Happy Wednesday everybody! I hope your week has progressed well so far. As like every week recently – this one has been sufficiently busy. Every day is different, which I suppose is to be expected when working in a maintenance department in a facility like ours. If the same things broke down in the same way repeatedly then that would imply that I am not doing the reliability component of my job very well. That being said, I enjoy keeping busy and caught up in all of the many, many happenings of the mine; however, the downside to this pace (albeit small) is that I haven’t dedicated as much time as I had intended to completing some of the personal development tasks I’d hoped to this year. I have a small fear that being this involved in the day-to-day events will prohibit me from ever achieving these personal goals. Perhaps I should invest more energy into scheduling my time to allow for me to work on them (even despite the unpredictable-ness of my responsibilities). Maybe I’ll write more about the entire collection of these goals in another blog. Today, I’d like to focus on a smaller and more-specific personal development goal that has helped me grow in unquantifiable ways. Today we talk about my favourite day: Underground Tuesdays!
Firstly, I’d like to recognize and appreciate my workplace for the leniency and freedom they have given me to grow. I have been afforded many opportunities to investigate and spend time learning about all kinds of disciplines at my own behest. Though, I suppose this is the responsibility of somebody posed to become an engineer – to be involved wherever they could possibly fit (so long as it’s within their capacity to do so and still be effective). Although, when I had begun working here in May 2020 I had no desire to be involved in any underground activities – I wasn’t unwilling, but I was definitely apprehensive. My concern with working underground was that if it became expected for me to go every day, then that would limit my ability to be involved in the decision-making component of the workplace; furthermore, it would inhibit me from learning about anything else. My primary interest at the time was researching battery cell degradation mechanisms and relationships between a used cell’s capacity and other measurable properties. Doing this research would benefit the company by expanding our knowledge of our evolving battery technology and could have implications for our battery retirement program, but I would be lying if I said my main motivation for doing this wasn’t self-serving: I wanted to learn and put my physics degree to good use. This work could only be done on surface where all of our retired battery equipment is stored – I didn’t feel compelled to investigate the underground. So for the summer, that’s the kind of work I did.
I don’t recall exactly what led things to change, but it was at some point during the late summer 2020. I began sitting in the electrical shop so that I could ask one of the underground battery equipment technicians (I’ll call him V) some questions about the battery pack hardware issues I was observing on surface. Upon initial meeting I can be quite introverted, even more so in this particular instance where I’m in a new setting and there are lots of intimidating electricians who do not know me. Needless to say, I did not like when I had to ask V questions. However, as per the accounts of my supervisors, V was profoundly knowledgeable and would likely have answers to all equipment-specific questions I had. We laugh about it now, but I was actually quite scared to be in that room to ask V questions. Yet – as one would expect with me, one question turned into two, then three more the next day, and a million more after a week. I found myself staying in the electrical shop almost every day waiting for V to come up so that I could ask more questions.
Waiting in the electrical shop quickly became my favourite thing to do. I’ve spoken about this before, but being present for the everyday benign & impromptu conversations is how I obtain 90% of the most critical information I need to be effective at my job. Useful information is seldom planned for in an industry like this. Engineering is a scavenger hunt for information – it requires clues which are often found in the least formal conversations. As I’d wait for V, I’d listen to the other electricians and battery technicians talk about their day. I began to infer things and learn about how the electrical department worked at our mine. Teck connector, 500 MCM, Megger, VFD, and so on – these terms began to mean something. One day after I had become less scared, I began asking V about his day and what issues he was working on. At the time, one of our 40-ton battery trucks (Truck 212, it has since been retired) was not working due to a long-time unresolved issue. 212 was the first truck of its kind and suffered from lots of novel issues. I think by this time it was about 2-3 years old. From my perspective, 212 had successfully achieved what it set out to do despite its flaws. It was a prototype for many trucks that came afterward which all have improved designs because of what we learned from 212. V had spent a lot of his time that calendar year troubleshooting & fixing 212, so he would tell me about whatever unsolved 212 problem he was working on that day. Sometime in October, he was explaining to my supervisor that he believed that one of its motors were failing. I didn’t quite understand how an electric vehicle’s motor-inverter-resolver system worked, so I had lots of questions about that. At some point I had come to realize that it was quite complex and despite V’s best efforts, I just couldn’t visualize the physical components.
Maybe I should just ask to go see it. I suppose I’m allowed do that.
Thus, I mustered up my courage and asked V (probably in a very confusing and indirect way) if he’d let me go underground with him & the team the following week to go see 212 myself. Unfortunately for him, he said yes. So, on October 20th, 2020 – I completed my first Underground Tuesday.
