David's Blog

Before starting his life as a Mechanical Engineering student, David Burnett contacted us at Red Spider to see if there was an opportunity for some work experience.  With his spidery attitude and us always wanting to support the engineering stars of the future, David started at Red Spider in February and here is a diary with some of the stories about what he has been up to.

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Introduction

I started with Red Spider in February, with the intention of gaining some work experience in an oil company.  This would be beneficial to me as I would be starting to study Mechanical Engineering in September.  This is my story of my time at Red Spider.

The First Week

On the first week I was given the induction to the workshop.  I was told about basic safety and an outline of the jobs I would be doing.  In the mornings I would empty all the bins, top up the red bins with clean rags, fill the panel wipe dispensers and sweep the floor.  If there were any oily patches on the floor I would clean them up with the mop.  

I got an induction to the stores as well, I was shown the basic principles of the Probity stock management system, and an outline of what Neil’s job was. He showed me how to add items to the stock, navigate between “availability”, “part of” and “engineering drawings”.  At first I was completely confused about the whole set up, as the days have gone on I am starting to get a better understanding of the program. 

Tool Washing

Often tools would be disassembled and would need to be cleaned, so it was my job to clean the parts in the parts washer.  Sometimes the parts would then go on to be cleaned with some panel wipe. 

The Dark Alley

The floors in the dark alley, test area and Bench 1 needed to be re-painted.  This had to be done between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning to minimise disruption.  This was a fine change and an enjoyable task.

Boxing

When new freight boxes came in they had to be stenciled using spray paint and then varnished.  In some occasions if the box had been ordered for a tool, I would arrange the blocks, secure the tool, strap the box using the white tape and then prepare the labels.  The labels were laminated and then stapled to the front and top of the box.  The first half dozen boxes didn’t stencil very well as I got slightly carried away with the spray paint, instead of Red Spider it looked more like blobspider, this created great amusement around the workshop.  I normally don’t mind stenciling/painting the boxes, sometimes if there is a big order they did start to get a bit tedious.  All in all it was quite a good job to do.

Clear Oot !

The storage space above the office and Red Room was cleared out by Neil and myself.  The majority of the stuff was thrown out, but there were a lot of sales brochures, accounts folders and engineering books.  This space stayed clear for about two weeks then it was back to being full.

The slings, scales, lifting eyes and shackles were all stored on the same rack, so I designed a rack that would just hold the shackles and lifting eyes.  I did this on Visio and then sent it to a fabricator.  This was one of my first designing projects and I enjoyed it as I was left responsible for the sizes and basic design.

Quality Craftsmanship

The workshop had a lot of drawings of different tools, one day Robbie and I went through the drawings and picked the out of date drawings.  These drawings were then shredded.  I then designed and constructed a rack for all the drawings.  The rack started off being a mega structure (approx 200 drawings) but after Rev 6……ish, it was reduced to hold 60 drawings.  The rack received a lot of stick for the time it was taking to be built, but quality takes time and shall live on with the company for many years to come!!!

The Quiet Times

At times the workshop became quiet as there was a lot of people offshore and on holiday.  During this time I got involved with the building of tools, the tool I mainly got involved with was building a Water Injection Valve.  I helped Graham do work on setting up the tubing mounted punch test,  this involved drilling holes into the pipe, tapping the holes and attaching the control line.  I also helped Geoff with the Selective Lock no go test.  This involved building the scaffolding and jarring the tool.

Show Piece

In Norway there was going to be an eRED demonstration at a show.  I was left to assemble all the fittings and control line.  I had to have it set in a certain way so that the stand could be built in a short time without being too complicated.  I designed the freight box that was used for the demo. I really enjoyed this task as I was virtually left to myself to complete the stand.

The box used in the demo was designed using Visio.  I used this package quite a lot and found it wasn’t very good but got used to it eventually. 

Archiving

All the older GRN, goods in/out folders were archived.  This involved picking out the staples and then vacuum-packing them.  This gave a compact, water resistant way of storing them.  I also started to archive the test evaluation folders.  It wasn’t the most exciting job but I was happy to be kept busy.

De-stitching

There were some boiler suits that had names of previous employees, so I picked out the name stitching so that if anybody that had to borrow a boiler suit it didn’t have someone else’s name.  This job was again quite tedious but it kept me busy as it was quiet in the workshop. 

Bacon Roll

If there is something to celebrate Steve would tell me it’s a “Bacon Roll Day.”  I would go around all the staff and get their orders, then phone it in to the local bakery which I would then collect later on.  I enjoyed doing the bacon roll run as I would get to have a news of everyone.

Plumbing

Stevie was doing an immersion test which required ventilation.  Drainage pipe was used to carry the flammable fumes away from the test bunker.  The route taken was not direct so a lot of joints were used.  This was a good job but got quite frustrating at times as there was difficulty when connecting joints.