Accomplishments

While my career path through Fairbanks, Alaska may not be typical, my achievements were full of excitement and new adventures. Accomplishments are hard fought in an environment that ranges from 85 to -55F. In the summer, sunset blends into sunrise shortly after midnight, with hardly a star to be seen. In the winter, one may see the northern lights while driving to work ... or while driving home (but watch out for moose in the road!). It is with such special experiences that I take added pride in the successes below.

Proud to have been a small part of a very talented group of engineers, technicians, and craftspeople that got the Fort Knox Mine constructed and operational. The start-up of the mine was one of the smoothest seen by the experienced personnel despite being done during the winter.

Part of a team of 240 FGMI employees that broke all production estimates in the first year of operation. The mine quickly became the biggest gold mine in the world (by tons milled--40,000 tons/day).

A member of an Electrical/Instrumentation team that rebuilt all electrical systems aboard a briefly sunken barge pump station. The sunken barge (8,000 gpm design with four 350 Hp motors) had brought a complete halt to all processing at the $350,000/day producing gold mine. Damaged electrical equipment included a charred 4160V motor starter (hot when it became submerged), the water damaged neighboring motor buckets, and water damaged PLC racks, telemetry systems, vibration monitoring instrumentation, etc. The barge was refloated, reconditioned, and rebuilt in five days. Experienced mine personnel considered that feat world class.

Became relied upon to identify, plan, and complete numerous changes to the Foxboro DCS/Allen-Bradley PLC control system. Had never even seen a PLC prior to working at the mine but quickly became very proficient with them. Along with numerous changes to and creations of standard start-stop logic, gained experience with logic relating to radio telemetry, DH+ networking, and DeviceNet and Modbus communication. My work resulted in suggesting and then being trusted to plan and perform the bulk of work in installing and configuring a sixth workhorse PLC-5. For more info on my work with PLC's, please see my Examples of PLC Logic.

Essentially self-taught on the Foxboro DCS and became quite proficient on it. Created numerous main screens, overviews, interlock and motor start-stop overlays, and other display graphics. Created countless Foxboro control blocks for communication and control as well.