Career chats: Repairing and maintaining things
About this video
Workers who repair and maintain things, including an engineer paramedic, a manufacturing worker, a power engineer and an anesthesia professional, describe their jobs. They talk about daily safety checks, fixing problems fast when a production line stops, keeping critical infrastructure reliable, and always having a plan B and C.
You'll be able to
- describe tasks people do in repairing and maintaining jobs.
- explain why checks and backup plans matter in this kind of work.
- connect this type of work to things I use every day.
Key words
- Apparatus
- The fire truck or engine and its equipment.
- Rig checkout
- A full check of a vehicle and its equipment to make sure everything works safely.
- Infrastructure
- The basic systems a society needs, like power, water and roads.
- Intubating
- Putting a breathing tube into a patient's airway, often before surgery.
Transcript
(upbeat music) - So as an engineer paramedic, my current roles are I drive the apparatus. The station that I'm at now, I'm at Station 31 in downtown Danville. I switch off between an engine company and a truck company. And when I get here in the morning, I do a full rig checkout, make sure that my ladder works, my air brake (buffering distortion), my pump works, all the intricates of the actual fire engine itself is all safe to drive and I have all the equipment appropriate that I need.
- If something goes wrong, it, you know, pauses production on the line, you're not able to build anything until it gets fixed. So it's kind of an all hands on deck situation to figure out what happened, make sure it doesn't happen again, and make sure you're getting, you know, the best quality product out to your patient.
- You know, I think a lot of folks take for advantage, you know, flipping on that light switch, you know, in their apartment or in their home, and don't really take time to think about what all goes into making those lights come on. But at the end of the day, you know, don't necessarily do it for the appreciation or for the glory, right?
You do it because as an engineer we have a responsibility to society, right? To maintain these reliable critical infrastructures, if you will.
- The airway could be not be what you expect. You could have difficult time ventilating them, difficult time intubating them for their surgery. And so knowing the next step that you're gonna take and kind of being prepared from that standpoint of if it can't happen, what is B and C?
And having plans in place and also knowing that those might have to change and being flexible in that and creative, but also being very on top of your game. (upbeat music)
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