Train 18 series, part VII..welcome dear consultants!!

I quoted in the last post, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool”. Well, the self-styled fools of the ICF’s Design team, shedding their pretension of being wise, were at work. Day and night. Bereft of the technical pearls flowing daily on their Whatsapp groups, my job was to meddle ever so little but meddle I must. 

The beauty of working with these European consultants was that they had mostly seen better and without saying so, they did give a sense that we could only improve from where we were. Consultants are not a member of a big multi-national and their stake in our delivery on design and build is much higher than the latter. To begin with, they are not arrogant. They seek to first determine our capability and mould their concepts and designs accordingly. The consultants were clearly much more open in looking at all feasible sourcing, including development, in India than a multi-national providing us with ToT ever would be. The interactions were a continuous process and the design work at ICF was in hand in parallel. As expected, a series of iterations in the design and successive rework on drawings, both Mechanical & Electrical, took some time but it was inescapable. A new experiment in rolling stock design on Indian Railways was shaping up; all the successive concepts and the final 3-D models and 2-D drawings were not merely the stepping stones towards manufacture of Train 18 but also all adding to the engineering repertoire of ICF.

An interesting feature of the design exercise with the consultants was ordering of components. We realized that if we waited for the drawings to be finalized and frozen before starting the ordering process, we would lose precious months. We had to have orders for key subassemblies and components in place and have the successful vendor as a part of the final design process. Can we order based on conceptual designs and it’s 3-D models? I thought that as long as the final weight did not differ much from the conceptual design, we should be able to do it. Obviously, you would need the target vendors to understand it. Let us take the example of the bogie frame. The concept showed that it would be a fabrication with many cast and forged components welded on to it. We met the prospective manufacturers; they expressed that since they would need to order the cast and forged components, it would be difficult to get quotes for the same based on drawings which may undergo changes. Yes, that was a problem. We had to hold a larger meeting, not only with the target bogie fame fabricators but also the prospective vendors for the cast and forged components. Some raised their hands showing inability to quote based on unfinished drawings. I me them with the design team and gave them a pep talk on the prestige of participating in a project of great significance; it not only would be a matter of pride but business-wise also it made sense as they would be the preferred vendors in future ordering. With some persuasion, some capable vendors agreed to participate in our tenders.  The procurement team was already working overtime; the orders were placed soon and the vendors concerned were a part of the Train 18 bogie design development group.

What was remarkable in the design exercise with the consultants was that the ownership of all drawings and specifications developed in the process rested with ICF. ICF was going to be the master of the Intellectual property rights (IPR), with no ifs and buts and this was happening for the first time in any major rolling stock project on IR. This concept of complete would certainly prove to be a great boon in future.

The learning our design staff acquired in the process cannot be gained through any training process usually held after the design work is completed by a ToT provider. The ICF design staff were getting a first-hand know-why and were indeed able to imbibe the nuances of top of the line design concepts and processes. Subsequently, when the designs would be taken to manufacturing, the same staff would get a first lesson in knowhow. The interactions with design consultants were not one-way; many a feature was incorporated based on the inputs given by the ICF design team.

Although I had scooted away from the day to day interaction, all the specific-domain as well as cross-functional groups with well-defined responsibilities were functioning well and daily interaction was encouraged strongly. At the risk of repetition, I must add that the team members of ICF and the key vendors were working tirelessly, regardless of the duty hours. Suffice it to say, most, nearly all, went about the interaction with a level of determination not easily seen hitherto in any Govt. Organization.

During an initial meeting, the delegation head of a consultant mentioned that they were acknowledged experts in design, analysis and validation of bogie designs and so many designs made by them were in successful operation in Europe, that they combined many years’ hands-on operational experience with deep analytical know-how, that not many consultants could match their expertise, that 75% of their employees were qualified engineers and that 90% of them spoke good English. I smiled and said, “Come work with my team. They have developed many designs over borrowed platforms of Schlieren or LHB. They may not speak very good English but all of them do speak one language uniformly and correctly: Train18. Come and learn this language from them”

One anecdote here. Once the personnel of the car body design consultants, a Polish company, came to meet me, all a bit exasperated. They said. “The culture in ICF is to make a lot, and indeed that you make more coaches here in a month than a mid-sized factory in Europe makes in a year. But no two coaches are truly alike. They are made alike by jugaad. Kindly have your team forget jugaad in respect of Train 18 and we would, with them, make a world-class product.” Jugaad? They had done their homework on Indian engineering; Jugaad, as you perhaps know, is often a term used to refer to a technique that finds a quick solution to a big or small problems. When crisis arise, many people come up with innovative yet simple ways to find an easy way out of the situation. I laughed with them and we promised that Train 18, sadly, would be totally free of any jugaad. 

Engineers are a much-maligned lot. They, however, come in much individuality, with their signature temperament, temper, psyche and disposition, perhaps more than any in any other form of humanity. I know many who are avid painters. Many devote a great deal of personal time and money in activities far removed from engineering.  An engineer I know has only one pastime, feeding stray dogs. Another is passionate about temple rituals. Yet, nearly all of them have a deep curiosity about how things work and whether it could be made to work better. Since they mostly fail to achieve this objective, people find them stupid and boring. What they miss is that in their own way, they are very creative. The creativity of ICF engineers came to the fore in Train 18 project. Since there was an environment of innovation, many ideas flowed from bottom to top and some were indeed adopted or adapted.

Engineers cannot be creative because they use data to achieve precision mechanically, without any scope of abstraction. Think so? In reality, engineers make precise guesswork based on unreliable data provided by people with questionable knowledge. And therefore they are equally creative.

On a serious note let me end today’s story with a quote on engineers by Herbert Hoover, the 31^st President of the United States; Hoover Dam is called after him, it was known as Boulder Dam prior to being renamed in his honour.

“Engineering is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer’s high privilege.

The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned…

On the other hand, unlike the doctor his is not a life among the weak. Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his purpose. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread. To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope. No doubt as years go by the people forget which engineer did it, even if they ever knew. Or some politician puts his name on it. Or they credit it to some promoter who used other people’s money...But the engineer himself looks back at the unending stream of goodness which flows from his successes with satisfactions that few professions may know. And the verdict of his fellow professionals is all the accolade he wants.”

How true? Understood perhaps only by engineers but for once, we are not at the butt of a joke!

(to be continued...)