Our Industry Person of the Week is Preeti Prasad, a Senior Technical Engineer at Ecolab.
Q: How did you get started working in your field?
Preeti: For me “field of working” is only Industrial because over a decade I had diverse experience with multiple roles & dept. I started my career with my dream sector” Oil & Gas” in 2010 through campus selection, worked with Process units, and then joined Process Safety Management. After a few years, to balance my family life I moved to my hometown & end up as a job seeker. There, the opportunity was less for a Chemical Engineer, and my experience in the Downstream sector was not working. So, to keep myself rolling, I enrolled in PGD in Industrial Safety. Meanwhile, also looking for a job and got a chance to restart my career with a Start-up and was introduced to the domain of industrial Lubrication. Working in a small organization discovered my versatility and gave me a great opportunity to explore my skills by leading an entire vertical of the company. The exposure being a Lubrication technical consultant & business development manager was giving a wing to my career. Then again, it slowed down with a maternity break and a location shift to another city. However, I was jobless but passionate about work, the pandemic gave me a chance to become a freelancer. Worked with a few companies as an associated technical consultant in the same field of Industrial Lubrication & Machine reliability. With improvement in pandemic conditions, it was high time to restart as a full-time job. Came back again as a Senior Technical Engineer in the domain of Smart water management with digital solutions. Now within a few months of dedication resulted me as a Team lead of Downstream & Global Chemical. Yes, perseverance works!
Q: What do you love the most about your job? What are you most proud of?
Preeti: Versatility, Industrial Exposure, and Making Connections. I love to visit sites, talk to people, listen to their stories, and share mine.
I feel proud that despite having breaks, I balanced my family life and kept my career moving from rig to retail (O&G jargon)/scratch to Shine.
Whichever domain it is, I excelled in each, like when I was in Safety then I did PGD in Industrial Safety. When in Lubrication, bagged 2 ICML certificates, presented technical papers in the International Reliability forum, Speaker on various online webinars, published articles, etc. Now coming to the Water domain, cleared the internal exam on cooling tower competency. So, I believe that sometimes life doesn’t give us options, we need to ADAPT, LEARN & GROW in each situation.
Q: What advice would you give to someone considering this line of work or new to the field?
Preeti: One should learn to challenge herself/himself, that’s ok if u don’t know initially but be determined that someday you will be master. The industrial sector or STEM is the universe to learn, for example simply in a pump & motor, one can learn about Lubrication, vibration, Ultrasound techniques, Misalignment, Bearing Analysis, and many more. Always stretch your limits and be open to experiencing something new.
Q: Can you talk about a project you recently worked on?
Preeti: To describe my Project, let me give a brief of my current work pertaining to the Downstream sector. My company has an IIOT device installed at the customer’s utility side, monitoring parameters of water like pH, conductivity, chemical dosage, etc., and remotely providing digital solutions or troubleshooting for any deviation that happens to keep a check on Asset uptime. Recently, I worked on the value addition to arresting the deviation consequences faster with more insights in reports to support Sustainability Goals like Saving water, predicting Asset life, etc. Also, now am focused to design a roadmap to bring similar digital solutions for the process side of the Downstream.
Q: Anything else you would like to add?
Preeti: The more you learn, you will learn that more is yet to learn. Be a self-motivated person to achieve your dreams. And yes, keep growing wherever you wish to, but don’t grow up so soon means always be curious or silly to ask questions, do adventurous activities, and keep your heart young forever & why high.
Connect with Preeti on LinkedIn.
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