Ep. #39 - Jon Collins - Calibrating a Career: Inside the Life of an Instrument Tech.

In this episode of The Crude Cast, Jon Collins, an instrument technician with over 12 years in oil and gas, shares his journey from leaving college to leading complex instrumentation projects on the North Slope. He talks about the influence of his grandfather, the hands-on nature of his work, the blend of old and new tech in the field, and the personality traits that make someone thrive in a rotational, team-driven environment. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Instrumentation in Oil and Gas
• 5:05 Career Path and Early Influences
• 10:02 Technical Insights on Oil Production
• 20:03 Challenges and Learning in Instrumentation
• 30:05 Daily Operations and Team Dynamics
• 40:01 Project Management and Execution

Transcript

The Crude Cast (00:00)
Grandpa kind of grabbed me by the shirt collar and was like, you figure it out. now and stay tuned for another captivating episode of The Crude Cast. You're listening to The Crude Cast and today I have instrument tech, John Collins. How are you, John? I'm fantastic, Travis. How are you? Instrument tech, I've been in oil and gas for 12 years now.

So, brief overview, you know, if my job is calibrate and maintain control systems for oil and gas production, calibrate transmitters, switches, and...

Verify that controls are are working as they should be so you

You got your instrument tech from KPC? Yep. I went to KPC. I was going for process tech and instrumentation and ended up just getting my instrumentation degree. And the reason I went into that was primarily because of my grandpa. So I was 19 when I moved or 20 when I moved up to Alaska. before that,

I was just kind of all over the place. I didn't know what I wanted to be. Already flunked out of college and thought I was going to be a motorcycle mechanic. So I moved down to Arizona and got down there and realized how expensive school was and that I didn't really want to work on motorcycles for my whole life. So bummed around there and my grandpa kind of grabbed me by the shirt collar and was like, Hey, you know, you need to figure it out. Arizona. That was MMI. ⁓ okay.

kind of subsidiary of UTI, I guess. ⁓ yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of guys that go down there for that. What is that like all on the same campus or something? Two separate campuses. So UTI has a separate campus. MMI is specifically for motorcycles and that's all, they have all the brands, right? You have Honda, Yamaha, BMW, Harley, all that stuff. whichever specialty you decide you want to work in, that's what you.

focus on. Yeah, you grew up in Spokane? Spokane area. Yeah. Yeah. So I was south of Spokane a little ways, but small farming community. Right. Yeah. I remember you telling me before that agriculture was very big down there.

like you what's that windows background that always come up viewers like i know that place that's ⁓ the Palouse yeah yeah yeah rolling hills yeah that's ⁓ that's where i'm from so it it pretty much the economic driver down there is agriculture wheat farming

And then university, right? So, what university? University or Washington State University. really? Like 15 minutes away. So, not like in Seattle Metro. No, that's Washington or University of Washington is over there. Yeah. And then Washington State is on the east side. Yeah. OK, that's the

What is it? The huskies? Cougars? Yeah. Yeah. So that's where you grew up. You graduate. You go to college. You don't like doing that. You go down to Arizona to go to motorcycle school. Your grandpa was up here though or not? Yeah, my grandparents lived up here that time and he had worked on the slope for

20 plus years. As an instrument tech. So he was actually, he started off as a mechanic and then he kind of worked his way into an electrician and then so he was an electrician. maintenance loophole. Yeah and I think he ended his career on an FCO team so but he was familiar with all the trades and he's like you know I think he

you could be good at this. I think you would enjoy it. Why don't you try it? And so he was a big push for me getting that degree. Yeah. So you came up here, were you going back and forth or you just like came up here and then pretty much went into the? Yeah. Once, once I moved up here, I was pretty much here. ⁓ you know, did my three years of schooling and then in the summers I would work for my grandpa on his charter boat.

And so that was how I paid for school and got through the year.

I was pretty fortunate that after I graduated, I was able to get an opportunity to go out to the platforms like six months later. I got super, super lucky. Yeah. And that was? That was with, ⁓ Big G Electric. ⁓ okay. As who I, who I was told to contract through. no other like.

bouncing well and then you went like from your degree to steal head to steal head yep I had one small job in between there just trying to make some money I was working in a mechanic shop just kind of helping out right it's kind of just a helper you know sweeping floors and changing oil and stuff like that nothing too crazy sure and did that for I don't know four months or so

then got the opportunity to go out to the Steelhead. Interesting. The only reason that happened is, so one of my friend's dad's was a lead and he's like, hey, just give me your resume and I'll just shoot it out, right? In case anybody's looking for a tech. I was like, okay, that's awesome, thanks. Right. And the foreman on the Steelhead at the time also had a charter business.

