Experienced - Engineering & Technical
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James Rudecki - Foundation Engineer
The main projects that I get involved with as a trainee SAP are high voltage maintenance work. However recently at Iver substation there’s been a construction programme that’s just started which is for the replacement of a supergrid transformer. They’ve set up all site establishment works and are just getting ready to undergo removal of the supergrid.
The main core elements of the roles as an SAP will be risk assessments - we’ll be constantly analysing various different jobs and tasks throughout different days, depending on what jobs they are and how involved they will be. It can take a week to carry out a risk assessment for the work, and all the other staff, materials and resources that will be required for it.
If I didn’t complete my role as an SAP achieving safety from the system, it could be very hazardous for all of the other construction workers that are on site, and other staff for National Grid. They rely on the SAP to achieve safety from the system so that they can carry out their job safely.
My job can be quite challenging as the equipment that we work on from day to day can vary greatly – one day we could be working on a brand new piece of gas insulated switchgear that’s just been commissioned and the next day we could be working on a considerably older piece of kit with completely different controls and processes. It’s very challenging as the physical structure of the equipment changes as well as the electronics within it.