Career Path > Navy:Getting Out

Soon to Make the Jump

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RCLCPO:
20 Years Gone,

Well, It's been almost a year......how's the I & C life in Kansas?  As I'm retiring myself soon, I'd like to know your perspective after some time on the beach.  Is it still what you thought it would be?

Cheers,

rclcpo

kwicslvr:
RCLCPO,

Well I didn't do 20, only 12, and got out 2 years ago has a LELT on subs.    I have a chemistry positon, but the experience in the end is the same.  For me it was one of the best decisions I've made leaving the navy and working at a civilian plant.  Granted with out my navy training I would of never had the oppurtunity.  The work is great and the people are awesome for the most part.   The other nice thing is working half as much and being paid twice as much compared to when I was in the Navy and when I do go over 40 hours I actually get paid quite well for it.

Good luck on the search for your new life.

20 Years Gone:
Well, where to start?
Pro's:
1.  Lots and Lots of Money.  The retirement check makes the mortgage, with money left over.
2.  No duty days, or taking home work with you, or really worrying about the job at all when you're not there.  No fast cruises, or staying up 21/24 hours on shutdown PPWO, then working a normal day the next day on 3 section duty
3.  The schedule is pretty regular.  No sudden at seas, or extended yard periods, or deployments.  I can look ahead months from now and make solid plans, with no worry of something coming up on the ship, and leave being cancelled.
4.  I have a nice house in a nice community, and don't plan on moviing again, so my kids will grow up here with friends they've had for years, instead of the move every 3 years.
5.  We specifically picked where we live based upon the local schools and communities.

Con's:
1.  You know how the navy had a structured training program, where ever you went?  After awhile, you pretty much new that when you reported to a new command, you'd get a qual card and attack it, and get your quals out of the way.  Now, it might be that way at other plants, and maybe in OPS, but in I&C, they seem to have completely forgotten how to get/allow people to get qualified.  That's probably due to the low turnover.  An example:  The last guys they hired in I&C were 5 years ago.  The 4 of them finished their level 2 I&C quals in the last couple months.  They sat around for YEARS while the company tried to re-discover how to get them qualified.  So, I have quals like crimping, soldering... But there's really not a single preventative maintenance item which I can go perform.  And it is a BIG deal here if you perform a maintenance item and aren't qualified.  I carry a lot of guys tools around.
2.  The supervision is a bit different.  Mostly, they are the nicest guys in the world, but, they really don't supervise.  They might tour around the plant every couple of weeks, watch while you calibrate a transmitter, then check that off on their things to do list, and don't think about it until the next time.  They spend their time answering PIR's (process improvement requests) going to meetings... well, hell.  I'm sure they must do something... They run interference for us when we need it, coordinate maintenance a little... The maintenance schedule is planned by another group altogether, though.  Speaking of supervision, there's not a real chain of command.  We have about 5 I&C supervisors, and you sort of get shuffled to whichever one owns your maintenance that day...until someone else needs you, then you work for that supervisor.  It's kind of "just-in-time" supervision.  Very, very, reactive.  They're more like taxi-cab dispatchers, if that makes sense.
3.  Unless you hire in as a supervisor, you might as well have just come out of tech school.  All those abilities you've spent 20 plus years developing, like maintenance expertise, operations, and operatonal interfaces, computer skills, planning skills, procedure writing, QA, troubleshooting....  Well, those skills will not really brought to use, at least right away.

   I've let my fingers run away with me.  Let's sum it up.  I've been here a year.  I'm not qualified to do any preventative maintenace.  The happiest times I've had here is when something has broke, and they allowed me to troubleshoot and fix it.  They want us qualified, but the supervision can't seem to decide how to do it, and do not seem to have the planning abilities to make it happen. 

   It's a little frustrating. 

Fermi2:
It's always astounded me at how unorganized in general CRaft training seems to be throughout the industry.

I will say before I left Fermi the Instrument shop was really getting their stuff together in order to create qual curves and to be more organized when it came to qualifying people. A big reason is they had an Ex SM in charge of their department who knew how to get things done. (Joe Meyer by the way is the man I admire most in this industry, he was a real role model for me and as mentor)

Hey 20 Years. You're at Wolf Creek right? They have one of the worst SROs in the industry there, I believe he's no longer in Ops though.

Do you know a Mechanic named Frank? He's a tall lanky guy, very dry and sarcastic sense of humor. In 2003 he worked for me at Fermi during our March Refueling Outage. I really liked the guy a lot. He was assigned to the FIRS Team (Fix It Now Team). I don't remember his last name though. Anyways if you can figure out who he is please tell him Mike from Fermi said hello.

Mike

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