The So Called Planning Engineer (Sounds Itself Spooky Hah..!!!)

For All the Engineers who plan…

(To be read in a lighter mood)

Sad, but true...! ! !

When I was studying my Electronics textbook I used to deem myself of engineering some stuff which generates current or drives an LED. But they say that truth is stranger than fiction and so it goes. The strangest part of it was the job of a planning engineering I did for a living. I came across the planning part of engineering in one of the most gigantic engineering firms. An engineer who does engineering in the document part of it is what I can best and most fairly coin out of a planning engineer. Putting in this way, a guy who fuels in the flow of things on paper would be better. 

To make out something out of nothing and adding lot of logic part of it is what a planning engineer does. He rolls his stress in the reports and jets in the ever changing list of packing lists with some dubious codes he knows and feels would best fit in. The one who is supposed to know the process and seems to add value out of nothing into it with papers and files is the planning stream of engineering demands. 

The three vital components of this stream are Excel Sheets, Excel Sheets and Excel sheets. The size, gravity and the text keeps on changing like the components of a circuitry but the PCB remains the same: Excel Sheet.

The funnier part of it is the placement of a planning engineer in a firm. A fresh guy from college who neither knows the objective nor the functional part of papers is made to engineer the papyrus deluge. I find them everywhere around. When you hear a guy getting bullied by someone who seems to engineer the things which are actually to be planned by the one who knows only the neonate part of it is undisputedly the planning engineer of the project you are looking at. The best part is the mistakes he does often out of innocence and dodges more bullish behavior. And, when it comes to knowing what actually happened as per plan things would have gone the way they occur. He ropes in serious troubles when the plan fails which is destined to fail. But the fun of the game lies in the clientele’s attitude of sticking to the plan he submits. This in turn gives every one run of their lives as the carrot hung before the rabbit is not to eat but to make it run till he lives.

It may sound a little bit raunchy, but the regular kick he receives makes him reach to his ultimate goal: Resignation. We all know engineers are filled with lots of stuff they are bamboozled with in a more than 1000 day course. And all of the mixed crude actually shells out and leaves him nowhere. It actually kicks chucking out the crammed formulae and graphs. And the thing that kicks more is the process of chucking it out i.e via all the papers he rambles through and makes him more or less an administrative person what we proudly spell as a planning engineer.

One interesting thing that he turns out to be is a perfect answer telling cum excuse making machine. The questions can vary a lot. They swing from the progress part of the project to the profit part of it. Often the men and the material he works with come in the game but none bothers as it is the money and the glittering reports that count. Glittering reports come out of bargaining with the scope of work and money with the so called tactful negotiation with the one who drives the money wagon into it.

The planned death of an engineer in a guy is actually what planning engineer lefts with if he continues till the end of the execution of his so called engineered plan…

Amit Purohit

The Lone Soldier

Share