And he happened to park his boat like two slips down from my grandpa's boat. ⁓ And he's like, Hey, I read, know your name. And he was funny. He goes, so if you can work for your grandpa, you can work for me. So that just luck of the draw and timing and it just worked out. That's super fortunate. Heck yeah. And then you're on the steelhead for.

I from there, what, like six, seven years or something? So actually, I was on the Steelhead for about a year. Yeah, I was on the Steelhead for about a year. And we had three techs there at the time. Three instrument techs? Three instrument techs. really? Yeah. So I was kind of the third swing guy. Yeah. You're kind of the apprentice,

And the Grayling was looking for an instrument tech. so they shipped me over to the Grayling and then I spent eight years on the Grayling. I thought you were I thought you had been on the Steelhead for quite a while before you went over to the Grayling. no. I was only there for a year. Yeah. When you you come up here, how old are you?

would have been either 19 or 20. ⁓ okay. Yeah. And then you do three years of that and then steelhead for a year. You're on the Grayling. So when did, how many years had you, you'd been on the Grayling probably for three years before I got there then? Yeah, probably pretty close to that.

I had only been there for like two years. So then you went from grayling as an instrument tech to lead on the steelhead.

So actually lead on grayling. So I was lead on grayling for three and a half years or so. ⁓ okay. And then transferred to Steelhead and I was back there for nine or ten months before I went up to the slope. Then back up to the slope as an instrument tech

We take oil and we process it. we have a big system that we, you know, it's meant to deal with.

barrels and so we have the capacity we have the high pressure we have a whole high pressure unit you know that's so that's part of that that we can handle and it can handle a lot of production so high pressure gas high pressure yeah gas and oil so it coming into the facility at pounds ⁓ okay and you know we have that process

Cause don't most of them are like you're flowing from the pad to the flow station and then yeah, you're sending that oil on down the line. I imagine. So to have you have the gas lift is not normal. would think. No, I don't know why I don't.

They're just like, hey, we have room over here. We'll put a gas lift compressor and then we'll support whoever needs it. ⁓ so it might not be primary gas lift.

I think our common line pressure is like 250 pounds. Yeah. And we usually break it down to like in the plant. ⁓ okay. What are you like for fuel gas and stuff like that? Just separation. So we have low pressure trains that we call them pounds and then it's all three phase. So it's just those lower pressure wells coming in or separate. then after the pressure gets knocked down,

from the LP and the high pressure wells. places you go what you're going to call something. So I know people are like, it's low pressure. okay, well, what is low pressure? Because low pressure now is pounds where before when the, you know, let's call it native production or

Low pressure was 300 pounds that's I mean, still the same thing, right? Low pressure, we were running our low pressure wells pounds. at the compressor, compressor suction was pounds. that is low. Yeah. And now you're potentially bringing all those solids to surface, but now you're offshore. It makes a mess.

I never heard about guys like doing separator cleanouts, like with the back or anything, you know? I mean, is that something that they were doing when you were there? So on the steelhead, yeah, we had issues and we would do cleanouts. So we try to consolidate our sandy wells into like our test separator. Right. So that way we weren't co-mingling, contaminating everything else. Right.

And yeah, when we would do cleanouts on that, it was full. And you know, we had issues several other places, wrecking condensate pumps and you know, just chewing them up. Yeah, it just goes down the line. And then like the waste liquids tank, right, would get pretty solided up. ⁓ right. As a separator. Yeah, as you dump, you know.

condensates or whatever to the waste liquids tank it would. It would just trickle down. It becomes like a daily thing, right? You that was part of, you knew it was gonna happen, you'd have to go flush the bridle.

on your test separator level because they would just go wonky on you all of a sudden it would be reading like way high and you knew it wasn't accurate so you'd have to go we'd had 100 pound water hooked up to the bridle and blow the taps out and bring it back and then be good for a day and then you'd have to go back the next day and do it again do it again until you did a clean out yeah yeah there's no instrumentation that really

overly accurate in those situations except for maybe like some nuclear system. I mean it's because if you have DP cells they're just gonna plug off and right or if your your taps plug up then you're not reading an accurate level and even maybe a guided wave like if you had a guided wave maybe yeah looking at the top. Yeah, but you're gonna get all the interference from everything else there too.

