Quote:
Originally Posted by 3.8TransAM
You'd be amazed if you worked in a refinery and saw all the things we fixed from engineers who told us it would work better like this or that.
Or how many times they say this will work better, yet never bother to ask those who actually do the work(when the last "engineer" did the same thing).
|
No, I wouldn't, really. Often times, those who are on the front lines are the ones who see issues nobody thought of and are likely to have a good idea of how to fix them. I've seen it happen. However, this is the case regardless of whether there is a union or not. But, there are engineers and there are engineers. Some of them have little or no real-world experience and that fact shows up in whatever they design, as you have seen. There needs to be a feedback loop in order for quality to improve, and front line people can offer real value this way that should never be underestimated.
In the case of the engineer in my story, he was a guy who spent years getting his hands dirty, so he was one of the good ones. He also had detailed firsthand knowledge about how the union crew had performed on various types of tasks before, so his caution was warranted. None of this stuff was "normal" or "run of the mill" - each and every thing was a unique "one off" design, so there was never an opportunity for repetition to improve training.