Ghost in the machine

THERE ARE NO sooty urchins - Charles Dickens would have been disappointed. The look, smell and sound of an industrial plant today is completely different, especially a state-of-the-art pharmaceutical plant.

Here there are only tall stainless steel tanks and cylinders and giant units that hum. In some areas where processes are being updated, men in hard hats move about supervising construction. In the control room, electronically controlled gauges, which track and measure all computerised processes, are being monitored.

Willie Power, an instrumentation and controls project engineer who is currently on contract to Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in Cork, is part of this automated world. He is concerned with instrumentation, in particular that which measures temperature, pressure and flow, he explains.

His time is spent moving between the design office and the site. As a site-based project engineer with Pfizer, he is responsible for designing, installing and commissioning a range of instruments and electrical engineering systems at the plant.

Pumps, agitators, reactors, filters, dryers "They are all controlled. It is a total operation, everything is worked in sequence," he says. The key to his job is automation.

He explains that the common sheet of paper that moves between all the different people involved in any job working on a project is the process and instrumentation diagram. "That's the key document and we all work to that document," he says. "Any changes of significance would be noted on that."

But how are the technical requirements determined in the first place? "Usually the client would have a good idea, a good feel for what is required in terms of instrumentation. When it comes to controlling it, I would have a good input there."

From Bishopstown in Cork Willie Power went to boarding school in St Augustine's College in Dungarvan, Co Waterford. "Physics would have been my strongest subject," he says. After his Leaving Cert he went to Cork RTC to study for a certificate in instrument physics.

The course wasn't his first choice, but it turned out to be the one that suited him most. He was also confident that there was a commitment in Cork RTC to develop the course as much as possible. And so, instead of transferring to the NIHE in Limerick (now UL) after two years to study electronic engineering, he went on to do a diploma in instrument physics in 1987 in Cork.

After this, he worked with Project Management Ltd on a range of projects, many of them in the pharmaceutical industry. He completed his studies in 1994 after studying on a part-time basis, graduating from Cork RTC with honours - part of the first group of graduates in the country to be awarded the BSc in applied physics and instrumentation degree.

He describes his work as exciting. "As a career, it offers great scope. There's great variety."

In his work, he says, "you wouldn't want to be uncomfortable with computers"; most of the processes in pharmaceutical companies, food processing plants and creameries today are automated. Being able to deal with a wide range of people - from the very highly qualified to the less skilled - is also a requirement of his job. "You'd want very good communication skills - a lot of the job is about interpretation of requirements."

It is important, he says, to be open to new technologies. "You'd want to enjoy working with new technologies and getting involved with things that you have no formal training for - you'd want to be ready to open up a textbook at work and get involved and learn new things.

"Equipment is advancing and changing at such a rate that every year something new comes up that would meet some of the requirements that we'd have, be it a software package or an engineer product."

This is the side that Willie Power loves best of all. "Like a kid with a new toy, I love the idea of picking up a textbook and learning something new."