A Commissioning in Ammonia

A COMMISSIONING IN AMMONIA Continues the adventure… Which began as getting a project approved And then building an ammonia-based fertilizer factory. There’s keeping the Head Office satisfied And controlling a group of smart people at several levels Plus covering what government regulations require Then getting the factory built is not the end of the job After that there’s commissioning, making it work And all the odds and ends of left-over details to be completed Including making the contractor finishes what he’s paid to do And then there’s company accounts to be signed off After all that we hope we have a reasonably happy “working family” Because people are an essential part of running a business So although this is about engineering and management It’s a story about people. R. B. Ward has many years’ experience in engineering and management and has used this knowledge to establish the fictional and futuristic Homeworld and Cheap as a tribute to engineers both past and present. —John Morrow’s Pick of the Week ‘A Commissioning in Ammonia’ follows ‘A Project in Ammonia’ as Book 2 of the trilogy by this author. Written in the same crisp style we are thrown immediately back into the maelstrom of personality clashes, hidden and/or conflicting agendas, power plays, time and money constraints and the inevitable rationalisation of the demands of ‘the job’ as opposed to the needs of ‘the family’. This latter being both the on the job family and the blood related family. The lessons to be learned by all other disciplines going from an academic placement to any company of medium to large size [including any bureaucracy] are invaluable. I look forward to reading the final episode in this trilogy. —Kate Smith The differences between management styles in London and at Muddy River are quite interesting. I feel the writing is better and more readable than the previous work. Somehow I feel the characters are more real. —Andrew Banta, retired engineer and academic Ward permits the reader to vicariously experience the turmoil and triumphs of his characters as they face complex decisions about life, love, responsibility at work and at home, conflict concerning personal identity, and the meaning of integrity in all its forms, as the culmination of their joint efforts on commissioning day draws closer. —Christine McGuigan, Kensington Review