Young Engineers' Cross Talk From inexperienced to professional:
a sense of growth that can be seen beyond trial and error.

Tell us about your current responsibilities.

I'm currently reviewing the layout of new buildings.

The shapes of the concrete and exterior walls are indicated on the drawings, and the equipment has been placed,

so let's plan the piping to connect this equipment to that equipment, something along those lines.

Alternatively, how to run piping from an outdoor unit to an indoor unit,

and if that's not possible, how to move the equipment in such a way to make things work. I come up with such suggestions to customers

while planning for buildings on a large scale.

Do you use CAD?

I use CAD all the time.

Buildings are full of piping,

and I evaluate the seismic resistance of the piping to see if it will collapse in the event of an earthquake.

There are also many supports for the piping,

and I also evaluate the seismic resistance of these supports.

I belong to the Primary Cooling Group, and I create models connecting buildings and primary cooling equipment,

perform seismic analysis, conduct post-processing on the results, and produce reports.

So the scope of your work is slightly different, even if you belong to the same Structural Safety Engineering Department.

Arita-san specializes in piping, and Ueda-san in buildings and primary cooling.

My work isn't related to buildings or anything like that. I analyze cores, which is the hottest part of a nuclear reactor.

I also create programs to extract the necessary portions of data from among tens of thousands of rows of data every day.

What kind of impression did you originally have of the company, and have you felt any disconnect since joining?

I hadn't imagined that there would be no sales staff, and that we would have great direct relationships with our customers where we made proposals to each other as we progressed. Instead of having to adopt an attitude that prioritizes sales, I was able to make suggestions such as "I think we should this here" to customers and sometimes receive ideas from them, which was different from what I had expected, in a positive sense.

Since what I studied in university was in a different field than analysis, I was a little apprehensive, thinking that the company would be full of experts with knowledge of the framework of nuclear power, but this was not the case.

More than half of the company's employees started out in different fields before working here, so I felt a sense of kinship with them when I joined the company.

I think it's an easy place to work and grow.

Ueda-san and Matsunami-san, both of you joined the company without any knowledge of analysis or reactor cores. Did that make you apprehensive?

I didn't think I could do everything right from the start, so on the contrary, I wasn't apprehensive.

I just thought that I had to get going.

When I heard the explanations, I thought that the job mainly revolved around creating more analytical models

and continuing to analyze them,

but the work that followed afterwards, which included post-processing as well as producing and checking reports,

was many times more than I had expected, which was different from what I had expected.

There were also quite some work that were not plain or flashy... Put another way, it didn't feel like genuine analysis.

I never thought I would use a pen so much.

I do a lot of checking and looking for errors.

There are many people who work in different fields than the one they studied in university. How did you develop your skills after joining the company?

My superior explained the job to me, told me to "just try doing it," and I did it.

I got everything back with corrections... and this cycle kept repeating itself.

I'd go to my seniors who were on dispatch at a customer and communicate directly with them, prepare all the materials for a proposal,

and have my superior take a look. He'd get back to me, saying that "this is no good, this is no good,"

and I would make corrections and get my work approved. I kept repeating this cycle.

I made progress while getting asked to redo everything I did, eventually learning to do more and more,

and I was able to give my opinions to my superior.

It isn't hand-holding, in the sense that I wasn't told how to do things, or to be careful because it's easy to make a certain mistake.

That's right.

I think this way of doing things—learning how to do something, being left to get on with it, doing said thing, and making mistakes—suits me.

Does your superior explain to you why you made mistakes?

Yes, my superior explains that to me, but I can't figure things out in one go.

I kept asking the same thing over and over again for about 10 minutes before I realized and went, "Oh, that's what you mean!" and I repeat this

10 or 20 times a day.

Of course there's also practice, but once I'm given a manual, I refer to it as I work.

Since analysis makes up most of my work, I need knowledge related to it. That's how I started looking at drawings.

I had some knowledge of physics, so I started by studying other structural topics.

When it came time to do some actual work, I was able to understand, and I went, "oh, so this is what this means."

When I go on business trips and see all the work we're doing and the work that our other customers are doing,

I sometimes end up with a better understanding of how they are connected.

In a way, it's totally different.

Our businesses are different.

There is no right answer when it comes to reviewing things,

so there are a lot of things that you won't understand unless you work on them and refine your sense for them.

Ueda-san, you're also part of the Structural Safety Engineering Department like Arita-san. What are your thoughts?

I think my experience has been mostly the same as Arita-san's.

I looked at manuals, talked about important points relating to work at kick-offs and regular meetings, worked out the details,

and actually tried doing the work.

I can use a tool by referring to a manual,

but manuals don't tell you things like the kind of calculations used for processing,

or how things change when the conditions change.