So they make some of them now where like if you have your specific PLC card, like a heart card for your PLC, you can actually separate out what solids and what's liquid. So if you could actually see your solids level accumulating versus your liquid level. That heart card is mounted in the PLC? Yeah. So it's just like an analog input, right? But it's specific for breaking out heart loops and signals. ⁓ interesting. So it's not your standard.

What Alan Bradley or something? Yeah, four to twenty, right? So you can get each manufacturer makes a hard card. It's just you have to know that that's what you want because these devices anymore you can pull multiple parameters off of them. Right? So we did it for gas injection, but you'd have one transmitter and it would do flow. It was a mass flow meter. So it would actually spit out your flow rate.

So you could get that, you could get static pressure, could get differential pressure, and you could get temperature all off of one transmitter. And it would just break it all out instead of having four different field devices out there, you know.

Yeah, so we have, so each drill site has an operator and they, that primarily they, that's where they hang out and each drill site has a control room. But the flow station can monitor everything out at the drill sites. Right. Also. And.

So that's kind of cool and it's actually interesting because a lot of the times our flow station board operator will manipulate wells at the drill site. You know, especially if the operator's out in the field or something, I'll be like, hey, I'm going to bring this well on. And they just do it because, I mean, really the production from the drill sites is going through the plant.

drill site operator doesn't they're like all right cool how about it you know what did you think an instrument tech did if you can recall before you became an instrument tech ⁓ man I don't even know if I had a clue really right I thought okay I'll calibrate devices and stuff and that's kind of my job

And then when I made it to the platform and it was just mind blowing, like I was 100 % overwhelmed. Like how am I supposed to learn all of this stuff? then... With just the complexity of the operation? Yeah, just like all the... You know, the first tour of the facility, I'm like...

what is this, you I like the first five minutes of information you kind of get and then the rest of it's like crushing. And I feel like it's like drinking through a fire hose, right? You're just, all right, anything you can retain, here we go. But yeah, I'd had no idea. I thought maybe a little bit of valve work, some calibrations and stuff and.

but no idea about the background logic or SCADA or setting up new control loops, anything like that. I no idea. the first part, are you doing more of those calibrations and stuff like that versus? almost, in my mind, be...

two different tech specialties as far as maybe one guy that does installation and maintenance and then you have another like automations group I guess really that's doing PLC work and

So yeah, that's the way it is on the slope. it is? Yeah. ⁓ okay. But as far as, yeah, when you're a new guy, you are, especially if you have somebody there to kind of mentor you. Like I was fortunate in the fact that I had people there like, you should, let's focus on this. So you're gonna do PMs, so calibrations and work orders.

that come up monthly safety checks. Get your feet wet, understand how the equipment works, understand what you're looking at, how to isolate. We'll bring you back to the basics and then as you get the basics down, don't forget to close your equalized valve on a flow meter, right, John? Yeah. And so get the basics down and then we'll expand on.

let's go troubleshoot something. Why isn't this working? know, kind of start getting the basics for those skills and then start working on the new installations. In all kind of like pneumatic systems versus I imagine what you deal with now is more almost always digital. I think you would be surprised.

We were still running board mounted AC squared controllers for valve control

like maybe a pressure transmitter out there but level indication you have to go out there and physically look at it how do you get an alarm so it has alarms based off of like the

pneumatic controllers, And then you have level switches. But does that being ran back into like what we had before, like a scan panel or something? So yeah, actually the boardroom has a scan panel.

It'll run through an alarm there and then it will go through back to the PLC and come in so they get it on the Arschada alarm system. Yeah, we've been trying to get a lot of our old controls updated to new PLC controlled systems and get, because a lot of that equipment is...

super obsolete. know, you're fishing on eBay trying to find stuff. So that's what we're dealing with now is trying to get the plant up to the newer standard. And so we're pretty busy doing that.

Which is weird though, because all the new stuff that...

They did put up there, they did. They put the best technology they had available at the time for their new projects. It was, you know, up to date for the new stuff. They just never retrofit the old

And that's another hard dichotomy, Because you want your facility to do well and be awesome and be the best. then to remember that, OK, now this is benefiting us as a company. We need to all be team players. And that was even on the platforms were especially bad. But yeah.