It was a long day. I understood nothing and stood beside 212 for 10 hours as V went through operating logs, software, and tested a bunch of components. He did a lot of thinking but didn’t discover anything new despite his best efforts. At some point I noticed the vent tube above us flapping around in unison with the flashing blue & red lights of the truck and made a joke about it having a rave. I think I may have even gotten to “key-on” the truck at one point while V was on top of it isolating & testing the CANbus circuit or something. Although I didn’t understand anything, I remember it being important that I ask a lot of questions. I wanted so badly to understand what V was trying to do and I wanted to help. Some questions I asked were about things I didn’t know so that I could learn, but other questions I asked with the intention of helping V parse through his thought processes (even though I didn’t understand the details), and I wrote everything down. Later that day when we were back on surface, he apologized for it being a boring day. I found this confusing because I didn’t find it boring at all – I ended up learning so much, even if it was all obvious to V. It was probably surprising to him when I asked if we could do Underground Tuesdays on a monthly basis, the first Tuesday of every month.
Now that I had more context, I was deeply invested in the problem that was 212. Over the next two days, I ended up writing a guide for CANbus data transmission and presented it to V. This was the first time I felt tangibly helpful in the workplace since I had started. At some point during the week my supervisors had made the call to try installing a new motor in 212 to see if that would resolve any of the issues. As such, I asked V if I could go underground on Tuesday again, on the 27th. This time I learned about the mechanical components of the truck axels (brake boxes, planetary gears, and SAHR brakes).
After that, I went down again the following Tuesday, November 3rd. Then November 5th and 6th. What was agreed to be a monthly Underground Tuesday quickly turned into a weekly underground Tuesday, plus whenever else I could manage. There were so many things about being underground that felt special. At the time, it was where most of the questions were – and where all of the answers could be found. Since starting as an engineer, many workers have expressed to me that engineers tend to not understand the practical implications of their designs since they do not have the in-field expertise or context that tradespeople do. They tell me this with hopes of me becoming more mindful in this regard. I sympathize with this sentiment, and I understand why this is the case. It’s an engineers job to make decisions (whether it be design, technical, or management related) and be held liable for these decisions. Perhaps not every engineer is good at making decisions, but I tend to think that most of them are better at it than they are given credit for. However, an engineer is only able to make as good of a decision as the information they have. Perhaps some engineers could do more to obtain good information on their own accord; however, I’d imagine that some cannot access that information themselves. Fortunately, I have access to the information – I had access to 212 – and it made me a better engineer. At our mine (and what is likely true for most mines) our underground mobile equipment is a production bottleneck. We have limited capacity to operate more trucks and scoops – the things that move the gold to the shaft in order for it to get to surface. Any broken down vehicle has a sizeable impact on our ability to do so – even Truck 212. Being involved with battery mobile equipment allows me to become more knowledgeable and helps me make decisions that have great impact on the place I work. Sometimes, sitting on the left-rear wheel hub of 212 as V troubleshoots the traction inverter is as close to The Room Where it Happens as I could possibly be.
While 212 being broken down was less than ideal for the company from a production perspective, it remains to be my favourite piece of equipment I’ve ever worked on (aside from FrankenBattery 1 – but I’ll save that for another time). I was scared of the underground, I was scared to impose myself onto the Battery Team and V; however, 212 was interesting enough to go underground anyway. It was a science experiment – it felt like one of the few regions wherein I was able to do research and where asking more questions was actually helpful. Since then, Underground Tuesdays have reached far beyond Truck 212 as I’ve now been able to work on all kinds of battery equipment and grow in a lot of ways. What began as a silly inquiry about motors has led me to where I am now – helping manage battery team alongside my supervisor, which is 90% of my job. Although – with this added responsibility, I’ve had a lot more work to do to help keep things in good order and help implement new ideas. I haven’t been underground in five weeks. I haven’t spent a full day underground since August where I helped V install a new auxiliary inverter on Scoop 200. Other priorities have gotten in the way. I was meant to go underground today to do some accelerometer testing and ideally help install a new camera system in Truck 223, but there’s a big deadline tomorrow for a document I need to get done. Perhaps I’ll make some room and try again next week when I have more time.
I’m not sure that he’ll read this – but if he does, I’d like to thank V for letting me ask him a million questions (all at once and all of the time) and for helping me to be better at my job. I’d also like to thank him for making it fun, even though he finds a new way to piss me off every day. Here’s to Truck 212 and one year of Underground Tuesdays.
(October 20th, 2021)
astronomine 