OR maybe it seemed so easy because I HAD planned, and some subconcience planning had occured as well?
Yup
With respect, cujets post about some jobs just requiring you to jump in with both feet is rubbish, even absolutely no warning emergency situations have planning, they are called "drills" and firemen and suchlike use them all the time.
Projects too big to plan?
Designed in the UK, by draughtsmen, on blueprint paper. Before we go any further, no two were alike, these were bespoke designs.
The components were manufactured in the UK, including rivets, inside you have boilers, triple expansion steam engines, the bucket ladder, huge pumps, spiral separators, conveyors, dc and ac power generation, more complex than a ship, there is no cargo space, it is ALL machinery.
The components were never test assembled, not possible, and containers weren't the thing then, so everything is crated and sent to southampton where it is loaded onto a couple of ships, then it heads across the high seas to singapore.
Unloaded in singapore and trucked into the malayan peninsula, then up roads cut into the jungle to the spot where tin or can be found, gangs of hundreds of coolies and a steam shovel dig a "dry dock" to assemble it in, ready for flooding when complete and to start work.
No infrastructure, if you need a crane or scaffolding it better be buildable out of bamboo. No ac power, no nothing.
When the crates start arriving in the middle of the jungle you start assembling them, plates and beams to rivet together to make the hull, plates and tube assemblies to rivet together to make the boilers, assemble the steam engines, etc etc etc, all from plans, all never been test fitted, all in the middle of bum fuck nowhere so if even one part is missing the whole show stops for a few months.
It's quite an engineering challenge, and of course there is a whole other financial challenge in the whole thing, it has to cost out and show a profit.
As it happens at that time there was a communist emergency in malaya, mum had a S&W 38, dad had a Luger (I was too young at that time to carry a firearm) shopping was done in chauffer driven ford mercury with armour plate and slits for windows, only car that would carry the weight, villages (campongs) were fenced and guarded, you were timed in and out of each campong so the next day if you didn't turn up there knew where you went missing.
On the domestic front the houses (which were beautiful) had water, no windows, just "chicks" (roller blinds) and shutters, patios you polished every day to keep the snakes out, food kept in a cupboard with legs sat in jars of kerosene to keep the ants out, cooking done on kerosene wick, lighting by kerosene or electric, no refrigeration, if you were a manager you got an electric fan (no, I'm not kidding)
You'd have maybe half a dozen "white" men, meaning like my dad, been to the world famous (for mining, esp hard rock mining) dalcoath tech, later camborne school of mines, and had steam and electric ticket etc, and a crew of mainly chinese fitters and so on, working shifts, first you built em and then you ran em
that was planning, and considering the era and the technology you can't say it was a small project, fact is the world is too small now, you couldn't find projects like that any more, nowhere is that remote in time, except perhaps the moon, and there aren't any communist terrorists on the moon.
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an apprenticeship, whether formal time served or just years at the coal face, is all about learning project management, even if you don't know it at the time.
Lister(oid) single cylinder diesel engine, as simple as anything can get, doesn't require any less project management than rebuilding a 12 cylinder engine, which is just more complex, not more complicated, you've got 24 sets of tappets to adjust, not 2.
End of my road there is a garage, lot of people said he was crap, when I wanted to some work doing on my car I took it there after we moved here, he's been doing my cars for 4 years now, can't fault them in any way, why did I go there? his workshop floor was spotless, and jobs around the place were obviously project managed and done in stages.
Mate of mine before he lost his arm was a master builder, he would talk about a "clean building site" which sounds dumb when all a layman can see is mud and piled of material and equipment, but it was the same thing.
Military have it down to a fine art, even teach you how to dress and wipe your ass, but they can get your rations and ammo to point x on the map.
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Current example is NASA and the shuttle, which sounds like an ongoing cluster fuck with admins and managers screwing the pooch, prolly one of the most complex projects you can imagine, but it is broken down into sections so everyone manages their own bit.
Trouble now is you have engineers in charge of their own sections saying "I ain't signing off on that" and managers maybe over riding them because they are looking at risk assesment, if say the risk of the next shuttle blowing up is x per cent it is acceptable and we launch, if it is x +1 then it is unacceptable and we don't, you get a struggle between what amounts to different ideologys within the same system.
They are project managing by shipping extra supplies to the space station as an alternative, and readying a spare shuttle.
I suspect the acceptable risks are a lot lower than the apollo days, just like the iraq body bag count is lower than the somme days (anniversary yesterday)
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One way or another I've spent most of my life working around diesel engines powering generators and dynamos and suchlike, every boat has them, loads of houses in out of the way places have them, and I'm sticking here to the small stuff, 25 Kw or less, like most of you here will be using, where owner / chief engineer / chief electrician / fitter / end user are all the same person.
There are a lot of perceived dangers, like rotating machinery and external flywheels, but every time I ever saw someone on crutches or in plaster or being rushed to hospital it was none of those, if was because something fell, or moved, or shifted, and it wasn't jacked or slung or braced properly, all totally avoidable and all a total lack of project management.
I've seen a lot of DC injuries, but again these were never was people assume the dangers are, they were non vented banks, brine = chlorine gas, flinching out of the way or a short into something that hurt you, etc.
I've seen a lot of AC injuries, but again they weren't from workiing on the head per se, but because of bad wring that didn't isolate cables properly, leak backs and earth loops.
I've seen a lot of general injuries, because the installation was so bad and the work area so dirty they slipped and took all their body weight on a dull cherry exhaust header, or the access was piss poor so lage weight crushes fingers etc etc etc.
I've seen a lot of time and money wasted because installation was shit, people think wet exhausts and joints will never leak, so they run them over the gen head, people save a buck by gas axing a hole and running hose through it and no hose mounts, instead of a bulkhead nipple and properly mounted seamless pipe, drop trays mounted to close under the sump you can't drop the sump.
NONE OF YOU GUYS (as far as I am aware) is sticking their lister in a boat or some tiny enclosed space, you all know it weights a shit lot, most of you seem to be making a small ladder frame in steel to mount it, why not use a bit extra steel, make a proper base that extends outside the crankshaft ends? Why not bolt a frame on to of that which you can use to cover the engine and also use as a lifting gantry, if you bolt instead of welding you can always remove it if need be for access. Why not raise the whole plot ten inches and put in a drip tray? Why not use the frame to route some proper plumbing, maybe put all your service and access points on the same side?
That kind of stuff actually doesn't cost much more than a simple skid, and it saves money because you can do a lot of things properly, and that means reliability, all it takes is a little planning and project management.
Of course about now that purpose built shed with a 30" doorway doesn't seem like such a good idea...
