Witajcie drodzy konsultanci! (Welcome dear consultants!)

Chapter  IX :  Witajcie drodzy konsultanci!

                      (Welcome  dear  consultants!)

The beauty of working with European consultants was that they had mostly seen better and without saying so, they gave a sense that we could only improve from where we were. Consultants are not members of big multi-nationals and they have a direct stake in our delivery on design and build. To begin with, they are not imperious or condescending. They merely seek to first determine our capability and mould their concepts and designs accordingly. Our experience was no different with our Polish friends; while being quite open and upfront, they were also clearly very accommodating. For example, they were not hesitant in looking at all feasible sourcing, including ones involving development, in India.

Hard core design work on Train 18 had started in May 2017 and the consultancy contracts were in place by June 2017. Immediately after that, our 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, burst many time lines but it was not unexpected. 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 were also 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 its 3-D models? I thought 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 said 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 might undergo changes. Yes, that was a problem. We held a larger meeting, not only with the target bogie fame fabricators but also the prospective vendors for the cast and forged components. Some of them backed out expressing inability to quote based on unfinished drawings. Meeting those still interested with the design team, I gave them a pep talk on the prestige of participating in a project of this 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 our blandishment and persuasiveness, 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.

The consultants were fully aware that the ownership of all drawings and specifications developed by them in association with ICF would be the property of ICF; ICF would be the master of the IPR, with no ifs and buts. Although this was happening for the first time in any major rolling stock project on IR, they were used to similar regimes in their contracts with major rolling stock companies in Europe.

Meeting with the consultants would frequently be attended by more than 50 design and drafting engineers at a time. There were some meetings within the meeting with one sub-group discussing Brake interaction with propulsion, another discussing interiors with cable layout engineers and some other group discussing mounting of under-slung equipment with various suppliers. Not grandstanding here, but these meetings and on site/off site interactions proved to be the bedrock of Train 18 project, the very pillars on which the edifice of the prototype development was built. The meetings, incidentally, used to run from 9.00 am to 9:00 p.m. without a defined lunch break. Although I was never a part of the main  meetings as such, the CDEs would ensure that my weight was used to ensure seamless participation of all cross-functional groups, including Production, with the consultants whenever required.

As the consultancy contracts started in right earnest, a legion of email and Whatspp groups were created by our design heads with participation by ICF officers and supervisors, consultants and identified vendors; the groups were arranged tier-wise. By the way, many of these meetings were virtual meetings, conducted through video conferencing. I was, initially, kept as a member. Within days I left this Armageddon as the traffic was too high with matters getting too technical for me to comprehend or contribute. I knew that if I started getting curious and tried to butt in, my curiosity would kill the cat. I thought it was wise to let the superior intelligence handle such nitty-gritty and not meddle with it. I was, however, always invited and I attended the concluding part of face to face interaction with the consultants and I contributed as well. For example, there was a big debate with the consultants about the sidewall thickness of the car body; they insisted that we must have the standard 2mm thick sidewalls. Our experience, however, was that given the manufacturing capability of ICF, a 3 mm sidewall afforded us a much better exterior finish. It added some weight penalty but it was a preferred compromise. Eventually, I ruled in favour of a 3 mm sidewall with the understanding that as the tooling, processes and workmanship improved, we would switch over to 2 mm sheets.

The meetings frequently involved major participation from representative of key vendors too; they were excited enough to be wilful participants without any cajoling. Nearly all face to face meetings involved visits by the consultants to India. Arranging visits by ICF personnel to Poland was a tough net to crack, given the government’s restrictive policies for foreign visits; we would frequently request the industry to send their technical personnel to Poland for more intensive interactions. They always complied.

Why am I emphasizing so much on interaction with European consultants? Simple because it proved out to be a novel way for ICF, and therefore IR, to empower its staff towards some path-breaking work and get to be equipped for more complicated design work in future. The inaugural and concluding sessions of a series of design meetings with the consultants and the partner vendors, beginning July 17 till as late as third quarter of 2018, unmasked for me the novelty, effectualness and productivity of the exercise in hand.

The learning ICF design staff acquired in the process could not have been gained through any training process usually held after the design work is completed by a ToT-provider. They 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.

During an initial meeting, the head of a consultant delegation 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. He added 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: their technical audacity now incarnated in Train18. Come and learn this language from them.”

Once the personnel of the Polish car body design consultants, came to meet me, 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, is a term often used to refer to a quick-fix makeshift solution of a problem but actually it is a bit more than, it is the handiwork of some exceptional engineering skill. When crises arise, many people come up with innovative yet simple ways to find an easy way out of the situation. I laughed with them and promised that Train 18, would be totally free of any jugaad.

Easier said than done. Jugaad resides firmly in our ethos and our culture. It reflects that we do careless and shoddy work back stream and when the assembly is haywire, the Jugaad god is invoked. He obliges as an atonement for our sins and after some customary ablution, we revert back to where we were. I have modified a humourus creation of poet Amir Amir to catch the essence:

Ye  meri  aadat se  meri fitrat hi ho  chala hai

Kya  khoobi se diya hai  mujhko  bigaad aise

Hazaar minnat hazaar  jurrat hazaar  mehnat 
kucch banane ko hi to hote hain jugaad aise

(From my habit it has now become my nature as it has so nicely spoilt me. A thousand entreaties, so much daring and all this labour of jugaad is employed only to build something)

It would be a challenging task but I resolved to do it and started sensitizing our production people. More than that, we had to modify our working to make sure  that a dedicated team manufactured the body shell under close supervision as the shell is the wellspring which invites jugaad later.

Jugaad has been a distorted form of creativity of Indian engineers; channelized differently, it could mutate into something more spectacular. 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 their objective, people find them stupid and boring. What they overlook is that in their own way, engineers are very fertile. 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, in a conventional sense, because they use data to achieve precision mechanically, without any scope of abstraction. In reality, engineers make precise guesswork based on unreliable data provided by people with questionable knowledge. And therefore they are equally creative.

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 was what Gordon Lindsay Glegg said,

“A scientist can discover a new star but he cannot make one. He would have to ask an engineer to do it for him.”

( to be continued...)