You know, you're like, no, I want that money for my project. You know, that's super important, they're. ⁓ right. So you're having to compete with the capital

when you're asking for capital money, are you getting most of forgetting most? Yeah. Okay. Just someone has to be willing to want to do those types of projects. Yeah. Before you you're flying offshore

Let's say 15 minute helicopter ride to into the Cook Inlet offshore platform. Now you're on the slope. What's the logistics travel time of getting to So, ⁓ so I have to take two flights. Essentially I have to fly to Anchorage. So, ⁓

I'd have to show up a little early for that, you know, maybe if I get to Anchorage by 11, and then hop on an hour and a half flight to the slope from there.

So I have essentially two hours of flight time and two hours of wait time. And then from the airport in Dead Horse, it's about 15 minutes to camp. that's not bad. It's not bad. And then from camp is about a five minute drive. Yeah, that's way more convenient. Yeah. I it was like.

hours. ⁓ no yeah no it's not bad at all. realistically when ⁓ it's so I definitely have more travel time than I did on the platform ⁓ but it's only a couple hours difference from ⁓ you know especially if you got stuck on like the milk run in the inlet right yeah you're flying around for an hour.

and they have an hour drive home. It's only a couple hours. I still get home around eight o'clock at night versus, you know, maybe when I have the afternoon flight on the inlet, I'd get home at six, five or six, somewhere in there. And then you're getting to the slope at three or four or four or five o'clock. And then you go to work the next, that next Yeah, I go to work the next day. ⁓ OK.

that's not horrible, No, it's not bad. Not as bad as I thought it would be. Right. just for context, as far as, know, someone might listen to this episode and wonder, the North Slope is the North Slope of Alaska five hours.

Ish, I guess. Yeah, that's about right. Yeah, coming home, you know, we leave, leave camp around three and then our flight takes off at in between 430 and 445. So then get to Anchorage at six ish and then fly home. So fly home at seven. So yeah, I usually get get home around eight. Right. 830. Yeah.

So how many, how many techs okay. Man, that's quite a few, I think. Yeah. It's not including electricians or? Yeah. So we have electricians and mechanics and GMTs. So general maintenance techs. okay.

I think a lot of the reason, like if we were slow and the only thing that we were doing was preventative maintenance and work orders.

is too many. Right. But we're also doing a lot of projects and upgrades and so we're pretty busy most of the time. Yeah. So we can justify having that many. You're kind of half construction, half maintenance. Yeah. I guess. Exactly. Do they ever ask you to go to like the different stations or? Every once in a while we will go and like help out.

So like there is a...

Just an example, a guy was on PTO at another station and the guy that was on shift got really sick and had to go and they had to do some, to work out at the drill site so they called and asked if we could go and assist. So, and there's instances where we'll go and help out but typically unless you work it out with one of the techs or something for coverage you're not gonna go over there.

And I'm assuming it's more the same as an operator where there is some general work that you can do, but it's also going to take you a lot more time to like understand their process, understand their facility, understand like where all these wires go. Yeah, like that. That definitely takes time and the.

It's, every facility is different, right? You gotta figure out the nuances for every facility that you ever work, because they're never the same, right? And I'm sure you can attest to that. so yeah, you gotta figure out the nuances, how it operates, what the alphabet soup acronyms mean, because everything's different. Yeah. Like what do you think of when you hear IGV?

Air operated gas valve. Yeah, that could be it. You know, my mind always automatically went straight to like inlet guide vein for, for turbines, right? That's like automatic. Well up there it's inlet gate valve.

⁓ really? You know just the little stuff like that you know you got to get on board with is different. So you're saying that just even the that's like a naming convention right? Okay. Yeah we all have to agree on what we're gonna call the thing. Yeah exactly and so one that took me a little while to wrap my head around is

the use of different PLCs. So we typically have controls on one PLC and like alarming or analog on a different PLC. And so like all your shutdowns and everything would be associated with like an ESD PLC. And then the RTU is your analog and alarming panel. Right. So they separated out. So you have to figure out, okay, which PLC am I going to? Yeah.

I say that as far as is you going over there, you may or may not be you might not be as effective as you be. know, I got you. Yeah. So I think it like luckily everything's pretty similar.

the plant is built the same. They have the same modules. have pretty much the same PLCs. So it would be pretty similar. Like you wouldn't struggle as much as you would think.

And like, it's not like going to the different platforms where they were owned by different companies and they had different ideas. And you have no idea. Well, even like when we've had guys come over, same thing, like an electrician or an instrument tech or whoever comes over to the platform, it's like, this is the problem that we're having. They're like, OK, well.

Let me look around a little bit. You know, I got to find out like where these wires go and where, you know, so it's not just like most of these spots, you're not going to plug and play like, we have a mechanic over here. He can backfill at this facility instrument tech. He can backfill at this facility. It's almost like you're being trained or like I said, you're most effective at the place that you're working at. You are. I mean, that that's a fair statement. Yeah. So what is your.

What is your day today look like? Like you're doing a lot of construction now, projects and stuff. I mean, maybe those you can give an idea of like what it looks like when you're doing construction versus like maintenance. Yeah. So, ⁓ we just go to construction. So, ⁓ for example, we, ⁓ or

replacing a PLC, a whole site PLC, right? So we knew we had a plan. We had all the drawings and everything we needed to make.

make the upgrade work, we didn't know where we were landing wires. We had everything pre-tagged. You go out and pre-tag it. Get with the operators, you know you're gonna have an outage, you shut the place down. So you have a plan, you know what you're doing for the day.

You wake up, eat breakfast, and then you head straight out with your permit, get your permit signed off, and then get to work as far as what your goal for the day was, and you try and achieve that. Whereas typical day-to-day maintenance, you may have an idea of what you want to do, be like, I have these two work orders I need to knock out, and there was something over here.

or maybe I was gonna knock out these two work orders and I have some red lines I have to follow up on and get submitted.

and that can all change in 10 minutes. Right? You go to the morning meeting and operations says, hey, I have this issue. You come take a look at it. So now those two will work over in that red line or out the window. And you're off looking at this problem that operations has. You're working 12 hours a day. I'm guessing you're getting up. If you start at five, you're getting up at four o'clock or something. If you start at five morning meeting is. So we have a maintenance meeting.

and then we have operations and maintenance meeting So we start at 530 and operation starts at 6. So we get it in, kind of get settled, kind of figure out what we're gonna do for the day, have our meeting with maintenance crew and our lead and then at 630 is when we do the plant.

morning meeting and that's everybody So how many guys at a morning meeting? So if physically in the room there's probably 20.

if you're doing construction, you're doing the same thing pulling wire, working inside of a cabinet, mean, those types of things. So all depends. Typically, electricians have pulled most of the wire, you we assist, but they'll get it set up, get the panels mounted and then.

we'll come in and do the tie-ins and the calibrations and do the loop checks. that, know, hook calibration equipment up to a transmitter and verify that the signal is making it all the way back to the PLC and then even into SCADA so you can see a value, right? So, hey, I pressured this transmitter up to 50 pounds. Am I seeing 50 pounds on?

that HMI device. So doing our loop checks, verifying red lines, any changes that are made

So you're doing the... Are you doing drawing updates too? ⁓ So no, you don't hand it off to... So we... Somebody to make drawing updates. No. So we do, we just... We do the red lines.

as far as what we changed, then we submit that to our engineers who review it, and then they send it to documentation, and documentation makes the official changes. ⁓ okay. Yeah. So then, so you're going to work...

lunch break second break dinner got first breakfast second breakfast lunch yeah so are you mostly inside outside ⁓ primarily we're inside okay there are times we if we have to go work on a ⁓ like a well house or something we'll be outside

But it's few and far between. Right. And we said those two groups that you work with are kind of, offshore you probably did more SCADA stuff than you do now? Yeah, I was more involved with the logic and SCADA. involved, yeah. But now you kind of, you're doing, it sounds like more...

Let's just call it field work. And then you have, like we described an automation team that's doing SCADA programming. Yeah. Displays. Exactly. Yeah. So we kind of, we will do an MOC, especially we're changing something new and then we will express, you know, okay, this is what we're doing in the field. This is what we want to see represented on SCADA. And that will get passed on to the automation team. And then we are.

We work super close with them as far as communication. they have questions they'll call or we almost talk to automations daily. Yeah. But they are their own department and they work on the logic and the displays. So yeah, I'm less involved now.

