IEM Jurutera Nov 2008 – Interesting Articles

December 4, 2008

The bulletin of the IEM for the month of Nov, 2008 was themed Chemicals and Petrochemicals.

Articles which might be of interest to the oil and gas industry are:

  • Issues on Natural Gas Distribution in Malaysia
  • IEM Kerteh Chapter Activities April-July 2008.

Okay, it’s only 2 articles, but the other articles are on petrochem topics. And the front cover shows two semisubs (okay, I’ve been on a fetish for the past couple of weeks).

Pirahnas Encaged

Pirahnas Encaged

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Posted by Wata

IEM Shout Out – Talk on Asset Integrity Management Setup

November 28, 2008

This is a late shout out for the IEM. My technical division will be having a talk tomorrow entitled ‘Setting Up of an Asset Integrity Management System for Offshore Oil & Gas Platforms’. It’ll be at 9:30 am (breakfast at 9:00) at the IEM Conference Hall, Bangunan Ingenieur, PJ.

The talk will be given by Mr. Praba Karunakaran, IICOR Asia. He is a Chartered Engineer with over 8 years of international work experience in the field of Oil and Gas Facilities Integrity Management. He attained Engineering Masters and Degree qualifications from UK (Scottish) Universities. He is familiar with Integrity Management Systems applicable to onshore and subsea pipeline, topside and subsea structure, remote subsea equipment, pressure relieving devices, topside static mechanical equipment and piping, lifting and safety equipment.

Please come, I’m sure it’ll be interesting.

A copy of the flier is available here.

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IEM ad supporting Malaysia Brain Drain?

October 7, 2008

Talk about ironic. I find this one page glossy card-stock ad in my August addition of Jurutera (I know, it takes me a while to get through my stack of papers).

Ad - Engineers Move to Australia

Ad - Engineers Move to Australia

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Registration with the BEM

September 26, 2008

People have asked me about how the Board of Engineers, Malaysia (BEM) registration categories for Professional Engineers clashes with their work experience. Questions have come to me either when I’m presenting on the topic, during IEM meetings, and over the ‘Net.

For those not in the know, it’s a legal requirement to register with the Board within 6 months of starting work. There’s a form you fill up. You have to state that you want to be registered in the same field you graduated in.

Now, what happens when your work experience does not match your degree? Or you want to be apply to be professionally registered in a speciality of your discipline. Here are my thoughts:

  • You have to work with the system. If you have clout to change the system, please do so. Don’t forget the paperwork and procedures the BEM has to establish to determine whether the PE speciality is correct, which will also be applied to those applying for the traditional categories. And compare this with other systems. The IChemE only gives Corporate Membership, it doesn’t allow you to pick a specific category.
  • Do you really care what category you are registered under? The only place I’ve seen this crop up is when I have to endorse tech documents, and how many of us do that? Engineering houses would require PEs working in their own disciplines, but they would make sure their staff had the right disc. EMEPMI wouldn’t care what your PE qualifications are, or even if you were a PE.
  • For those who say that their current work has nothing to do with their BEM registration category, I say: are you sure? The classical disciplines have more leeway than you think. Material selection can be ChemE, turbine maintenance can be AeroEng, corrosion inhibitor selection can be MechE. Wrap project management around all this, and you have enough tech content to take the Professional Interview.

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Mentoring – How do you do it?

September 21, 2008

How do you mentor another engineer? As an example, the IEM has a mentoring scheme thats based around a logbook. The mentor meets up with the mentee at least once every 3 months, and reviews what the mentee has done. The mentor is meant to provide guidance as to whether the work done allows the engineer to develop.

