On resumption of duty in the new millennium I exchanged correspondence with Sh Raju Narayanan and understood the whole issue. He explained in detail- that sea water being a good conductor, it forms electrolysis between the holiday gap in the steel pipe with that of Nobel metal in the valve stem and lead to cathodic corrosion in the steel pipe. He highlighted how the introduction of the sacrificial anode can prevent such occurrences. That was one lesson learnt.
25. Standardisation of Crude oil floating roof tank storage. When Reliance initiated the engineering process for the mega refinery at Jamnagar, one Mr Subramaniam of ex L&T joined as general manager- construction. Without realizing the national statutory rule conditions, he took one earlier dwg of M/S Chicago Iron& Bridge- a reputed international tank building contractor and approached CCE department at Nagpur for the layout approval for 160000 Kl tank size. When he approached them, he was questioned what made you come here, when only Mr A Ramanathan is the only authority registered here for all Reliance approvals ? He got cheesed off and on return he threatened me and said 'I shall lodge a complaint against you with Sh MDA !' and he did that. Sh MDA reacted by asking him what made you go there when our walking encyclopedia is available in the company?; handover everything to him and he shall handle it. That made me to rush to Nagpur to find out the cause for not entertaining him. It so happened that by the time MSR visited Nagpur, Dr Mukherjee has retired and Mr Goshal took charge. When I called on him he explained the technical reasons and asked how a person moving an application for the layout approval does not even know the stipulated limits as per the law? Thereafter he told me- you have only 2 choices- either you stick with that size for which the National law had to be amended and parliament approval time; there also not sure whether it shall be cleared or rejected ( OR) newly design and revise the overall layout meeting the existing laws and the department shall approve in a day. He added that you were the secretary of the Rules Revision Committee constituted by the Government and how can you yourself seek these alterations? Silently I took back the submissions and returned back. To my luck, I contacted Mr Raghavan of M/S VTV and enquired him for help. He being a design engineer himself was glad to accept that request and furnished a fresh design within a week. Utilizing his design I took the services of M/S Bechtel and developed a revised layout and submitted it to the authorities. As promised the layout approval was done in one day It should be noted that Mr Raghavan's design for the floating roof crude inventory storage- 92MX20M sizing has become international standard then on. Year 1996
26. Prioritization of inventory for PolyPropylene start-up. It so happened that the J1 polypropylene plant was mechanically ready well before the completion of the main refinery construction and that plant in charge took up the matter with the director- projects and suggested to hire out the newly constructed propane spheres by M/S VTV at Porbandar for propylene inventory build up. As a safety specialist and statutory liaison in charge I was asked to visit that and technically approve using that facility. Unfortunately the cryogenic temperature limit of propylene is lower than that of propane, the safety relief valves setting was not meeting our requirements and I rejected that suggestion. On hearing that the Director- projects went to the extent of questioning my technical expertise and threatened that he will throw me out from the plane, while flying. Reacting to him I responded if that is the management decision let it happen! While getting down from the plane, he asked me to come out with some working alternatives. That whole day I broke my head and came out with a bright solution by evening. Then I asked my assistant Sh SM Pathak to draft a detailed note- To build a temporary cryogenic propylene receipt manifold in Ro-Ro/Lo-Lo jetty in marine area and utilise LGA supplied cryogenic heater for bringing that C3 to atmospheric temperature and pump it to the RTF area spheres through the executed LPG pipeline. The proposal was to utilize a cryogenic designed barge and tranship the material from an international carrier ship. On presentation to the management, it was approved across the table and appreciated. by the director- projects. The whole scheme was executed on top priority and completed within 6 weeks flat. Year 1999
27. Unforeseen transfer to Telecommunication. While working on the close out report of Ph1 refinery project- Utilities & Offsite, M/S MDA & SM ( Sanjay Mashruwala ) tracked me and instructed to move to the newly launched communication set-up. Rather self argued with Sh MDA that I do not even know the spelling for the term communication and how are you expecting me to function. His response was point blank- " Ramu, you are an instrument engineer & I am a chemical engineer by qualification. We both joined together and executed several manufacturing installations successfully. Come down and we shall try" That was in May 2000. After afew days, he asked me to take the role of GIS implementation for the mobile phone service. I was blank and started looking for some idea on that subject. My colleague Sh Sharad Dhoke joined me to search that in google. With some indication we flew to Hyderabad and met Sh Mohan Reddy of M/S Infotech, which company was a pioneer in basic GIS engineering. From that baby step, I grew up implementing Digital Map of India utilizing both imported and indigenous satellite imagery and developed several terabyte capacity geographical data databases. With the services and software of M/S ESRI & Network Engineer we developed several communication applications. Rather , our group became so popular in the country that even ISRO leaders started taking our services and universities asking us to guide them to draft syllabus and take classes for their Geomatics students. Within the company the Business and Operational services were taken from our GIS system only. That lead to world recognition. We were rewarded for developing the Digital Map of India and one specific application development for the cross country cable cut management. Those two world awards broadcast our presence for GIS services. Here I would like to add that M/S Google initially utilized our digital map only for GPS services to the public. Year 2000-2002 Contd....
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