So I tried to make actual calculations on my own in Excel during downtime at work, and I studied and understood the content

by consulting with my superior to see if my results were the same as the results generated by the tools.

When I joined the company, I had no knowledge of programming at all, so at first, I was taught everything from scratch, beginning with how to write a program.

Once I was judged to be somewhat proficient, I was asked to try my hand at a task, starting with tutorials.

When I was done, I would show my work to my senior colleagues and get their advice, and I would make corrections based on their advice.

Matsunami-san's way of learning about work is similar to Nitta-san's, isn't it?

You need a certain sense for writing programs after all.

So, have you ever experienced a moment of personal growth where you learned a skill like that?

Our work is divided between those who create things, those who are responsible for things, and those who approve things,

but now that I'm one of those who are responsible for things,

I feel happy that I have grown visibly and maybe am being appreciated by the people around me.

When a problem arises when I'm working, I feel I've learned how to solve said problem

if I can recall what happened quite a while ago and remember," Oh, this is what I should do."

The tools I use are quite different depending on the task I'm doing,

so it's difficult for someone who has never used them before to know what to do when an error occurs.

I feel as though I've grown whenever I'm asked, "Ueda-san, you did this before—can you tell me how to do it?" and whenever I'm able to resolve an error.

A corner where we ask each other what we'd like to know about

Let's begin with Arita-san...

You mentioned earlier that you visited sites.

If you were in Plant Design, you'd go on site inspections to determine how best to provide support,

and if you were doing layouts, you'd look at how to create routes, but as a member of the Structural Safety Engineering Department, what do you look at on site inspections?

The Structural Safety Engineering Department's site inspections involve obtaining point cloud data to make it easier to work over here (at the company).

However, I went on some business trips where I did the same work on-site that I do at the company.

If I'm working at the company, there is a time lag in the evaluation process: if I discover an error after performing an evaluation, I have to prepare inquiry documentation and send them to the site, but if I'm working on-site, I can ask the site directly and and shorten the process.

Well, it's an emergency measure. I'd like to visit there again.

Where do you get your tools and programs from?

Do you purchase them, or do you make them yourself?

There is some analysis software that is pretty much developed according to customers' specifications.

That's right. The software that I thought was the coolest was...

Cool...?!

It's a software called NASTRAN.

It was originally developed for NASA, and I thought that was cool!

I don't know what it is, but it seems to be some sort of modeling software.

I'm on dispatch at a customer right now, and this is my third year there, I think. I didn't have anyone who joined the company at the same time as myself for roughly two of those three years...

The two of you (Nitta and Ueda) joined at the same time, right? I wonder what it's like to have many colleagues who joined the company at the same time as yourself.

Do you usually interact with each other a lot?

We're in different sections, so not really...

We might bump into each other at smoking areas, or in the restroom.

I have a colleague in my section who joined the company at the same time as myself. He's at a different location, but it's fun talking to him because we share a common work language.

We can share our pain with each other.

I get excited whenever we bump into each other on a business trip, and it's great that we can get dinner together on those occasions.

You're in the same section, so it makes sense you'd get along well.

We also hang out together in our spare time.

Do you have any worries?

I'd like to go on a site inspection.

The layout review I'm doing now involves working on an outline drawing of a piece of machinery that appeared in a drawing without looking at it,

so I have to look at the size and visualize it in my mind because I've never seen a site where the ceiling, walls, and floor of the building are this large,

and where this equipment has to be connected to that equipment.

If it's an existing building, I can look at point cloud data and photographs, and if there is a 3D model, I can also look at it in 3D,

but I can't do anything with a new building.

I don't know anything about it because it's at the very first conceptual review level.

If I've been to an existing building at least once, I can visualize what the equipment looks like

because different plants still have the same equipment for the most part,

but I can't really visualize what the equipment looks like when I see only numbers representing its height on a two-dimensional plane,

so I like to go on a site inspection.

It'd be nice if we could utilize VR for something like that...

But you'd still like to see the site for yourself, right? Since the scale of the actual site is different.

Finally, let's have you say a few words to the students.

If it's a job you don't enjoy even a little, you probably won't be able to keep doing it.

I think it might be best to look at different professions,

check out internships and the like, and do something that you like and are interested in.

I hope you'll enjoy the rest of your student life to the fullest,

as you'll probably work for about 45 years after joining a company. Make sure you have no regrets.

Life is long, so take things easy.

This is a rare industry, isn't it? You can't work with nuclear power plants if you aren't in this line of work.

Plant design is a very big thing, isn't it?

I think that you can feel a sense of adventure by working in this field.

The sense of adventure that comes with supporting the infrastructure known as electricity,

which everyone uses, and of generating electricity for everyone.

I don't think there are many jobs that give you such a sense of adventure and confidence in yourself.

I think this line of work is suited to people who yearn for those things.

That's a wrap!