Tim’s Journey

Tim came from a small town in Queensland, Australia. He studied mechanical engineering at university and was able to get two industry based internships while pursuing his degree.

Later, one of his internships turned in a full-time position! He became a Condition Monitoring Engineer doing vibration analysis, oil analysis, infrared thermography, and hands-on time with the equipment doing shaft alignments and fan balancing.

Out of the blue, he got an offer as a Reliability Engineer in Western Australia with a major mining company. Since then, he has never looked back. Tim shared, 

“Growth over my career has come from working with some highly skilled people from maintenance technicians, to engineers, to people leaders. They challenged me, and while at the time it was uncomfortable, it made me a much better person.

Tim now resides in Salt Lake City, Utah, working to develop his own consulting business with a focus on the core reliability engineering processes. As he takes on this new venture, Tim said,

In my new role, I hope to mentor people who are new to reliability, especially those that are in a similar position that I was in when I started my career. I think we all have a duty to pass on our knowledge to those coming up through the ranks.

Having Experience, But Still Learning

To Tim, there are still aspects of maintenance he wants to learn more about. For instance, he has yet to learn the many specialized areas in precision maintenance, condition monitoring and reliability engineering. In fact, Tim expressed this,

The thing that interests me the most right now is how do we create the perfect frontline maintenance technician – what soft skills and hard skills do they need, and what’s the best way to arm them with these skills?

His passion to learn more about maintenance and reliability stems from his admiration for an industry that often goes unnoticed. Ending his story, Tim shared these insightful words,

“Just like the janitor at NASA helped put a man on the moon, maintenance helps to put food on the table, smart phones in our hands, and develops cures for diseases. We are essential to human progress.”