Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations IDS on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

"How to do the right thing" but not be yelled at? 1

Status
Not open for further replies.

caluna

Mechanical
Nov 23, 2004
86
Hi, I am puzzled and would like to hear what you think of this situation. Thought I did the "right" (was?) also a close friend.

We work on petroleum tank farms and had occasion to be selecting an old tank for re-use as a slop/spare/odds and ends tank in a new facility. This tank would not be connected to the normal tankage and piping system. Petroleum tanks need to be ULC at new one was not ULC approved. (The adjacent one was ULC, so it would not be impossible to get that one out.).. My colleague recommended that we use the non-ULC one, and advised contractor.. Colleague also mentioned vaguely about having to find out whether using non-ULC was correct....I suspected we should be using the ULC tanks but did not know for sure to be able to contradict my colleaugue on site, which might have been a tricky "diplomacy" situation..so I emailed the fire marshal..of course he says we cannot use non-ULC tanks. My e mail and answer were copied to my colleague, who was not at work.. I phased my Fire Marshal email as a question not mentioning anything particular about my colleague's decision on site..

THEN I get an earful from my colleague who objected to me checking with Fire marshal..."you should not have done this, we have other situation where this decision might apply so it opens up a can of worms, we always did it this way... "

It was upsetting to me as we usually get on famously..Normally the colleague is a stickler for code adherence so why this? I am an engineer and colleague is not.

I told my boss and copied him on emails.

I am thinking maybe I should have told my colleague i was going to ask the Fire Marshal (on behalf of all ur section-so we know what to do about the ULC non ULC question) but I KNOW my colleague would have told me "no" - then I would have been crossing them another time...Or would there have been a better way to handle this?


 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

The latest development on this is that no slop tank at all is to be installed. Client Ok with this. It was not entirely clear what was to be put in that tank, or when...but seems all of a sudden it is not needed..
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor