×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

New acronym: PPADS

New acronym: PPADS

New acronym: PPADS

(OP)
If I had to guess I’d say many engineers who work as project managers have experienced this nearly debilitating illness :)  

      P - Post
      P - Project    
      A - Adrenaline
      D - Deficiency
      S - Syndrome

PPADS is the “low” you feel 2 to 3 weeks after commissioning a large capital project.

Anyone else experience PPADS?

Thoughts?

Mike   

RE: New acronym: PPADS

much the same as PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) ?

would equally apply to exams, ot to when the results come back!)

RE: New acronym: PPADS

I have gotten a bit of that feeling at work.  However, I've gotten it much worse after finishing a great book or video game.  Movies not so much since they're so short and not as emotionally involved.  

I thought an acronym had to be readily pronounceable?  Otherwise it was just an abbreviation?

Like, for PTSD, you say "pee tee ess dee" but for Mothers Against Drunk Driving you say "mad".

RE: New acronym: PPADS

(OP)
Pronounced "PADS"

RE: New acronym: PPADS

Silent 'P' eh?  Sneaky!

RE: New acronym: PPADS

(OP)
My acronym - my rules
:)

RE: New acronym: PPADS

This acronym could be dangerous when pronounced:

"I am not sure why, but all this week I've had a case of bloody PPADS."

RE: New acronym: PPADS

I've always heard the acronym PPAP pronounced as "P-PAP".  Wouln't PPADS be similar? smile

RE: New acronym: PPADS

I hate to say this, however I will say it anyway.
Is there any way to modify this acronym to get it, closer, to bathroom humor?

RE: New acronym: PPADS

I accept the acronym. There are not enough FLAs in this world. This one fills a long felt need. And, yes. PPADS is what I feel after having worked on a project for a long time and then suddenly not. But the feeling is universal. I felt the same way when school finished and I had a long vacation ahead of me. Not that I disliked the vacation - it just came so sudden.

I think that there should be a debriefing period included at the end of every major project.

Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org

RE: New acronym: PPADS

A debriefing period?
Are you crazy? Go fishing or something relaxing instead.
The tedium of explaining everything you did and why, and what you didn't do and why not, to a bunch of guys who din't know enough to do it thenmselves and now want to use their superior hindsight to make you feel you didn't do such a good job after all and that they would have done it better?
I guess if you weren't crazy to begin with, you would be afterwards...
Debriefings are really pre-mortem postmortems, if you get my meaning, the only questions that need asking should already be answered:
Does it work? (yes)
Did it cost what we thought? (That'll be the day)
Is it making us money? (of course)
Will it break? (eventually)
Whose fault will that be? (not mine, the operator's, the supervisor's, the management's who will decide not to shut it down for maintenance when they should because it is making them too much money)

The time to evaluate is when you come to do it again by which time speculation is replaced by experience.
Of course there will be things not right and things left undone and even as you finish it you will know that "next time I'll do it different".

A lube oil plant manager told me "You will never get the project completed 100%. Just make sure that the 95% you get done is the most important 95%."

Always the pressure to switch on the money maker will take over. You'll tell yourself you'll come back and change this or that but you'll never get the chance.
If it breaks down for anyreason, as soon as that reason s fixed, which is where your resources go, it will be switched on again.

There are a surprising number of "next time" projects where first time errors are perpetuated for economic reasons.
A particular instrument never worked. It never will work and can never be made to work. Everyone knows it. You most of all.
Everytime they build this plant this instrument gets specified, bought and installed and then ripped out and replaced with what does work.
But the guys who cost these things always use the original costs and an escalation formula. This applies to the over-runs.  
The purchasing guys use the same BOMS.
The right bit of kit is always costed in the over-runs.

It's how it works.
Don't ask me why, but it does.
Getting the original specification changed for one item might seem easy enough but add in all the other items and the overall costs become uncertain and increasing.
Recosting costs too much.
It is cheaper to build it wrong and fix it than build it right; because you know that will work and you know what that will cost. That, at least, seems to be the message.

So a fair part of PPADS has to be a frustration factor, the knowing what you wanted to do to make it better (perfect) and knowing "they" will never let you do it but if it goes wrong, "they" will come and hound you about it.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: New acronym: PPADS

I think P-PADS would be the generic term for "Depends" ??
Both are a form of stress relief.

Rerig

RE: New acronym: PPADS

Supposedly druggies have similar experiences after the high. They fix it by getting high again.

RE: New acronym: PPADS

rerig (Aerospace)
There you go with that bathroom humor.
B.E.

RE: New acronym: PPADS

jmw,

Yes. A debriefing period. But we understand different things there.

You think about defending yourself and blaming someone else.

I think taking care of the souls that only a few weeks ago were spinning at a high rate and now don't know what to do with their time and energy.

I don't know if your definition of "debriefing" is more correct than mine. But I think not.

Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org

RE: New acronym: PPADS

Yes, Skogs,
but it is all a matter of degree and attitude.
Sometimes you have too much back slapping  and sometimes to much blame-giving and not enough objective analysis.
If you have a good team and good management a good debriefing can be invaluable.
I think there are times when the objectivity is lost and it is actually counter-productive.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: New acronym: PPADS

Sounds like a typical "seagull attack" design review-

when the beach was empty/paper was blank, they were nowhere in sight.....

once you spread out your picnic/ designed your design, they show up, squalking loudly & crapping all over everything, then dissappear.
winky smile

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources