Chapter 2

I gave the problem with Missy a little thought over the next couple of hours. Then I suddenly had a brainstorm. Obviously, Gene didn't want to have to deal with the problems of having a female engineer on a job site. I didn't agree with him, but I could see his point.

I did, however, have an alternative staring me in the face. Jim Shear had told me that he was two people short, in R&D. I decided to give him a call.

After we had exchanged greetings I asked, "Jim, how would you like to have a young electrical engineer, who finished third in their class at MIT? This person has no engineering experience as yet; but is bright, and is willing to learn."

"That sounds ideal, Ed. How do I get this guy, and how do I manage to get him hired?"

"Well, first off it isn't a guy. It's a girl. Do you know Missy Gerard?"

"Yeah, I know Missy. She has an engineering degree?"

"Yep. She tried to get into controls engineering, but Gene is concerned about having a woman on a job site. You wouldn't have that problem."

"No, I wouldn't have that problem. Are you saying I have to take her, or do I get to interview her?"

"I am not telling you that you have to take her. I definitely want you to interview her. I really know nothing about her, except that she has a degree from MIT, and that she finished with a great class standing. I'm giving you an opportunity. What you do with it, is up to you."

"Great! I'll get in touch with her boss and see when I can set up an interview."

"Actually, you're talking to her boss, right now. She was assigned to me as a temporary secretary. I'll have her give you a call."

"Okay. Tell her we can do it this afternoon, if she'd like."

We said our goodbyes, and I called Missy in.

"Missy, I was wondering if you'd be interested in interviewing for an engineering job... in R&D?" I asked when she came in.

"I think I'd like that very much," she said.

"Okay, give Jim Shear a call. He says he's free this afternoon."

"Uh, thank you, Ed."

"You're very welcome, Missy. I don't want to see you waste your talents working as a secretary, when we are short of engineers."

I gave Phil James a call and told him about our problem with purchasing.

"Ed, this is news to me," Phil said. "Al Jackson is in charge of Purchasing. You should probably talk to him about this."

"That's fine, Phil. I just didn't want to step on your toes by talking to one of your people without your knowledge."

"Go ahead and talk to him. I'd appreciate you letting me know what you work out."

"Not a problem, Phil. Thanks."

Al Jackson was a problem though. He seemed to take an adversarial position from the moment I told him who I was.

"I went over all of this with Pete Welsh, Mr. Delany," he told me. "I don't want to have to cover the same ground every time there's a change of personnel in engineering."

"Consider this a major change. Pete is no longer here. All of my managers are complaining about the substitutions that are being made, and I need to know what can be done about them."

"I have two people who make electrical purchases, and three who make mechanical purchases. There are many factors that go into the decision as to which part to buy. My purchasing people have to consider all of these, not just the preference of the engineer who specifies the part."

"These aren't just preferences the engineer is stating. The engineer is saying 'buy this specific part, and nothing else'. If the part isn't available, then the purchasing agent should call the engineer, and ask for a suitable substitute."

"My people are quite capable of making these decisions themselves, Mr. Delany. Look, I know you're a new guy. I know you're anxious to show everyone who is boss. But I don't work for you, so it isn't going to work on me. If you have a problem, take it up with my boss."

Then the bastard hung up. Well fuck him. I started to call Phil back and fill him in, but I decided I needed to cool down first. My stomach rumbled, and when I looked at my watch I saw that it was time for lunch, so I figured a good meal might put me in a better mood.

I had gotten my lunch and was just starting to eat, when Gene Reynolds came over and joined me.

"Hi, Gene. How's it going?" I asked.

"Some good, some bad," he said. "I have one project that is driving me nuts. It's two weeks behind schedule, with only six weeks before it is scheduled to be turned over. There's a penalty clause for every day it's late."

"What seems to be the problem? Was mechanical late in turning it over to you?"

"No, mechanical was right on time. Oh, they had a few things they had to fix after we got started, but for the most part, it was fine and they didn't delay us any."

"Then, what caused the delay?"

"There are a couple of things. First off, all of the programs were written for AB controllers. What we received were Nitschke controllers. After a lot of argument, purchasing finally ordered AB controllers for us, but that threw us a week late in getting the cabinets built."

"I'm working on getting that problem taken care of, right now. What else went wrong?"

"Well... It seems like our Project Engineer and out Project Manager have some conflicts. From what I've been told and what I've seen first hand, whenever the PM tells the PE he wants something done a certain way, the PE calls me and bitches about it. Then, I have to get involved and find out what is going on. I listen to both sides, and then see if I can work it out between them. Then the PE will do something on a different part of the installation, and the PM will be on the phone to me saying the PE has overstepped his bounds. I have to get involved again. All in all, this bickering back and forth is putting us farther behind every day."

"Where's the job site located?"

"It's in Atlanta."

"Are the PM and the PE both on site now?"

"Actually, neither one of them are. The PM is Jason Baldwin. He's in Pittsburgh on a different job. The PE is Sly Westover. He had to come home on personal business."

"I want both of them in my office at 8:00 AM, tomorrow. No excuses."

"I'll try, but it may be hard to get the PM here by that time."

"Tell the son-of-a-bitch to get in his car and drive all night if he can't get a flight. As I said, I don't want any excuses."

"Now, what is Sly Westover's personal business?"

"I don't know."

"Gene. I hate to say this, but that is a screw-up on your part. Westover should be on the job site. Nothing short of a death or a family member in the hospital should bring him home at a time like this. After tomorrow morning, I want him on the job site 24/7 until the job is finished."

"Okay, Ed."

"How much of a penalty is there on this job?"

"It's $10,000 a day for every day it's late."

"So, right now, we're looking at $140,000 worth of penalties. That sucks, Gene. I want overtime authorized for the installation crew, immediately. When our PM and PE get back to the site tomorrow, I want them on the site, seven days a week."

"Okay."

Okay, so my quiet lunch had been spoiled. I decided to call Phil as soon as I got back to my office.

"I wondered when you'd call," Phil said when I had gotten him on the line. "Al Jackson said you'd talked to him."

"Well, Phil," I said. "I did talk to Al and he told me he wasn't about to change his policies. He told me if I had a problem with purchasing, I should talk to you."

"Al was a little hot under the collar when he talked to me. He said you demanded that they purchase what the engineers specified."

"I guess I did say that, but I really didn't demand it. I told him that if something an engineer specified wasn't available, his purchasing agent should call the engineer and discuss with him what an appropriate substitute would be."

"I don't really see what the problem is. If the purchasing agent checks over all of the specifications and the two parts are identical, what is the problem?"

"Well, I have one project that is seven days behind schedule right now because something was purchased other than what was specified. There is a $10,000 a day penalty for every day we finish behind schedule. The engineer specified AB controllers. Hundreds of hours of software were written for the controllers. When the controllers came in, they were Nitschke controllers. We could either rewrite the software, or get the controllers that were specified. When the proper controllers finally came in, we were a week late getting the cabinets built."

"So, you're saying that purchasing has cost the company $70,000 by getting the wrong controllers."

"Unless we can make up some of the time on something else, then yes. I've also run into things at the company I worked for before. We found that two photo-cells from two different companies had identical specifications. However, the cells from one company would give false trips, if the wiring for it was run in the same trough as the motor wiring. A purchasing agent wouldn't know this, but an engineer would."