Some Bosses make Migrant Professional Engineers Scapegoats

By Engr. Kanthar Balanathan

DipEE (UK), GradCert (RelEng-Monash), DipBus&Adm (Finance-Massey), C.Eng., MIEE, 

Former Director of Power Engineering Solutions Pty Ltd, Consulting Electrical Engineers

Leading Engineer of the World 2006, UK Authority Award

 

1.     General          

 

In a country where the author worked, he came through an interesting affair where the General Manager of the Power Station was trying to make a migrant Specialist Engineer (A) a scapegoat for something that he was liable for. The engineer was a Professional engineer educated in the UK with substantial years of experience.

 

The engineer had previously gone through several bullying as a result of racial focus and racial difference and perhaps the General Manager wanted to escape from punishment.

 

2.     Plant

 

A 280 MW turbo generator was fitted with X-Y protection with online earth fault protection during its survey. The day the Unit was returned to Service, the Unit tripped while running up and the engineer was called at 12:00 midnight. The engineer went and had three trial runs and the Unit tripped with no other faults, except the rotor earth fault. The trip occurred around 1350-1375 rpm while running up.

 

The engineer after analysing the system disabled the rotor earth fault system and advised the Operators to run the Unit. The engineer had thoughts about what could be the real problem was. The engineer went home after sending emails to all Executives explaining the issues.

 

3.     Issues

 

The following morning General Manager called upon the engineer and the heads of departments and wanted the engineer to explain the problems. The engineer explained the rotating rectifier system and what could be the real problem was. The engineer went back to his office and his friend came and advised confidentially that the engineer’s position is to be advertised on the instruction of the GM. This was a challenge to the engineer as the engineer had a preliminary understanding of what could be, as there was no opportunity for the rotor to contaminate to generate an earth fault. Even so, the earth fault would appear at zero rotation. The engineer gave the issue a name: “dynamic earth fault”.

 

As the engineer thought his job was at risk, he went to the registry archives and picked up the Unit file and studied the contents. Quite interesting information was picked up. This particular Unit had an earth fault while running up from “Day One” in 1980. The test was done via a button manually.

 

The owners who are the USA Company, approved a sum of $ half million to repair the Unit in 1995, to which the current GM was appointed the “Project Manager”, he is being a Mechanical Engineer. The file opened up queries that after the third layer of rotor bars were lifted the slivers the maintenance staff found from the other top two layers were not found. The repair team thought that they had repaired the Unit.

 

The rotor earth fault system was installed in 2001. The engineer (A)joined the organisation in 2000. In 1993, an engineer (B)from the Power station wrote a letter to ABB requesting to quote for an online earth fault monitoring system. The engineer explained what the real problem was in the quote letter to ABB.

 

The so-called scapegoat engineer (A) took photocopies of all the documents. The following morning the engineer went to the meeting and explained and placed the quotation letter by engineer “B” to the GM and the Maintenance Manager and the other attendees. Engineer-A observed a surprise on the face of the GM, MM, and others.

 

The Technical Service Manager, who was our boss, advised certain items and the engineer and (A) prepared a comprehensive report giving the real issues and the repair options and forwarded them to the owners in the USA. The General Manager was transferred out and another GM was appointed.

 

Engineer A was asked to file a repair option and a report on the possibility of a second earth fault. The Unit had operated for 21 years without a second earth fault, however, engineer A, advice was the Radial Plug/Pin may have a weak point.

 

After some months engineer A had health problems and he resigned.

 

This can occur in the third world but not in a developed country.

 

The true situation is:

 

It is a polite and strong appeal to all managers, GMs, and Superintendents, that they have to be true to their positions and not attempt to make intelligent, intellectual Professional engineers scapegoats just for them to escape from their own mistakes. Only incompetent nincompoop managers do.

 

The real issue is how is that none knew the 21-year of rotor earth fault problem on this particular Unit. Could this be a racial issue?