Staycation heroes
GEnx-1B engines. “Yeah, it’s a pretty good platform for young engineers,” he says.Staycation Pan is permanently attached to his mobile and his laptop because he says, “Our job is unofficially 24/7 on standby. No matter whether we’re on vacation or not. Whenever Jetstar has an issue, if they can’t get a result quickly, or they want some advice or recommendations from me or GE they can call me on my mobile straight away. During the Christmas holiday period, through until early Feb, utilisation of aircraft is two to three times the normal utilisation—they basically fly the aircraft nonstop, so there’s more chance of experiencing issues. Most flights are international, crossing time zones, so it’s important that I’m available around the clock,” he says.
Play stations “I really love being out in nature, where I can let myself unwind. Last year I went to Darwin. I went scuba diving and snorkelling and walking in the National Parks.”
2016 Motivation “I like helping out with difficult situations, helping the Jetstar team to negotiate challenges. It might involve some sacrifices, but when I see the aircraft flying without any problems and everybody’s happy, it gives me a lot of satisfaction,” says Pan who cites the past three months of Jetstar on-time-performance—99.1% to 99.2% of flights on schedule—as evidence that he and the GE team are in synch with Jetstar’s aims.
robots for industrial processes, such as spraying engine components with thermal barrier coating, is safer and more efficient than doing them manually. The coating is sprayed as a stream of plasma which can get up to 16,000oC. I’m programming the robot to reach all surfaces of complex shapes.”Staycation The Offline Programming Team consists of three people. With other team members on leave in January, it’s important that Keye stays on deck to keep the project on schedule. The robot application she’s working on was initiated to allow GE’s turbomachinery operations in Algeria to carry out the spraying of parts in house, rather than having to outsource the work—an urgent requirement.
Play stations Keye is an avid traveller. Last year she holidayed in Tokyo and on the ski slopes of Japan, and later this year she’s planning to visit her sister who works in Denmark.
2016 Motivation “I have projects in mind for the workshop here. I’m most excited about using handheld laser scanners on engine components that come in for repair. Rather than measuring them, using a scanner would quickly tell us where the part is deformed and out of tolerance, allowing us to speed up the repair process. Repaired parts could also be scanned so we could tell, in a virtual environment, whether they will fit back into position, or need slight adjustments—before we go to the trouble of refitting them. It would save time in the workshop, and eliminate damage to parts and machinery during refitting.”
F/A-18 Super Hornet, and the GE CF6-80E1 engines that power the KC-30 Multi-Role Tanker Transport—aerial refuelling aircraft. For aircraft experiencing difficulties in combat zones such as the Middle East, Naumann says, “I guide the technicians over there, offer additional information as needed and suggest things to look for specifically. If I can’t help directly, I can refer to a great team of engineers at the GE Lynn in Boston.”Staycation “When not deployed overseas, Defence practically closes down for a few weeks over Christmas and we all get a bit of a break, but that hasn’t happened for a few years,” says Naumann. “They’re conducting round-the-clock operations in the Middle East, so I answer the phone when it rings, answer emails, and go in to use the Defence computer on basewhen necessary.” Because much of the information about RAAF operations is classified, Naumann has to communicate on the Defence Force’s secure systems—so even beyond the holiday period he tends not to go much further than an hour’s drive from Amberley, and certainly nowhere out of mobile-phone range.
Play stations Naumann likes to get away from the city—a farmstay on the Scenic Rim of mountains behind Brisbane, for example. He takes short breaks of two or three days. “I really do struggle to take my holiday allocation,” he says ruefully.
2016 Motivation “We’ve got 12 new aircraft coming—a variant of the Super Hornets, called Growlers. They’ve got a heap of electronic jamming pods on them, to disrupt other militaries’ radar and communications systems. It’s a capability we’ve never had before. They’re pretty exciting.”
Jo Harper, service delivery manager, Northern, GE Healthcare
The ‘Northern’, in Harper’s title doesn’t give enough of a clue to the region in which she handles customer liaison and problem solving for GE’s installed base of healthcare machines. Her clients range from single-doctor radiology practices to Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, and across remote and regional Queensland, through the Northern Territory and up into Papua New Guinea. Harper works with a team of 11 engineers who specialise in medical machinery, co-ordinating their efforts to keep healthcare delivering—24/7.
Staycation “I’ve been doing this job for a while,” says Harper, who’s coming up for 20 years with GE. She used to cover all of Queensland and northern New South Wales. “I’m quite lucky now that there’re two of us, Narelle Lahiff and I, so we alternate covering the holiday times. I’m on this year. Though technically we’re always on, because if one of us can’t take a call for some reason it will escalate to the other. I have worked over Christmas for many, many years, so it’s quite a luxury when I do have the time off; sometimes it feels like ‘Something’s missing.’”
Play stations “When I go on holidays, it’s usually to the beach or somewhere around water. That’s what I like to do. Cocktails, swim-up bars—they’re nice!”
2016 Motivation “I’m looking forward to starting the year with the team feeling refreshed. We had a very, very challenging second half of 2015. Our CT and molecular-imaging teams had so many installs, it was exhausting. Now they’ll be starting afresh with a lot of new toys to play with! Personally, I love dealing with different challenges and personalities among my customers.”
