Power Ops

A chime sounded, drawing Jaso’s attention to his console. “‘New equipment is to be delivered and…'” Jaso read the message, his voice trailing off. “‘Certification process must be complete before the equipment can be deemed operational.’ Hmm… sounds easy enough,” Jaso stretched and yawned. He transferred the information to a PAD and closed down his console, “Hulez! Moht! T’Kolum!” Jaso shouted, his voice carrying throughout the office. “Gather your kits, we’re heading to the shipyard.”

In short order, the doors to the shipyard opened, inviting the quartet to step inside. “Wow,” Ensign Moht exclaimed, her voice echoing in the cavernous space. “There must be thousands of ships in here!”

“It would be impossible for thousands of ships to occupy this space,” T’Kolum retorted.

“That’s enough,” Jaso warned. He didn’t like pairing Moht and T’Kolum together. The Bolian and Vulcan bickered constantly, as much as a Vulcan would anyway. The job necessitated that they be on the team. T’Kolum could quote most engineering protocols and would catch any cascade patterns Jaso missed. And Moht could resplice power conduit nodes and trace relays faster than anyone in the department.

“Excuse me,” Jaso said to a nearby worker. “Power Operations,” he gave a quick introduction. “Would you be able to show us where the recent equipment that Logistics delivered is?”

The team stood on a large 50m by 50m open deck space that sat between Shipyard Central (a large prominence jutting out into the bay with control centre and main offices) and the Workbee Hive (one of 3 hives with a few hundred workbees and dozens of skiffs, haulers, sleds, and loaders).

Chief Horvath, one of the veteran Shipyard Ops specialists, was pleased to realize that the bosses had obviously heeded their warnings about the new equipment. “Fat cats are through those bay doors over there. They’ll be happy to see you and your team, so brace yourselves for a warm welcome.” Horvath chuckled as he pointed to the doors that led to Shipyard Central.

“But if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got ships that need building and freighters that need fixing out here,” Horvath said as he walked off in the direction of the beehive.

“It looks like we’ve already received one,” Hulez said after the man made his brusque exit.

Jaso and his team followed the path to Shipyard Central. Inside, they found organized chaos: 3 sunken wells with consoles and comms equipment spread out in front of them. About 2 dozen staff and officers were going about their duties. They didn’t have to wait long until they were noticed by the Deputy Director of Shipyard Operations.

The short, portly, and sweaty old shipbuilder came over, greeted them, and was delighted to hear they were the Power Ops team they had requested. He walked them around the perimeter of the office and down towards the well at the far end of the large room. He told them the basics of the issue they had.

There were 14 (8 new automated gantry cranes, and 6 state-of-the-art, 10 jointed, 200 metre reach auto welders that were used to weld vessels frames/skeletons together) new pieces of large equipment they had finally received and installed that needed certification. Second, the shipyard ops crew installing the equipment noticed that the power taps at each location weren’t rated for the power that each device would draw. Third, to keep anywhere near schedule, 7 of the 14 pieces of new equipment would have to be up and running in the next 48 hours.

“…so that’s the issue in a nutshell, we need to know whether you guys can just switch the taps themselves to ones with the proper rating, or will this require a new power distribution trunk to be installed to pick up some of the extra load….or what, you know?”

“It looks like a little bit of both,” came the response from Moht. She was looking over the power relay schematics. “But mostly the second; you’ve been running these things over capacity for a while.” Jaso joined her and traced the lines. “You’ve been running these two on 1000 terawatts alone.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a handle on what we need, great. So, this is Lt. Traan, one of my best shift leaders. He’ll be able to answer any questions and give you everything you need to help us out. Let me know if you need anything else. I’m in the office in the far corner there.” Without waiting for a response, the Deputy Director nodded at the Power Ops team and wandered off, leaving them there with Traan at the Ops well.

“About as temperate as we expected,” Hulez smirked.

“Well, if it isn’t my old pal from the turbolift the other week, how are you doing, Jaso? Boss fill you in on the issue we got here?” Traan said energetically as he walked up the steps from the well to greet him and his team.
Turning away from the station, Jaso turned. “Lieutenant, it’s good to see you fared well. He did, yes.” He shook Traan’s hand. “This is my team: Ensigns Hulez and T’Kolum,” Jaso motioned in turn. “And that excited woman is Lieutenant Moht,” Jaso thumbed to the Bolian, who stood entranced at the schematics display.

“Let’s start with the equipment that is the biggest need and work from there,” Jaso said. “I’ll leave Moht here to monitor power output.” He motioned, “Lead the way, Traan.”

