Bailey Mine - Part 2

"Sparks Flew from my Mechanical Pencil"

I went to my office and worked on some pressing permit issues, not thinking much about how I would present the new mine plan. Not realizing that if I embarrassed myself, my credibility would be shot, and it would take years to restore it. This was a core fault of mine, I always thought that any good idea would sell itself; salesmanship had little room in an Engineer's mind. In my gut, I just wasn't giving serious consideration of having to implement this new mine plan, because I believed there would be weeks of further reviews. Additionally, I knew that before making one change in the mining sequence, by law I would have to update the mine subsidence permit and mine ventilation plans, it was a matter of law and they take weeks to update. Thus, despite the rush to present it to Don and Jim, I thought it would be days if not weeks before any aspect of this plan could be put into effect.

At the appointed time, Dave and I headed over to Don's office. It was a large office, just down the hall from the drafting room. It had an above-average sized desk and separate area, with a decent-sized conference table that could seat 8. From my previous meetings with Bailey's management regarding air shafts, gas wells and mine planning, I knew the protocol would be to put the new mine plan on the table and let Don and Jim review it. The expectation was that they would criticize it, tear it apart, get their pound of flesh and then I would retreat back to my office to lick my wounds.

If Dave were a 10 on the "tough and well-seasoned chart", Don and Jim would be ranks near 100. This was just not a pessimistic feeling, as a Regional Engineer I had been through I knew these reviews would be professional but brutal. At Bailey these guys were not just tough and demanding they were extremely sharp, there was a reason it was the best mine in the world. There was no BS'ing them in any way, shape, or form.

With the freshly-inked mylar neatly rolled and tucked under my arm, Dave and I walked into Don's office. I laid out the plan on the table, only Jim was in the room at this time.
He looked it over and went through the same critique that Dave had, making statements like "You can't do that, this won't work, or what is this crazy scheme?" all to be answered quickly by me simply pointing to a different line on the mine plan. The mine plan spoke for itself. I, nor Dave had much to say to defend it.

The management at this mine had an inner vision; it seemed like they never asked a question they didn't know the answer to. After about 10 minutes of this intense cross examination, I took a breath and looked up, the office had now filled up with a dozen or so of Mine Foremen and various Assistant Foremen. It was standing room only.

Don had just entered the room from the private bath/shower area he shared with the General Mine Manager. He was positioned behind his big desk surveying the surroundings. Don stepped forward as the crowded room parted a path for him to the table. Don was somewhere in his 50's probably a High School grad, about six feet two, with 2% body fat and a shaved head to go with it. Essentially, he looked like Mr. Clean on those bottles of Ajax. He must have been a drill sergeant in the Marines. His physical aura was magnified by his personality, he was just one of those guys you knew not to mess with. As soon as he walked into a room you knew he was a leader, someone you immediately granted trust to.

As he approached the table, he asked Jim and Dave what they thought about it, both replied with a strong "It looks good". He then bent over and studied the mine plan, despite the room being packed with a dozen burly miners, most still wearing their hard hats and miner belts with self-rescuers and safety lamps clanking at their sides. It suddenly got as quiet as a church. He pulled back and then walked to his chair behind his desk. He asked a few select Foremen to look at it. They stepped forward, and essentially went through the same routine as Dave and Jim had previously done, making statements like "it won't work", and "that can't be right" only to answer their own question within a second or two. Again, Dave and I had very little to say. Within a few minutes, the select group reverted from critiquing the plan to praising it!

By now I had drifted or had been squeezed back behind Don's desk, positioned at his side. Don stood up and the room got quiet again. He turned and looked at me and asked, "Ok, what will it take to get this plan put into place?" All eyes were on me, the atmosphere in the room was exciting and anxious. With his question, I stepped forward to the front of the desk and partially turned to face him on my left and the group on my right and stated, "Well, there are several additional steps that need to be taken, specifically, I need to modify the ventilation and mine subsidence plans before any changes can be made underground".

He and I both knew that no formal submittals or approvals from State Authorities were required but the plans, specifically the drawings, just needed to be updated within 30 days of any changes, with a copy kept in our files and a copy sent to the state. Don responded to my statement with "I am sure you can meet the state's 30-day deadline" and then turned to his crew and started to pan them asking certain individuals what issues they had with the new layout. To a person, they all made complimentary remarks noting this would be a big boost to mine productivity. We could avoid putting in any new Continuous Miner units and it would allow the mine to catch up on the development of the mains and finally get out them out in front of the longwall units. No changes were offered by the small crowd, it was a rock solid (pun intended) mine plan.

At this point I was feeling pretty good about myself, then one of the General Foremen spoke out in the all too familiar Appalachia drawl, "Well if you all want to implement this, we're going to have to start tonight!" This caught the group's attention. He went on to explain that his crew was ready to start cutting the entryways for the next longwall panel on the upcoming night shift. He astutely observed that if this plan were not implemented in the next few hours it would have to wait for another 5 or 6 months before similar conditions existed!

It caught Dave and me by surprise. We quickly gathered that over the weekend, the maintenance crews must have run this section and made an all-out effort to push the right side mains forward. In a few shifts over the weekend, they made up two weeks of time. I thought, damn these guys are good.

Don then started a series of very direct questions to his crew about why we couldn't implement it the next shift. After a few minutes of a chaotic group discussion, Don said "Well I haven't heard any real reasons we can't start on it tonight, looks like the plan is a go".

My heart stopped; I thought no way could my idea created just a few hours ago be implemented the very next working shift! As everyone in the room started to feel good and with nodding heads affirming the decision, I blurted out, "Wait a minute, don't you think we are moving a little too fast? I mean don't we have to get Mr. Keil's (the Mine's General Manager who was on vacation that week) approval and then run it up to Corp in Pittsburgh for their approval?"

