the prosource diaries — Eric

Spend a day with Eric, a Service Delivery Lead

06:15 – 07:30: I’m away from home today – I normally work remotely from my home in Houston, Texas. As part of my role, I regularly visit the site I support – a refinery in Toledo, Ohio - where I’m responsible for day-to-day infrastructure operations and project support. Today, I have to be ready to leave at 7:30 to go to the refinery. I’m with two members of the network services team that are also visiting from Texas.

08:00-08:30: Conference call with the executive leadership team to discuss a current project - migration from an aging legacy phone system to the selected new phone system.

10:45-11:00: I escorted the network team lead to a meeting in the refinery so he could discuss sharing fiber with the PCN (petroleum-grade naptha) superintendent.

11:00-11:30: Worked on upgrade plans/designs for 5-6 conference rooms in the refinery operations center.

11:30-12:30: Another conference call to discuss the list of phone numbers being migrated to the new system

12:30-13:30: Lunch at Chipotle (burrito bowl + chips)

14:00-15:00: Bi-weekly national call with the client’s main communications and telephony supplier to discuss regional issues, ticket metrics, and local updates

15:00-15:30: Weekly call with local IT field services and the Toledo Service Owner to discuss Toledo network issues

16:00-17:00: Most people in the refinery leave by 4pm so I get caught up on emails.

17:00-20:30: An unexpected emergency! The two network services people that I was traveling with have encountered a major issue while doing the work they came here to do – they can’t leave until it’s fixed. I wasn’t going home anyway so I pitch in and help get it resolved.

21:00-22:30: A late dinner at “Luckies”—steak medallions and onion rings with a nice local brew… then back to the hotel. A very long day today, but a productive one.

Any gaps between my meetings and conference calls today were filled with emails, team chats and in-person conversations about audio-visual upgrades, new hire onboarding, laptop/desktop deployments, printing for people with non-client owned devices, printer deployment, printer returns, printer repairs (I admit I hate printers!), IP addresses for security controllers, truck scale project issues and phone deployments.