It might be a cliche but what do you, what's the most rewarding part of your job and then like other parts that you're...

like gosh they're asking me to do this again ⁓

I guess the most rewarding part of my job is, like after project completion, is like you get a sense of accomplishment with your team. Like, hey, yeah, we did that, you know. We didn't have to hire an outside group to come in and take care of this for us. We had ownership of the project from start to finish.

crushed it, you know, that's that's a good feeling like heck. Yeah and then on the flip side of that the most mundane thing would be Like hey, have to go through this stack of drawings and make sure everything's correct and up to date and it's monotonous

You're sitting there staring at a computer for hours and hours and hours going through and redlining stuff. so that's the less reward. Like it's super, it's a critical part of the job to make sure your drawings are up to date, but it's the least rewarding, you know, the paperwork, the paperwork. Yeah. Yeah.

What personality may be a good fit for this type of job or career? And then I know a lot of guys that say, man, if I would have known about this career, like right out of high school, like I would have just gone into that. like, what kind of personality might fit the job to where you could say like, hey, if that's you, then...

than do get into it So it's, I mean it's definitely a few things, right? Because especially with the rotational work remotely, right? I think the remoteness takes a different type of person. So you have to be willing to...

Essentially abandon your life for half of a year. Right. I mean granted it's broken up into slots, but you have to be willing to Be like I will be gone for a week or two weeks and I won't be able to see my family or I won't You know, I won't be able to be involved in life. I am here. I'm at work. I'm here to work

So that's step one, you have to be willing to do that. And that's hard for a lot of people. It's a hard concept for some people to even understand. And I guess if you're young, it's easier, like before you start a family, because if you get into it when you're young, it's easier to find someone that, I would say, like if you're trying to...

create a life with a partner. Like, hey, this is my life, this is what I do. If you can accept that, then we can make it work, right? So step one, you have to be willing to abandon half your life. Step, like the next personality trait would be, you know, you have to be willing to work with a variety of different people. You have to be a team player.

to be successful, you can't be self-absorbed. You have to be able to work with people from all different walks of life. You have to be a good team player and like, do you need a hand with this? I mean, that makes the team effect so much more inviting and powerful because you do, work with these guys day in, day out.

Close quarters. Close quarters. if you're a sour apple, people will either, you know, start disregarding things you say, even if you have valid points. You know, I've seen it guys that are super smart and have valid points. If they're sour or their delivery is bad, people will just tend to ignore you. So.

I guess be open, be willing to learn, be willing to be a team player, and it can be the greatest opportunity ever.

But like I if you can get into it when you're younger versus older, that I think would be more helpful. As long as you're just willing to like participate and have a good attitude. Yeah, I mean, really. to learn a little bit. That's really all it, I mean, a lot of places are looking for guys that fit in with the group, right? And honestly, some places look for that more than even the work ethic. Yeah. Which...

It's kind of hit and miss. mean, because you want a guy that's going to go work. But that's what you're there for. That's what you're there for. But you also need to be able to get along with everybody and not create tension. Yeah. You know, there are people that want to work in an office versus like out in the field and work with their hands and.

Is that more part of the job or do you feel like it's a good mix? It's a good mix, I would say. I mean, I'm probably more, it's probably more 70-30 field work to office work, you know, in the instrumentation. Right.

So at least the cert particular career path, you know, is, it's more hands on, but you do get your seat time in the office. But there's so many different avenues, right? I mean, there are so many jobs out there where you, if you did want to be an office person that you can still work in the oil and gas field and have an office job. You know, there's,

planners and like work order management system technicians and drafting. yeah, and doing like AutoCAD. So there are opportunities there if that's more style and some of those positions you don't have to work remotely. You can work in town and work at nine to five. Right.

So you go, like to get into this, said you have to go to a school, like be an electrician or go to a school for it, right? For instrument tech? Typically. Yeah. then where do you go from being an instrument tech? Is this kind of like...

the top or can you move, where can you move out of? Like we talked about automation and then we also said that you were a lead operator. So like what are the avenues from being an instrument tech?

