Lee Clinton, Installation and Commissioning Manager
Lee has been with us for a long time now - he started as an apprentice in 1990 and since then his career has been varied. He's worked as a Hardware Development Engineer in Mobile Services on the rabbit phone; on Installation Design for the Royal Netherlands Airforce; on the London-Tilbury-Southend re-signalling; and on installation and design, then commissioning, and finally maintenance on Midlands Metro and West Coast Mainline. He was promoted to Installation & Commissioning Manager in 2002 and now works on an even larger variety of ops communications projects. He provides resource to various rail projects, as well as maintenance, technical support and assistance to both design and field staff. Here Lee tells us about recent surveying activity that took him to Cumbria for 3 days.
Day 1: 07.00
Wednesday morning I travel into Coventry to do what I call my ‘day job'. This involves getting guys out the door, answering technical queries, signing expenses and so on. I then meet with Tim Jones, one of our Design Engineers, to discuss our work over the next few days surveying the telecoms network to support a power supply upgrade on the Midlands Metro and West Coast Mainline.
Tim secures all the documentation we're going to need for the next couple of days and together we travel up to the Carlisle power signal box for 13.00. Here we meet with local Network Rail telecoms maintenance engineers. We have a cup of tea and a bit of a chat to catch up on what has been happening since we last met. I know these guys – they're good guys and have been a big help in past as they know the area well. We also phone the Lancashire & Cumbria area Telecom Maintenance Engineer to keep him updated of the plan and what we'll be doing in next couple of days.
We run down the survey checklist for the installation of FTN (fixed transmission network) to support SCADA links for the West Coast Mainline power supply upgrade. Then the work begins: we check for an identifying floor plan; locate position of the FTN core node and fibre joints; confirm the route from joints to telecoms equipment; make sure there is room for laying of new cable; identify any possessions required; get the grid reference for FTN; undertake an FTN environment study survey; mark up the FTN straight line drawing showing the location of new transmission equipment and cable; locate the existing AC supply; and locate the building earth.
I then take a call from the General Manager, and we spend around an hour discussing circuit migration. Finally, around 18.00 Tim and I find a Travel Inn where we enjoy dinner and a beer.
Day 2: 07.00
We're up bright and early next day for breakfast and on the road for 7.30 to a feeder station substation at Harket to visit a previously completed job. Tim is new to telent and so I've taken him to Harket to give him a flavour for our work. Then we make our way to Penrith and conduct the same series of surveys we did at Carlisle the previous day.
By around 11.00 we're done and we travel to the Eden Valley relay room undertake the same series of surveys at Eden Valley, Harrison sidings. We have to negotiate with the quarry manager to get proper access rights – without this access to the site will be very difficult and change the way we have to deliver the work. In addition, the UTX has been identified in a confined space so we need to find the right people with the right skills to do this job.
Next we head over to the Shap relay room where we both get soaked in a freezing hail storm. In fact, for the whole day the weather is bleak out on track with horizontal rain, sleet, slow and gale force winds.
We finish at 18.00 and look for another hotel. I phone ‘telent Northern HQ', which is what our team call Tebay services as we've all stayed there quite a bit at some time or another.
Day 3: 07.15
We breakfast and then leave the hotel at 07.45. It's a short trip to the Tebay relay room. It's our last stop, and we complete the same survey as on the previous two days. We leave at 11.00 and we're back in Coventry for 14.00.
Back in the office I update the weekly resource roster, which tells all our Engineers and Project Managers, which shift pattern and projects all the team are on. It's a really important piece of work and one that I do religiously each week. I then join a bid meeting to give information on pricing for installation testing and commission effort, which keep me busy for the rest of the afternoon. After that I travel into Coventry city centre to meet up with the team involved with delivering the Leamington resignalling. They're enjoying a free night out as a ‘Thank you' for all the hard work they've put in. It's a good night out but I'm still up bright and early the next day and back in Coventry.