“Gladly, Ramirez, take care of things here until I get back. Don’t let those truss and girder frames for the new Sagan class ship pile up in front of the fabrication yard. If things get behind schedule, call me on the comm, I’ll sign out a hauler barge so I can divert and help out after showing the sparkies our issue and dropping them off if I need to.” Traan was walking around the front of the ops well and along the large, wide bay window that looked out over the bay.

“We’re flying out on a barge?” T’Kolum asked.

“It’s more floating with style and speed than flying, really,” Traan said without looking back. He went out the same door the team had originally come in, and walked across the large open deck to the beehive. On their left was the cavernous bay where new Gagarin, Shran, and Sagan-class ships were being built.

Traan greeted the chief manning the duty desk, then signed out an HC6 hauler barge and led the team over to it.
“All aboard, who’s coming aboard,” Traan said as he hopped onto the vehicle and went over to the control console that was in a little hut at the front.

The team of three stepped aboard the hauler. As it picked up speed, they took in the space. T’Kolum stood as impassive as ever, running analytics in his mind. He previously researched the issues the Shipyard had and how this new equipment was going to exacerbate their already strained resources. Hulez and Jaso discussed the equipment schematics and possible strategies for power output.

Jaso called his team together for a briefing. He also included Traan to make sure everyone knew the plan. “We’ll use a two-pronged approach: T’Kolum will work on installation of the new equipment.” He turned to the Vulcan, “Work with the Shipyard crew and correct their power couplings and output. Traan, your crews’ assistance would be great there. Hulez and I will work on the inspection and certification process. We’ll join you when we’re done.”

The hauler came to a stop at the first piece of new equipment. “All right, Hulez… we’re up.” Jaso and Hulez locked in their safety lines and stepped onto the gantry crane. He turned to T’Kolum, “Keep an open comm channel. Report back to Moht for real-time feedback.” T’Kolum nodded, “Aye, sir.”

Traan hollered, “If you can certify this crane and the one in bay 3 over there and the first 4 of the auto welders in service by midday tomorrow, you’ll be my personal heroes.”

“They’ll be lucky if they’re finished by midday next week, the way Ops is dragging its feet,” Hulez commented. He watched the barge disappear. Jaso readjusted his engineering pack, “All right, Ensign, let’s find the control cabin.”

Traan then flew himself and T’Kolum over to the first of the massive auto welders and parked the barge.

“So there’s our problem, I think. The trunk supplying this section of the bay is only a 24tw distribution node… off the top of my head, that seems undersized for the load we’re adding to it. After taking a look at the coupling type, should we go and check that out? Could you maybe just upgrade the available supply to that node? Or would you need to do a new tap and run a whole new trunk or EPS junction?” Traan said, exhausting nearly all of his power systems technical knowledge in just forming the queries.

“Impressive, Lieutenant,” T’Kolum replied with a raised eyebrow. He opened his tricorder and scanned the node, “You’re assumption is correct that the node is the primary problem. It has been over capacity for some time, as Lieutenant Moht guessed. Your strategies have merit; I believe combining all of them is the solution.” He closed his tricorder. “Unfortunately, we will not make the 48-hour time frame requested by your Deputy Director.”
Traan thought to himself for a second. The work on the new Gagarin class hull needed the new equipment the most; the other 2 new builds could limp along with portable welders and repulsor cranes if needs be.

“Alright…can we get 2 of the cranes and 2 of the welders going on this trunk? And then the rest can wait…how long until the work can be done? Is a week enough time?”

“It is possible, but unlikely,” T’Kolum admitted. “I understand the Shipyard’s need for this equipment; however, we have a responsibility to make them as safe as possible. If we were to connect the equipment on a single trunk, it would cause them to malfunction. And that would render the equipment inoperable for a week, possibly longer, while they are being repaired.” T’Kolum opened his tricorder and typed in commands. “I will do what I can to mitigate risks and provide an assessment to Lieutenant Erdian when he arrives.” He pointed to one of the cranes. “I would like to start with that crane first.”

“Sounds good, I appreciate you guys coming so quickly and giving us a hand with this.” Traan flew the barge over to the crane he pointed at.

Epilogue

As it turned out, they were only able to safely power 3 of the 14 devices within the target time window. But to their credit, the power ops team did bring in an additional crew, and together the shipyard and power ops crews were able to get the the remaining 11 device operational and ceritifed within 5 days.

After a few days of pushing the pace, the shipyard was able to stay relatively on schedule with their ‘new build’ projects.