I have room for advancement. I could become a maintenance lead, maintenance tech lead. So at that point you're a lead over the maintenance shop. So mechanics, electricians, instrument techs. And then if I had aspirations to go further from there, you could potentially become a facility foreman. okay. So there is a path to...

progress. there's a progression. Yeah, it's not like you can be an instrument tech your whole career, but if you want to go up and do something else, you can do that. Yeah, and there's other avenues too, if you like, we're tired of maintenance, like you said, automation. So there are automation leads also, which

instrumentation, electrical, those guys work really close with which you could potentially, if you had the aptitude and the willingness to learn, you could potentially move into like a automations lead type guy and manage those. There's a...

form an opportunity, we call it fact forming, but that covers a very broad scope. That's automations, that's turbintags, that's overhaul crew, that's, I mean, they have a pretty all-encompassing maintenance role. Right. Yeah, I even think you could almost come back around and do

they might call it.

you know, servers and IT and database management, you know, data capture and all that kind of stuff. You got tired of doing the maintenance stuff. There's plenty of avenues that you could branch into. Because you deal with all of it. At a certain level. At some point, at a certain level, yeah. That's like, like you said, they're looking for a guy to work with them.

put in a little bit of time. If you're in instrument tech and you want to go into the automation side, like there's going to be some effort that's going to be had. Yeah, right. There's going be a learning curve. stuff and server stuff. And yeah, so I could see where you could pivot this. Like you said, if you didn't want to do maintenance field stuff, that would be another option is to go.

into the database side, the IT side. Or another avenue is even, you know, operations. If, yeah, because we work closely with operations all the time, a day in and day out. that we, one of the operators we have right now used to be an instrument tech at the facility. really? So it's another avenue. And then I did essentially the same thing in previous years.

you know, when I worked with you, was working in operations. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes you can be an instrument tech and an operator. Yeah, that makes it a little tricky at times to be good at either. Yeah, it depends what your expectation is, I think. If you're maybe slow enough or something, you might be able to get away from it. But I'm like,

You're constantly pulling that person away from something. And then wondering why he's not getting the other thing done. like... It's hard to juggle. You would... I'm guessing your advice for somebody going into operations would be just do the operations and don't let them...

suck you back into doing instruments. Yeah. You know, like focus on what you want to achieve. Right? Yeah. There've been electricians become leads and even those leads are like, Hey, I traced it down. I think it's this, but then they like, they have the guy who's

the active electrician, like come back in, look it all over, come to his own conclusion and move forward with that, you know? Like you can use those tools as an instrument tech, as an electrician to help the facility and the people, but it's pretty tough to do Yeah, you can't be trying to do the other's job. Yeah, right. You have a job to fulfill.

And you need to be proficient at that. But like you said, you can use those skills to make an assessment and then maybe jump ahead on the troubleshooting or whatever it may be. Like you said, like, Hey, I think it may be this. What do you think? then there's potential that you're, if you're more skilled or even that, you know, just have more time or experience or whatever, could be helping.

someone who's less experienced. Yeah. Maybe doesn't know your facility or your process as well. what do you do really well? are people coming to you for or what are they saying? Like, we'll just wait and have John do that when he comes back. ⁓ I would say projects, a lot of projects. ⁓

wait until I'm on shift because that's what I love doing. What do you like about projects? Just the new? The new, right? Trying to figure out how you're going to make it work because a lot of these smaller projects, you know, we don't have a package for it so you're kind of designing it.

and trying to figure out how it's gonna work, where you're gonna land your wires in the PLC, how that piece of equipment is gonna function. And then you have to talk with operations. How do you guys wanna see this? This is my recommendation. Okay, you want that. Well, here's my recommendation to make that better. Or I think that's more overly complicated than what you really...

want. I think you're asking more than what you need. Or vice versa here, there's a couple more things that could make it better. And then going through with the facility engineer and being like, okay, this is what we're going to do. You sign off of it. Doesn't make sense. And then executing, you know, is always fun. I've always been happier working with my hands than doing computer work. So I just

I personally just thrive in that environment. You like having control over the project like start to finish. Yeah. I don't know what I'm going to get from this question. Who's coming to Thanksgiving and what are you having? Our family is different in the fact that we don't typically do the big holidays. Okay. So.

I nobody is coming to Thanksgiving. All right, we're at home by ourselves. we almost always do the big turkey dinner, mashed potatoes. Yeah, all the things. All the things, all the stuff. And well, so I guess it'd be my wife's side of the family, right? They don't typically celebrate the big holidays. okay. But we'll do a big family dinner.

around the holidays. What do do with your free time? Because I see on social media snow machine videos, snow machine pictures, trips to Hawaii probably. What else are you doing with your free time? So I have entirely too many hobbies. in summers,

I like to take the boat out. I got an ocean boat so I try and use that as much as I can. That's a recent purchase. Yeah within the last few years I've picked that up. ⁓ nice. So I missed the ocean from when I worked as a guide and ended up getting a boat so in summers I try and get out on that as much as I can do a bunch of camping. I like to mountain bike but I don't get to do that as much as I used to. Yeah.

