing committee discussions.

The Standards committees are a real community, and I like being part of that.

In 2006, the Australian pipeline industry association’s CEO got several dozen young people together in Canberra, to talk about ourselves and our future. From that fledgling discussion, the Australian YPF (Young Pipeliner’s Forum) emerged, and is still thriving.

I can’t remember the details, but somehow, I was one of the original organisers, to get it off the ground in the early days. Aimed at under-35s, there are site visits, networking events and technical tours. I still attend the national update meetings. Recently I observed, “you can’t get rid of me!” It’s nice that the response was, “We aren’t trying to.”

In 2004, after ten years with the job title “pipeline engineer”, I wasn’t really sure I was one. So, I started asking around, to better understand role expectations. There are so many things a pipeline engineer can be responsible for.

I presented my findings at an industry dinner, which really got everyone talking. Five years later, a set of 240 competencies for pipeline engineers was developed by industry volunteers (“PECS”). I’m very proud to have been a catalyst for that.

What I learned from the experience was that I was probably more of a project engineer than pure pipeline engineer.

My fifth Ironman was the 2019 IMNZ at Lake Taupo, NZ. It was simply amazing. (Putting aside the wicked crosswind on the bike).

I haven’t wanted to do any since, and I’m not sure I’ll do another. Though I won’t go so far as to say I’m sure I won’t. Because I do miss the feeling of joy crossing those finish lines.

This is a very important aspect of anyone’s life: finding joy. So, while it might not always be easy, I do try to think about where to find the joy.

Life’s better when there are moments of joy.

By the time my fourth Ironman came around, the 2018 IMWA in Busselton south of Perth, I had a rhythm to it. I had knowledge, experience, and some skills. One can’t do something as momentous as multiple Ironmans and not learn something along the way.

I also learned the need to facilitate, and negotiate. Negotiate for time, attention, resources. Other people in my life also had to be on the journey, whether they knew it or not, liked it or not. We all had to negotiate, we had to accommodate the priorities, we worked it out together, made it work.

It takes an odd bit of misplaced confidence, some “nevermind-ism”, and, well, cheek, for me, with minimal biking skills, and who feels awfully vulnerable at speed, to spend 180km trying to go fast on a bike. At first it took ages just to get the confidence to drop down onto the aerobars.

“Amateur” can mean “not getting paid”, but amateur also interprets as “not very good at it”, “inexpert”, or even “clumsy”. That’s me and cycling. To take on the very hilly, challenging Port Macquarie Ironman in 2017: that was me stepping strongly into something even while identifying as amateur.