When I go through a report, what I look for is:

  • Breadth of experience (I use the IChemE‘s report structure for this). The mentee should be exposed such as to develop her all her skills. This would mean the opportunity to explore as much as possible all engineering topics. Project management, safety, design, operations are just some of these.
  • Appreciation of engineering as a whole. A young engineer might think that running Hysys is cool, but you want them to understand why they are doing what they are doing. You don’t want to have only an technical software pilot, you do want an analysis as well. The tool is a means, not a ways.
  • Presentation of report. Engineers need to present their products. So clear writing skills and an proper flow is important. Highlighting important items and findings, and focusing on the deliverable would be something I would want to see.
  • General well-being. Is the mentee happy, is she getting enough support, is the mentor someone she wants to throw a brick at… you get the drift. The mentor should decide whether it is something she can help with, or the mentee should be able to deal with it herself with some tips of the trade.
  • Opportunity to influence exposure. You as a mentor should have enough clout to get  your mentee into projects or activities that help broaden their horizons.
  • Inspiration. It does help if you can get your mentee excited about work. Explain why they are doing the work that they do (need to build up experience, enhancing skills, exposure to client/site/software tools)

And you can do this more than once every three months, depending on the requirements. Engineers do get up and down days, you know.

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IEM – Future Online Plans

June 21, 2008

I received this email back from the IEM:

“Dear Engr. Razmahwata,

Thank you for your email of April 2 regarding the above and my apologies for the belated reply. IEM will be setting up its own blog site in the near future and any issues that may concern the Institution and the engineering fraternity can then be posted and discussed there. We appreciate your interest and support given to the institution.

Best rgds,

KM Cheang,

Executive Director”

 

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IEM OGMTD Talk – Reservoir Fluids

May 17, 2008

On Saturday, 10th May 2008, I attended a morning tea talk arranged by the Oil, Gas and Mining Technical Division of the IEM, of which I am the SecTreas. The talk was entitled ‘Overview of Drilling and Completion Fluids’. The speaker was Engr. Anwarudin Saidu Mohamed, currently a Coordinator for South East Asia Region with Drilling Fluids, a division of Baker Hughes Inc.

My colleague, Hui Hin, wrote up a summary of the talk. Visit her site to read her write-up.

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Professional Engineer – CE Update

May 11, 2008

I was in Port Dickson on the 21st to 23rd March 2008, contributing to a workshop to prepare a question bank for the Competency Exam, CE (I know, this was a while ago, I just found my notes).

The proposal is that all engineers applying to sit for the Professional Assessment Examination (PAE) after April 1st, 2008 with have to take the CE. It is targeted to have the first CE in June 2008, with at least three sittings per year.

The current outline of the paper is that it will split into 2 parts, a 3 hour general paper and a 3 hour paper related to the candidate’s engineering branch.

The general paper will cover The Engineers Act and Regulations, OSHA and Environment Quality Act (EQA). The branch paper will cover Uniform Building By-Laws (UBBL), and codes and standards pertaining to the engineering branch.

  • The general paper will consist of 2 sections. Section A will be 30 true/false answers, while for section B, the candidate has to answer 15 out of 20 subjective questions.
  • The branch paper will present 30 questions, out of which 20 need to be answered.

Note: I do not take responsibility if any of the above is altered. Ask your friendly IEM rep.

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49th Annual IEM Dinner – Recording of Speeches

May 1, 2008

I have the honour of attending the above dinner, held at the Subang Sheraton on 19th April, 2008. I recorded the following two speeches:

 

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IEM presentation write-up

April 26, 2008

On Thursday, 24th April 2008, there was a small delegation from my company who went and attended the afternoon tea talk arranged by the Oil, Gas and Mining Technical Division of the IEM, of which I am the SecTreas. The talk was entitled ‘Talk on Upsteam Activities in Oil and Gas Industry.’ The speaker was En. Meor Shahrin Mahmood, currently Manager of Domestic, South-East Asia and Australasia regions, Basin Analysis & New Ventures Department, Exploration Division, PETRONAS Carigali Sdn. Bhd (PCSB), what a mouthful.

My colleague, Hui Hin, wrote up a summary of the talk. Visit her site to read the presentation notes.

4 Comments | engineering, Malaysia, oil and gas | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
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