First to the office, then out to the measuring points in the field

Let me take you on a typical working day. It starts at seven o’clock in the office and ends at a quarter past four. That’s a long time, but every other Friday we have a full day off. When I arrive at the office, I go through the jobs that need doing, which include maintenance and repair of the corrosion protection systems. I then map out a route with the sites I want to visit that day. At around eight o’clock, I go to the measuring points to do the troubleshooting and carry out any necessary repairs. For example, if a protection system has failed.

Despite GPS, it’s sometimes not so easy to find the measuring points. Some can be a bit overgrown, or sometimes access routes have changed. So if you like geocaching, you will have fun!

When I started in this job for the Corrosion Protection department, I received a lot of support from experienced colleagues. That always worked out very well because the team spirit is really great. You quickly get the chance to prove yourself and take on additional responsibilities. I now have a new apprentice working alongside me to whom I pass on what I have learned, and we often go out together.

How it all started

I come from a family of tradesmen; my grandfather was already an electronics technician, which is a predecessor, so to speak, of my apprenticeship. So my interest in electronics began quite early, and I enjoyed building circuits at my grandfather’s house at the weekend even while I was in primary school. After graduating from high school, I wanted to learn the same craft – which basically meant turning my hobby into a profession.

I applied to several companies for an apprenticeship. OGE was on my shortlist because somebody I knew already worked there and had only good things to say about the company. He put me in touch with OGE through the company’s “Employees recruit employees” referral programme. The friendly interview and the career prospects I was offered made the organisation so attractive that I quickly decided to join OGE. Fortunately, the company chose to offer me a job.

Setting sail for the new phase in life

Even before I started my apprenticeship, all the new apprentices went on a trip to the Baltic Sea where we spent a week on a sailing ship, which was very exciting of course. It was a great start to our working lives and a good opportunity to get to know the other apprentices. OGE does this trip with the new apprentices every year – but unfortunately it was not possible during Corona.

Cathodic protection with impressed current stations

This was an exciting new technical field for me which very few people know about. It was this specialisation I was particularly interested in. Our main job is to protect our buried pipelines from corrosion in order to ensure safe operation over several decades. For this purpose, about 700 CP systems are installed alongside our pipelines, and they ensure that a direct current flows in the direction of the pipeline. In order ensure effective cathodic protection, the CP systems are also monitored remotely, complete with regular measurements.

My career aspirations were shaped by my grandfather who worked at Ruhrgas AG, and by my father who had his own welding shop. Both of them kindled my fascination for industry, so in 1993 I began my apprenticeship as an industrial mechanic at Ruhrgas. After a few years in the company, I joined the hot tapping and plugging crew.

Hot tapping and plugging is a method used worldwide to carry out repairs on pipelines without interrupting the flow. In most cases, the pipeline is tapped at full pressure and taken out of service between two sealing elements, while the flow is maintained via a bypass line.

Full support from superiors and the team

If you do well in your job at OGE, you have the full support of your superiors and the team, and you are then entrusted with more responsibilities and get the opportunity to prove yourself. A supervisor once said to me: “If you do well in your day-to-day work, you will get the chance to show what you’re capable of.” With this support, I left North Rhine-Westphalia for a major project in Lower Bavaria.

I was put in charge as the supervisor for the construction of the 72-kilometre-long natural gas pipeline from Schandorf to Windberg. Since then, almost 500,000 cubic metres of natural gas per hour have been transported over this stretch of the Central European natural gas pipeline MEGAL alongside the existing pipeline.

No day like another

My everyday life? In one word: varied! I’m currently managing a project in the Palatinate. As at every construction site, there are rented office buildings on site, or we use portacabins for the purpose. I am in charge of planning and coordination of the construction site, and there are regular meetings to share information. Besides the work in the office, being on site is an important part of my daily routine. The work carried out has to be inspected and checked, and experience has shown that direct, solution-oriented exchange is also helpful.

A special kind of control engineer

It’s a very special job here in Dispatching. This is where gas flows are controlled and our large pipeline network is monitored – in other words, where our core business is organised. Today it’s natural gas, and in the future it will be hydrogen. As a control engineer, I am solely responsible, so to speak, for part of the network. I learned about my specific responsibilities as part of an extensive induction phase which usually takes 12 to 15 months. And that’s the way it has to be, to get to know the different areas of the pipeline network, the different demands on the network in summer and winter, the whole complexity that we deal with here around the clock.

Control, monitor, communicate, document – and always: decide

At OGE, I control and monitor the pipeline network with my team. My morning shift starts at 6:20 a.m. and ends at 1:35 p.m. First, there is the handover from the night shift staff who tell me what’s been happening: possible faults or failures, the general condition of the network, ongoing maintenance or repair work. And then it’s mainly about taking the energy quantities to where they are needed at the exact right time.

During my shift, I also oversee the schedule of work. This includes, for example, maintenance work at compressor stations and metering points. On top of that, there are always requests from colleagues in the field who want tasks done quickly here and there, and that needs to be taken into consideration. I then decide when a particular job can be carried out depending on the transport situation, and I document everything.

My job is varied: every day I am confronted with different events that I have to deal with responsibly. As a control engineer, I have to make many decisions, sometimes under stress. But that’s exactly what I like – that’s where my experience as a referee perhaps comes in handy. There, too, I have to make decisions alone and in split seconds, and I also have to take responsibility for my decisions.

I have moved quite a few times for OGE and its predecessor companies in the last 22 years. I trained as an industrial mechanic at Ruhrgas AG in Essen, the town where my family worked in mining for generations. I then relocated to Gernsheim and from there to Sandhausen and subsequently to Düsseldorf. I completed my master technician training and moved to Cologne where I took over as deputy team leader. After all those years I realised: you can move away from the Ruhr area, but you cannot get the Ruhr area out of your system. I just wanted return to Essen, to my home region. To develop further and learn something new. That’s when I got the opportunity to transfer to OGE’s Reporting Centre (ZMS). From gas pipelines to responding to telephone calls.

24/7 shift work

We must never lose sight of what’s happening in our network – not even for a minute. That’s why the Reporting Centre is manned 24/7, and that means working shifts: early, late, and nights. A typical early shift starts at 6:15 a.m. when we take over from the night shift with a short handover meeting. What happened during the night? What jobs are currently being carried out in the field? What is scheduled to happen today?

It usually only takes a few minutes before the phone rings for the first time. Up to 80 % of these calls are from staff registering for access to, or reporting back to confirm completion of their work on, pipelines or M&R stations. People also report faults and failures, and we have specific plans for investigating and dealing with them. There is a reporting chain with clear rules as to who needs to be informed about what and by whom. It applies across the company, from the technical departments all the way up to the board of management, and involves Communications, IT, Environmental Engineering and Materials, specific engineers and, if necessary, also the fire brigade, citizens’ hotlines and others. In the event of a partial failure of an energy network, for example, we check with the relevant utility whether the root cause is their responsibility. If necessary, we then send them our 24/7 service crew.

Shortened training period

As a foreman in maintenance at OGE, I was already familiar with many of the responsibilities of the Reporting Centre, but some systems such as the comms system were also new to me. I was taught the processes in detail in a shortened training course, and for the first four months I had a mentor with whom I did my shared shifts. However, it is important to do shifts with all your colleagues so that you get to know each other well. In these two-person shifts, we need to work hand in glove because of the sheer number of calls we receive. The nice thing here is that we all support and complement each other extremely well.

What’s typical of OGE?

First of all, OGE offers secure jobs. In addition, we are innovative and want to keep honing our skills and capabilities. What’s also typical here are the many perks: for example, the health budget for medical services that are not covered by the statutory health insurance. Or a working time account where you can accumulate overtime to save up for a sabbatical or early retirement. And things like a company pension, health care offers, a season ticket for public transport, or gym membership at a reduced rate.

In summary: Once you have arrived at this company, you don’t want to leave.

