MY MENTOR SAVED MY JOB AND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

CONTRIBUTING RE.ENGINEER

Shadrach Stephens

CHALLENGE

My first electrical project was to reconfigure a substation so that we could free up some manufacturing space on the plant floor and also add some additional electrical capacity.

I carefully took my cable length measurements, actually 2-3 times and even built in a 10% safety factor.

I proudly shared the design with my mentoring electrician and the first thing he said to me was “make sure that you have a 15 to 20% factor for the unknowns”. Back then, I was a hard headed, young buck engineer. I thought to myself, “why would I waste so much money on this extra factoring”?

But, my conscience wouldn’t let me be great! I decided to go with 15% extra.