And then winter is primarily dominated by snow machine season. Your boy, is he able to come out with you? Yeah. So we've been getting him out there a little bit.

So he's on his second snow machine now and getting ready to be on his third. Really? So this step he'll actually, I'm hoping to get him out into the mountains more and get him more experience and exposure and stuff. What size snow machine does he have now? So he's got a 400 right now. Yeah. And then I'm looking to pick up like either an 800 or an 850 and then that'll probably be the last one that...

I buy them through high school. can buy the rest of his toys. Six, eight hundred, that'll do. Yeah. Do good. And I'm probably just going to jump over the six hundred step and go straight to it. Eight hundred just because he can use that. Through high school. so he's got pretty much four more winners. Right.

Well, it sounds like your grandpa was kind of like in a certain way like your biggest advocate at kind of more the beginning of your career. Is there been someone else that more of a mentor going from like, let's call it, you know, five years in, you know, out to 15 or? Yeah.

I guess maybe like what does that look like or like how were they a mentor to you those types of things? I definitely had a mentor that kind of that saw more potential in me than I did. Like you know I was kind of there I was trying to learn as much as I could I was trying to make a good hand but I had no real aspirations to

do anything more. And then kind of, in a lull period, I started, I don't know how it happened or why it happened, but I kind of became the guy that people would come talk to about process questions. And I think that was just me going around on slow periods and tracing pipe and asking my own questions and then figuring out how a place worked.

And then people started coming to me and then, you know, my mentors saw that and was like, hey, you know, you should try leadership out and see what you think of that. You know, I think you would be good in that role. And so I did and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the teaching and the camaraderie of that.

And I learned some hard lessons. know, the first couple years were kind of rough. I wasn't perfect by any means. was, you know, have to do all the work right now immediately. know, breaks are overrated. And then it took me a couple of years to be like, okay, you know, let's back off a little bit. You don't have to work every second of every day on everything. You know, so I definitely learned some hard lessons, but.

I would like to get back into a more leadership role and stuff. So that was kind of the direction my mentor pushed me into. First year or two, right? You're trying to prove that you deserve that position. everybody else gets to pay for that. Well, and there's stress from your supervisor.

to get stuff done. So now you're trying to do it and motivate your guys and like figure out where that work fits and everything and yeah. And yeah there's there's a ⁓ the pretty big difference between still being able to accomplish a lot of work and still letting your guys have some downtime right like

You figure out your priorities. What is important? Is there a piece of equipment down? Yeah, let's go get it back running. Let's do what we can to fix it and get it going again. Are we just doing work orders today? Okay, if you want to sit and chit chat for 20 minutes with a coworker, okay, big deal. Pick your battles. Figure out what's important.

figure out your priorities. That's a big learning curve. that's a good tip. You know, this is an oil and gas podcast. What do you like about oil and gas? what's your view on the industry? some positives and negatives about... So positive, know, oil and gas has a bad rap.

being dirty and environmentally hazardous and constantly spilling oil, constantly having gas releases, this and that. And it's true, when there are catastrophes, they're bad, right? But I think that what people don't understand is the amount of effort.

that gets put into ensuring those things don't happen. Like, we're not hired trying to spill oil, right? We're doing everything that we can to make sure it stays in the pipe, whether it's getting all our pipes inspected on a regular basis and making sure that when we're working on land, we have containment when we're breaking flanges. And there's a lot of effort that goes into making it as clean of a process as we can.

And I don't think a lot of people understand that. And then another positive, know, the camaraderie of crews working together. mean, that's such a dynamic. hear horror stories about people working in offices that, you know, they're going around stabbing each other in the back. It's just a toxic work environment. I've only experienced that.

once really in in my career where it was kind of like that where it was a pretty negative place to work but other than that it it's been enjoyable as far as some other industries go it's actually safer in a lot of regards than yeah i don't i don't have anything else unless there's something you wanted to ask i appreciate you appreciate you coming on and being on the podcast and all that

So thanks for the invite. Like somebody's been texting you for two and a half.