The author never imagined he would have a story to tell.
Perception or Reality conveys stories from the author's career as a civil servant (federal employee).
Amusing and troubling stories within the backdrop of tasks and projects of his engineering career.
Scroll down for: About the Book and About the Author.
About the Book
Most government engineers hired straight out of the university into facility-oriented agencies tend to work in the development of projects and take into account user needs, organizational criteria, and other elements. Such projects are packaged as documents that are submitted to the US Congress. Congress works to review the documents package and decide on which of the projects to fund. But in the 1990s, chaos and disorganization brought about by Base Realignment and Closure, known as BRAC (and an Act of Congress) saw this recent college graduate thrust into a role that seemingly matched that of a state-licensed electrical engineer. Aided by his post-graduate studies in an electrical power systems emphasis, the author provides the insights he gained as he swam against the tide of a workforce seemingly placed in a state of confusion, a state of shock with regard to driving naval facilities projects. Among the issues encountered in his swim against the tide:
• Transformer impedance effect on short circuit let-through
• The cramming of outlets onto circuits that doesn’t account for load ratings
• Using light fixtures as the be-all and end-all of lighting system design
• The overloading of panel boards due to a lack of understanding between typical load and peak demand
• The resistance of many to stand against any whim in the interest of not becoming the next job loss candidate
This memoir of the time, regarded as a recent graduation with merely a bachelor of science in electrical engineering (the author is dumbfounded that he had a memoir to write), shares amusing and troubling stories from the author’s career during that time of chaos and disorganization. (Truth is stranger than fiction!)
William Maskevich is a first-time author writing his nonfiction memoirs.
Perception or Reality will be published in early 2025.
Learn about Perception or Reality as it journeys to publication.
I never understood how the author could be flabbergasted … until I read his manuscript!
Anonymous
About the Author
The author graduated with a BSEE in December 1992. Prior to graduating, he was hired by the US Navy into a student engineering program known back then as the Cooperative Education Employment Program, or co-op program for short. The co-op program was meant to provide engineering experience to those pursuing an engineering degree as part of an effort to recruit such students upon graduation into the Navy’s civilian workforce. Thrust into a role of contract management, the author gained a broad range of necessary knowledge regarding government contracting. Even though the knowledge was not deep enough to be a contract specialist, the author was told such knowledge would serve to keep him out of trouble; that is, the knowledge would guide him against those who, whether through ignorance or nefarious intentions, would seek to exploit the government contracting process. Although the author did not work on the contracting side of the house after his graduation, the learnings during his student employment served as solid grounding as an in-house electrical engineer (GS-850) with regard to the proper functioning of government agencies, which is what the Navy is considered to be from a legal perspective.