Institution news
A project engineer for National Grid, Charles Crossley has spent the last three years as part of the National AGI Renovation Campaign team repairing and improving the gas network running across the country, something which he says has been quite a mammoth undertaking.
“We have had more than 250 operatives across 90 sites all over the UK, and I have worked on 23 sites directly. We have had over 500 km of the system depressurised so we could complete our work, and then we recompressed the gas to put it back in the line once it was completed, saving more than 16.9 million standard cubic metres of gas from being vented.”
The age of the network, which averages more than 40 years old, means that Charles and his team have inspected and repaired more than 150 gas valves, as well as removing six outdated gas sites from the network and building 10 new ones, while all of the time maintaining a focus on improving efficiency and maintaining safety standards.
It’s been a challenging project to work on, but one that has provided countless CPD opportunities for Charles and his team, something that is vital for engineers progressing deeper into their careers.
“I am one project engineer within a team of project engineers, and we all have responsibility at every stage of project work from conception to completion to complete CPD, and you get a lot of variety in your CPD opportunities through completing that work. While you are working towards your NPDS it is quite simple and straightforward to keep track of your development, but CPD through on-the-job training is helpful once you have obtained your Chartership to help you maintain focus and monitor your ongoing professional development.
“It is a great way of ensuring you are progressing as an engineer, and over the last year this has helped me develop a number of areas and targets, things like becoming a pipeline Mechanical Damage Assessor (MDA), a modification initiator and a SCO91 job owner, as well learning how to work with company financial systems.
“My work as a mechanical damage assessor in particular, has required me to apply engineering theory in emergency outage situations, balancing safety and network availability, to decide the best way forward.”
Charles added that achieving these targets, all of which are recorded as part of his CPD record, were vital in helping him secure a recent promotion within the National Grid.
“A lot of the areas I developed during this project were a focus of the promotion interview, and one of the reasons, if not the main reason, I was able to achieve that promotion is because of all those elements I learned and got signed off while working on this project".