I’m an industrial project engineer and I’ve always referred to it as Professional Cat Herding. I get handed a goal (replace some piping, fix a tank, build a new thing, etc) and I have to get the operators input on what they need to run the system easily, I need the maintenance people’s input to make it easier to work on, I need the process owner’s input to make it optimized for production. All of these inputs will change a hundred times as there are always multiple crews/groups with different priorities and a lot of them oppose each other.

Once I have the design in place, I need to wrangle a group of laborers, a crane operator, the scaffold builders, the painters, the electricians, the inspectors and the parts so everyone and everything shows up at the same time to the party. That means meetings to make sure they know what the goal is, training completed to get them on site, lead times on parts sorted out, etc.

When everyone and everything finally shows up it’s mostly just running around like a maniac to make sure work goes smoothly with no injuries or major setbacks by ensuring everyone is communicating well with/through me. Halfway through there will be an internal request to change some aspect of the job and it’ll be on me to weigh the pros and cons of modifying a project mid-way through. These requests are denied 90% of the time, the rest cost a fortune to implement.

So ultimately, what it takes to do a good job is communication, patience, and attention to detail. For larger jobs that interrupt production or maintenance, a well-timed delivery of breakfast burritos helps as well.

A tired dog is a happy dog. I would recommend a VERY long walk or a trip to the dog park when you get home from work. Being kenneled all day and night with a brief respite while you are home and awake will lead to some serious pent-up energy, especially in puppies. We have two large dogs we’ve had since puppies and avoided rampant destruction by having a long yard for them to play in, but it requires us to be out there with them playing fetch and running them silly every day when we get home and again before bed. If we don’t, they just sit around outside begging to come in because ultimately they want to be around us.

I do that with cupcakes and muffins too. Saves the best part for last and you get a higher tasty-to-meh ratio.

At the tail end of a massive maintenance shutdown (16 hr days for everyone, for 2 weeks) the mill leadership started a site-wide meeting with pictures and stories of their recent trip to Japan. How they went golfing, the great meals they had, their trip to the mountain, etc. They finally wrapped that up and proceeded to tell us that cost of living raises were going to be small that year due to them being “unsure about next year’s profit margins”.

There was a pretty steady wave of resignation letters for the 6 months following that meeting.

Industrial project engineer. Consequences of losing those jobs? No more new production plants and maintenance forces would quickly get overwhelmed trying to handle upgrades on top of routine maintenance. Profits would plummet. Plants would shut down.

Moving to a rural/secluded area has been the best thing ever for my mental health. My commute is gorgeous and there’s nothing better than waltzing around outside naked in the sunshine.