Moving to Germany from a country outside the EU, studying and working here – that’s obviously a special story for many. Mine was reported in a number of newspapers and on Deutsch­land­funk. I grew up in Russia, in Ulyanovsk, a big city on the Volga almost 1,000 km east of Moscow. I studied mechanics and mathematics there, graduated with a diploma and was gaining my first professional experience when I met my future husband. He had moved to Essen as a late repatriate and was visiting Ulyanovsk. It quickly became clear to us that I would also move to Germany. Before that, however, I wanted to complete a large project that I was responsible for as a mathematician and programmer in a company on behalf of the Russian Ministry of Health.

Master’s degree, baby, and OGE

After three years, I received my master’s degree and applied for a job with OGE after my maternity break. My goal was to become an engineer and working mother in Germany, and that’s what I achieved at OGE.

When I applied, OGE was looking for someone with an engineering degree in Dispatching. My qualifications fitted, and I also liked the company’s location in Essen, where I live.

Onboarding with a mentor

I was warmly welcomed into the team and had a mentor right from the start who explained everything to me, from the coffee kitchen to the actual job itself. I also received a lot of linguistic help, so I soon found it easy to make small talk with colleagues.

My induction phase of about one year in the Scheduling department as a control engineer was based on an extensive training plan. At first, I only did day shifts, but later I worked alternating shifts with early, day and night shifts.

Personal skills required

The most important thing besides professional qualifications is the ability to work in a team. You just can’t do the job on your own; everything is coordinated with your shift colleagues. You should also be able to adapt flexibly to new situations. Actually, no two shifts are ever the same. Thirdly, you have to enjoy communicating. We talk on the phone a lot with very different people, including from other countries. Especially during the time when gas flows switched from Russian supplies to Northern European sources, for example, we had a lot of contact with Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands.

How you are supported

We have training courses all the time – some are compulsory, others you can choose voluntarily. Most recently, I did a conflict management course. Our processes are not static, they are always changing. That’s why we have ongoing training.

Why OGE is a good choice

If you enjoy working in a friendly and diverse team, communicating with different people from different countries as well as acting on your own responsibility and making many decisions in a short time – I can only recommend Dispatching at OGE!

Broadening our horizons over and over again in our studies and careers but also literally: that’s what inspires me – and it works particularly well in my field. Today I work as a route planning engineer at OGE, where I deal with geography in the broadest sense on the project side. For me, this closes a circle that began with my fondness for geography lessons at school and continued with my studies in urban and regional planning.

While I was initially interested in small and larger urban spaces, I also found global urban structures exciting as my studies progressed. So when I got the chance to spend some time abroad in South Korea as part of my master’s programme at TU Dortmund, I didn’t hesitate.

Renewable energy infrastructures

My experiences from that time kindled my interest in future-oriented spatial planning. My horizon had broadened, and I wanted to work on large-scale planning of infrastructures for renewable energies, sector coupling and hydrogen.

That’s why I wanted to get insights into a company that does exactly that. I did some research on the Internet and came across OGE and a project on “Power to X”. I then applied on my own initiative with an exposé. The great thing was that my speculative application not only aroused OGE’s interest, but they then discussed with me how the position of a working student could be specifically designed around everybody’s needs.

Time for the master’s thesis

I was then welcomed into the “Technical Projects Management” department with a correspondingly open mind. There I had all the time I needed to write my master’s thesis. A colleague supported me professionally, and it all went so well that I quickly accepted when I was offered a full-time position after graduation. Although I already knew the department and the internal processes, the actual job was a new world for me. I was familiar with many things, but there was much I didn’t know.

Good planning also requires good communication

The question is always: how can we complete a new pipeline route in a way that ensures everything above ground looks the same as before the project? We discuss these things and share our ideas with our nature conservation, design and construction management departments. Of course, our plans must then be approved by the authorities. Communication with the authorities, and sometimes also with the landowners, is something we do ourselves. I also go along to meetings with landowners and the so-called “dialogue markets”, where we talk to local residents.

What we observe in this process again and again is that everyone wants modern infrastructure, everyone needs it, but no one is willing to accept the inconveniences that come with it. It’s a good thing that we at OGE deal with infrastructure that is largely underground and hence “invisible” to the public.