Operations and the seven dwarfs

If you’ve perused this column a few times, you may have noticed that, as one of the main clients of instrumentation and controls (I&C) professionals, I consider engaging operators especially crucial. If you find yourself feeling unfriendly toward them, for whatever reason, you may have a long career, but your achievements could be stunted by never consulting one of your key end users.

Maybe you dream of some level of automation, where the man feeds the dog, who bites anyone trying to touch the controls. Good luck. It may work for deterministic and manmade equipment, such as a wind turbine. However, when it comes to reacting hydrocarbons with catalyst, boiling and distilling in often decades-old vessels, there’s that “wild side” that we need worried humans to  worry about. 

I can’t determine whether anything akin to worry manifests in large language models (LLMs). Worry is a feeling about what one doesn’t know, and what inconvenience, hiccup or catastrophe might hatch out of our blind spots. To me, this is a key attribute we desire, which we get exclusively from human operators. Seasoned operators always seek what’s changed, what’s different, and what it means. They steer their plants away from where the waters are murky.

If you seek a fruitful relationship with this unique group of end users, there are some paths I endorse less than others. Here’s what is and isn’t helpful:

• Seeking rapport by being “one of the guys.” Maybe you also enjoy bounding over trails, side-by-side in pursuit of wild pigs, while consuming 12-packs of refreshments. But operators know you’ll never be “one of them.” Instead, they want you to be effective in spheres where they have less input or influence, such as capital funding requests, solving their pet peeves, or enabling ergonomic improvements.
• Dressing like operators. Similarly, you should look like you’re from the office realm. You need to appear to wield the powers they lack, so don’t come in your NASCAR t-shirt, unless you were called out at 3 a.m.
• Behaving like you know everything or know nothing. When an operator asks if something is tied to an interlock that will shut down the reactor, even if you’re certain it won’t, follow up with “but let me look into it.” Meticulous attention to your craft is respected.
• Sharing your slacker tendencies. Maybe you  slipped out early to catch your alma mater in the  tournament, but keep it to yourself. Like a trucker driving a big rig, operators know when they take their attention off their duties on shift, dire consequences can result.
• Be engaged and seek their input. Balancing your position of relative freedom and power with humility and respect will ensure you get the nuggets of hidden insight that typically only operators know.

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Engineers must grasp that we aren’t paid to warm a seat for eight hours a day, and then go home and play. We’re paid to think of clever solutions, or find other people’s clever solutions, justify them in the capital funding budget, and bring them into existence. If you’re an engineer who can't stop thinking about solving a problem when the clock strikes 5 o’clock, you have a faculty that interests me.

Operators, by contrast, man a post. Like sentries on the battlements, they live in a world of uncertainty, peering into the blackness for some unforeseen adversary. So many always confess to ignorance. I always reassure them, we feel ignorant, too. Yet, we give them this immense responsibility to look after millions of dollars of assets, production and the safety of everyone on the premises.

The pay isn’t bad, but the serious person feels the weight of all this. No wonder they relish concluding every day with an orderly and uneventful handover to their relief at shift exchange.

Feeling more than a bit powerless to change things in their realm is endemic. You’re an asset to them if you can help advance and justify their interests. While they may ridicule our faults with glee, operators like to see staff members as thoughtful, professional and effective. Their worries can reveal clues to increasing plant safety and reliability.