At this point, the room went dead quiet, and I mean dead. Apparently to get the room's attention I had taken center stage by stepping in front of Don's desk where he was now sitting. Since he was directly behind me I could not see his reaction to my comment but the whole room did. What was a very energetic, positive feeling in the room, instantly turned into a feeling of stark astonishment, with a whiff of fear, my gut was telling me I had just made a career-ending comment.

I stepped to the side of the desk and looked back towards Don quizzically; he rose very slowly and while he rose, I could not help but notice that anyone within arm's length of me was stepping backward. All of these macho underground coal miners had a deep respect for the man, and with that, there had to be some element of physical fear. I was too naïve to realize that I had just crossed a line, a line that no one else in the room had crossed. Don took a step towards me and in a calm but very firm voice, while putting his large firm hand on my shoulder, said, "Colin, I realize you're kind of new here, but if I say it's ok, then that is the final word on it, Mr. Keil and Corp HQ can deal with it later".

There was total silence in the room. There could be no response from me, no quick-witted phrase, or some macho comeback. I mustered up a simple "Yes sir" and with that, he lifted his hand off my shoulder and said to the team, "Let's get it done."

At this point, there was a little confusion in the room. It was as if a busload of doctors and nurses came upon a car accident, everyone felt they needed to do something but in reality, just a few people needed to take some key and critical actions, the rest just had to get out of the way. Dave spoke out and said it would take him about 20 minutes to work up the specific coordinates for the miner crew to adjust their cut in the upcoming shift. In this pause, I regained some of my courage and spoke out above the crowd, "We need to send the surveyors back down into the mine to survey in the new coordinates. Have they come out of the mine yet?" One of the Foremen spoke up and said he had seen them 30 minutes ago coming out and they must be in the bathhouse taking their end-of-shift showers. I told Dave to go start on your calculations, and I would find the survey crew and send them back underground for a 2nd shift.

Well, it was another 1st for the day, earlier in the day I had a "eureka moment" and literally had sparks flying from my mechanical pencil, then I had to put on a salesman hat to convince Dave, Jim, Don, and the whole mine management team of a new mine plan, and now I found myself walking through the bathhouse, tracking down 3 naked men in the showers and convincing them to get re-dressed and spend the next 4 hours back underground. Before I knew it I was alone in the big drafting room, Jim, Don, and the rest of the day shift had gone home, the 100-plus workers that made up the night shift were far underground cutting and hauling away the coal. Dave finished his calcs as the surveyors walked into the drafting room. It was all explained to them, and they headed to the shaft elevator, with a "you owe us one" comment. For me, it was time to call it a day.

The drive home that night was one filled with professional pride; it was very late when I got home so I just snuck into bed. I was out the door to work the next morning before Tammy woke. Thinking back I don't think I ever mentioned this event to her, it just got lost within the daily issues and chores of two working parents trying to make it in the 80s.

****

Over the next few days, I finalized the various permits and submitted them to the state. The changes were the hot item at the mine. Everyone I ran into could only say positive compliments about the plan and the meeting. The next week Mr. Kiel, was back from his vacation and we had an enthusiastic review as well. With his review and approval locked down, I ran a copy of the mine plan through the Regional and Corp HQ Engineers.

Interestingly, none of them showed any enthusiasm towards the plan, despite the obvious fact that it was a game changer. This created a little disappointed feeling in me. Here, I went to school for four years to learn the mining engineering trade, spent a year working underground to pay my way through college, then busted my butt for 8-9 years working in the trenches, fighting my way up the Corporate ladder, getting my PE and Master's Degree and I was not getting any reaction from my peers. It felt like I just hit a grand slam or returned a kickoff for 100 yards and all I could get from the Corporate honchos were, "Looks fine, seems ok."

I should have just brushed it off that their egos would not let them acknowledge that I could create something so effective. But from a wider-picture viewpoint, it was at this point in time that I realized I had reached the pinnacle of my mining career.

I knew in my gut that from here on out there would be no way to top this mining accomplishment. This experience opened my mind to search for another mountain to climb, a bigger mountain at that. Within 2 months I would leave Consol.

+++++

A few years later, after I had left Consol to start a career building power plants, I found myself in Pittsburgh driving by the Regional office. I stopped in unannounced. It was nice to see a few old faces, however, due to the ever-increasing pressure to reduce cost a fair number of the staff had been let go. The Regional VP, Sam, heard me in the hallway and popped out and said, "Come on into my office, and let's talk." This had never happened when I worked at the region.

We had a nice long talk, Sam stated he wasn't happy when I left. Honestly, I didn't think he knew me at all. He went on to explain that the new mine plan was truly a game changer. As a direct result of the changes I drafted up that morning Bailey's production rose by 50% to an unheard-of 9 mtpy. Sam mentioned that my plan also allowed them to defer millions in capital costs and forego the hiring of an additional 40 workers. It was a big win, a huge money saver, and consequently a big profit maker.

It was good to hear that my plan worked out so well. Yet a sense of bitterness started to build up in me. I recalled that shortly after the big mine plan change, my annual review came up. Consol short-changed me on my raise, denying items they promised me when I took the promotion to Chief Engineer. Within 2 months after that review I had left the company for a 20% raise with an opportunity to earn an additional 20% bonus. I don't know why I didn't tell Sam this was the reason I left. Oh well "water under the bridge."

35 years later Bailey Mine is still the largest underground mine in the US, and I am still very proud of that day when "sparks flew from my mechanical pencil."