Transitioning to Team Lead

On November 12th, I showed up for my interview for the technical team lead of piping team role. That day was the first day I could remember meeting Ally Israel. My interactions with other students in the club had been quite limited at the time. Ally was the new project manager, along with Kevin Le. Both Ally and Kevin would come to be my good friends over the next two years. I would even work with Ally on other fun engineering projects. During my interview, I voiced my hope to communicate more with the community. Kevin knew very well what I was talking about. There wasn’t an established channel to speak with the community.

On November 14th, I stepped into the role of technical team lead for our piping team. At the time, we had a strong team of four that showed up consistently: Francesco, Raayan, Nick, and me. Before my first meeting as team lead, Francesco met with me to help me transition to my new role. It was then, that I read all the documents related to piping in the Google Drive. Francesco gave me great tips on how to become an effective team lead.

With the team, we set some ambitious goals for the upcoming near year:

Assumption: We get grants.

  • Create a manual for mitigating extreme leaks
  • In-country materials & tools
  • American materials & tools
  • Design a pipe system for the Chateau to Well Site and implement during summer
  • How often we need unions, expansion fittings, pressure release valves at pipe maxima, and loops.
  • Put water through the pipeline
  • Ideally done during the semester if generator works again
  • Decide if we want to dismantle existing pipes and redo all or continue but with proper fittings
  • Unsure about how the well side pipes are holding up
  • Call with Robert
  • Search for funding sources (as much as possible)
  • Determine cost of project/minimize cost
  • Format: excel spreadsheet
  • Product cost, amount, source, reason for buying, etc.

Quantitative Tests

  • Conducting flow rate tests
  • Flow rate at well site electrical room
  • Flow rate at peak/chateau (calculate & take into account elevation difference with flow rate)
  • Estimate current water loss from leakage data
  • Calculate average water loss for couple & extrapolate to total number of planned couples
  • Walk pipeline with gopro/camera

Deliverables

  • Manual for mitigating leaks (Donald)
  • Read through piping folder, see history of past project