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You can't really understand what it's like to be a project engineer until you're there. And when you get there, the stakes may be high and the situation may be unforgiving of blunders. Fortunately, you can experience it vicariously.

One way is through the experience of your bosses and colleagues, conveyed in conversations, counseling sessions, and war stories. This experience is valuable but it could arrive too late, since it will probably be triggered by some event on the project that’s created a problem for you. And, as you know, you have to listen attentively and critically to pan out the gold and throw away what’s irrelevant or exaggerated (as war stories can be).

For the same kind of benefit -- letting you know what it's like to be there -- but in a more controlled way, this chapter is a case study about a new project engineer, Ron, who finds himself thrown into a position of responsibility before his feet are on the ground. We'll join the project just after the contract is signed, at the outset of the project implementation phase.

The story line and characters are drawn from the example in Chapter 1. Recall that Sara Margeaux is the Project Manager for a natural gas pipeline compression station. We’ll call her project the Rio Bend Project. She works for a moderate-sized company called Wizard Oilfield Contracting. Her brusque but highly competent boss is Ted Kramer. Wizard has been hired by the client, El Dinero Petroleum, to engineer, procure and construct the project facilities.