About this episode
A work trip from Bilbao to Sicily: two flights into Palermo, a long drive to Milazzo, and on-site commissioning and Site Acceptance Testing around Quick Release Hooks — part of a vessel mooring system. After the work story, a visit to Mount Etna.
Arjun Acharya · Commissioning & Start-Up Technician
Transcript
00:00
When you work in commissioning, you never really know where the next project is going to take you. This time, it was Sicily.
00:22
This trip started in Bilbao, in northern Spain. I work as a commissioning and start-up technician. And for this assignment, I was heading to Sicily. To get there, I had two flights before reaching Palermo.
01:25
Airports. Waiting. Boarding. Looking out of the window. It’s a normal part of the job. But every time, it still feels like the start of something.
01:46
Palermo was only the beginning. From the airport, I still had around three hours on the road to reach Milazzo. The destination wasn’t a tourist attraction. I was there to work.
03:13
Milazzo is a coastal town in Sicily, in the province of Messina. This is where the real work would happen.
03:43
The reason I came to Sicily wasn’t tourism. This project involved the inspection, commissioning and Site Acceptance Testing of Quick Release Hooks. And this was actually my third time working on this project.
04:07
A Quick Release Hook is part of a mooring system used to secure a vessel. The hook holds the mooring line. And when required, it can be released remotely. Where load cells are installed, the system can also provide information about the mooring load.
04:27
Commissioning is not just switching equipment on. It’s verifying that the installed system operates correctly. That the components communicate. And that everything responds as expected. In the field, that means inspection, checks, and careful start-up — step by step.
05:09
Then comes the SAT — the Site Acceptance Test. That’s where we verify that the system performs according to the required functionality under site conditions. For me, this is the core of the trip. Steel. Testing. Responsibility. But behind every industrial system, there is also a person. Travelling. Solving problems. Spending days away from home.
05:28
But there was one thing I didn’t want to miss while I was here. After spending the trip surrounded by steel, machinery and control systems, suddenly I was standing on something completely different. This is Mount Etna. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. One of the most active volcanoes in the world.
07:22
And that’s the strange thing about this job. One day you’re checking a system at a port. And the next, you’re standing on a volcano. Sometimes work takes you to places you would never visit otherwise.
07:32
This was my first attempt at documenting one of these trips. I travel for work quite a lot. And there are always stories behind the projects, the places, and the people. So I’m going to try to document more of them. See you on the next one.