"Critical enough???"

It has been around 2 hour and 50 minutes since I have swiped in my office and staring at the white glowing computer screen in front of me. It shows Outlook mail inbox and a word document related to some heavy test scripts that I am assigned with for my next project that is going to start at new place. The cursor hasn’t moved much during this time except a bit of scrolling to avoid hibernation of desktop screen.

It has been two long years that I have spent my life in an IT industry and today somehow it just came to my mind how different was my life at Chambal, a typical manufacturing company. Yesterday my PM (Project Manager, your sole point of contact for promotions, demotions, queries, scams, slaps, regrets etc) explained me about the criticality of the document related to test scripts that I should read before starting a new beginning. “Criticality”…and that moment reminded me of my notion of criticality in real sense.

I was working with Chambal Fertilizers (CFCL) in Ammonia manufacturing plant and one fine day, during the plant start-up operation, we were instructed to fire a huge burner (it’s not as simple as igniting a household gas burner. This burner is as tall as 4 storeys building and is ignited with natural gas) that would heat the production gas to a temp of about 700 degree Celsius (if I remember correctly). One of my superior was standing on the ground floor (of the burner), clearing out the pipe inlet with the natural gas that will be ignited to form a flame. I was standing on the first floor and peeping into the peep holes that were meant to inspect the burner room from inside. My job was to watch out if any of those burners gets ignited with a flame so that our job was done peacefully. My manager and senior manager were standing at the ground floor carefully watching my actions (may be for next appraisal..!!!) and all of sudden called me to have a quick chat. I climbed down quickly and he told me one story about this burner. Last year 4 people had lost their lives during the same process of igniting a burner…!!! The peep hole through which I was watching the flame inside could have actually ripped me apart if flame would have started. My curvaceous smile turned into inverted smiley and my plain forehead turned into ripples…Critical enough???

One fine evening as I was strolling in Ammonia liquid storage area (in this area, the liquid-gas ammonia is stored in a gigantic cylindrical tanks. I would be over estimating myself if I could recall the capacity of each..!!), and had a little chat with the supervisor present over there. This area was isolated from the main operating plant and was guarded with a gun man and an operator. Casually I asked the operator that why do we need a person dedicated to look after this pair of tanks where hardly someone could think of passing by. He gave me suspicious smile and told me that a pin-hole leak in any of the tanks could release the ammonia gas in the atmosphere and can gradually suffocate the surrounding 3-4 villages to death..!!! The guard had to protect these tanks from being the target of sabotage… Critical enough???

It was late in the night sometime around 2-3 AM when all of us, the shift engineers, couldn’t resist a fast nap from the schedule. It was a fateful day when I was staring at the control panel when calamity struck us and caused the failure of big, important equipment. It was a gas heating chamber and the lid at the top was leaking. It took around 24 hours to shut the whole plant operations to avoid the lid to get dissembled from the chamber. If we hadn’t taken the set of actions at 2-3 AM in the late night, the lid would have detached from the chamber coupled with huge gas explosion that could take many precious lives with it… Critical enough???

I still remember many such incidents during my working days at CFCL that make me think about the real sense of criticality that we IT ‘professionals’ are normally worried about. We guys are tensed about knowledge criticality where we fear being laid back due to lack of required knowledge. But is it more dangerous or harmful than the criticality of loosing someone life? We consultants are normally worried about the client’s commitments and then the project becomes critical when the commitments are jeopardised. But think of the storage tank, if got burst could wipe out various villages in vicinity..!!!! Human criticality vs. Reputation criticality.

Which one is more critical and now what should be my reactions to these so-called criticalities???This issue/ realisation happen when a hard core Chemical Engineer is made to sit in front of desktops and required to consult the clients without even meeting them..!!