Paul Ohep is a production supervisor at the Campbell Plant for Consumers Energy. Listen to his journey from Venezuela to Michigan.
Paul Ohep is a production supervisor at the Campbell Plant for Consumers Energy. Listen to his journey from Venezuela to Michigan.
Description
Me You Us, sponsored by Consumers Energy, dives deeper into the physical, financial, emotional, social, and professional pillars that make up our overall well-being and contribute to our mental health. Through the sharing of personal experiences and conversations with industry experts, we can collaboratively support one another and increase our consideration for the personal well-being of those around us.
Paul Ohep is a production supervisor at the Campbell Plant for Consumers Energy. Listen to his journey from Venezuela to Michigan.
William Krieger
The views and opinions of the guests of the Me You Us podcast do not represent the views and opinions of Consumers Energy. Hello, everyone and welcome to Me You Us, a wellbeing podcast. It's another wellbeing Wednesday here at Consumers Energy. And I'm your host Bill Creek. Today my guest is Paul Ohep He is a production supervisor at the Campbell plant here at Consumers Energy. So Paul, if you introduce yourself, we'll get the conversation started.
Paul
Hi, yeah, I'm Paul Ohep. I'm a Production Supervisor here at Campbell, one and two, I have only been with the company for about six months now. So still fairly new I came from the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station where I was both an engineer for a number of years and senior reactor operator and a control room supervisor for another four or five years after that and decided to move up here to be closer to my wife's family now that we have a young family. So we are excited to be here and really liking our culture so far.
William Krieger
Well, we're excited to have you hear Paul, for the audience, though. It really for me, because I don't really, I'm not familiar with the generating plants. What exactly does a Production Supervisor do? How do you earn a living?
Paul
Yeah, good question. So production supervisors are kind of like the liaison between the control room staff, the operating staff out in the plant and the rest of the organization. So we coordinate the operators themselves, like the work that goes in the unit, we set the priorities for the operating crews, we also work with maintenance to coordinate all their work that's going to be going on for the shift or for the coming weeks and things like that. And particularly me, my role is more of dealing with clearances and tagging. What that means is that I my job, day to day now is to make sure that maintenance has the right conditions, to be able to go to work safely. So if they want to work on a pump or electrical equipment, or breaker or whatever, they need to make sure that there's no sources of energy coming in there. So I work with them. And I work with the tagging operator that I work with, in order to come up with a plan to set the conditions for them to go work safely. And so that's kind of what I do.
William Krieger
Well, it sounds like a lot of responsibility and a lot of work but also coming from the nuclear power plants like you did, I can imagine that you're the right man for the for the task. So you've been at consumers for about six months. And you were saying that you had moved up here to be closer to your wife's family? Because you're a young family now. So it sounds like you might have some children or at least a child in there somewhere.
Paul
Yeah, we have we have a one-year-old and a two-year-old.
William Krieger
So you're not busy at home at all? Yeah.
Paul
Oh my god, it's chaos every day at my house, but I mean, they're great. They're great kids. And we love them, obviously. So real busy, for sure. Every day, we have, you know, activities for the toddler and playgrounds, and now the weather's getting better. So we're always doing something with the kids.
William Krieger
And that's awesome. You know, my, my two youngest kids, I have a son who is a little bit older. My two youngest are about a year apart, like a year and a day apart. And I'm sorry, they're two years in a day apart. So don't get me wrong. But anyway, to have them close in age like that, as they get older. They were able to, you know, entertain one another, which took a little bit of the load off mom and dad. So you have that to look forward to.
Paul
Oh, thank god. Yeah, yeah, well, we can't wait.
William Krieger
Okay, but you also have some sibling rivalry to look forward to. So just keep that in mind as well. We, you know, we were talking earlier before the podcast. And, you know, the interesting thing was that you, you actually came the United States from Venezuela about 20 years ago. Can you talk a little bit about what that was like for you? And then what, you know, what made you pick the United States to come to what, you know, what was going on in Venezuela at the time.
Paul
You know, I went to high school in Venezuela. And over there, that time, the political situation had just changed. And this, this guy called Hugo Chavez was pretty famous. back then. He got into power in 1998 and I was in high school, and then I thought, you know, I was kind of reading the writing on the wall and then seeing that, you know, this, this may not be the right place for me going forward if I want to go to college and everything like that, and, and I was extremely fortunate, and I'm really lucky that my grandpa, my grandfather, on my mom's side, he was from New York, he was American. So because of that my mom is an American citizen, and that that gave me the opportunity to be able to emigrate to the United States, through a pretty easy legal path compared to a lot of the people that that want to move here. So I was very fortunate that that happened. And I decided to take advantage of that. Right after I got out of high school, since the situation over there was not a great, so watch, like, you know, many other immigrants, I came here looking for a better opportunity. And, and, you know, I've been really fortunate and lucky so far that I've been able to make the most of it.
William Krieger
So Paul, I was curious, though, you know, we talked about that. Your mom being a US citizen, how was your path here different? Did that automatically make you a citizen?
Paul
No. So the rules have changed over the years. But back then in, you know, early 2000s. If you were between ages of if you are under 18, and you're your mother's a US citizen, then you can get automatic kind of citizenship granted, if your mom were to move to the United States. And you're a minor once between the ages of 18 and 21. At least this is all back then you were able to get a permanent residency card, what it's still called a green card, even though it's white, kind of weird. But so that's the path I took. I was pretty much not immediately granted, but it was a pretty straightforward, easy process for me, we, you know, we are just my mom just went to the consulate down there and then just petition me fill out a form just and then I got granted residency, and I was able to come here, normally.
William Krieger
Okay, and so you came here and if I'm not mistaken, you went to Arizona first. Right? You had some relatives there?
Paul
Yeah. My, my dad's sister, who lives there still lives in Arizona. And, you know, I, I actually never met my aunt until I got there. So, you know, my aunt was very, you know, I was, again, very fortunate that that my aunt was able to willing and able to take me in until I found, you know, a job and everything like that and figured out what I was going to do. And again, I was 18. Right. And, and I really not much of a clue exactly what I wanted to do. But I knew I had to figure it out quick. So you Yeah, that's how, you know, I met her and then lived in Arizona for another 20 years until I moved here last year.
William Krieger
And you went to Arizona State University, right?
Paul
Yeah, yeah. After a few years of working on whatnot, I figured out what I wanted to do. And I knew I always knew I wanted to go to college. I wanted to be an engineer. And so I knew I was smart enough to get through an engineering program. So I just went to community college and then transferred to Arizona State University and graduated with a mechanical engineering degree.
William Krieger
All right, and then what did you do from there?
Paul
So I, while I was in college, I interned oil refinery for Chevron in California, that was a great, amazing place to work and have a job. But then the next year, I interned at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in we just west of Phoenix, and, and I was very impressed with just the safety culture that they had the way that they, they run business, you know, it's the largest power generator of any kind in the country and one of the largest in the world. You know, they put out 4300 megawatts of power 24/7 On three units. So it was just very impressive place to, to see and after being an intern there, they you know, they offer me a job as an engineer, so I, I took it and, you know, I really enjoyed my time there, learned a lot. And that's how I Started my engineering career over there.
William Krieger
Wow, that's quite a story. You know, it's interesting because here at Consumers, we have quite a robust internship program. And many times I will interview people and talk about their path to working here. And it's, it starts out with an internship program. So it's interesting to me that you're all the way across the country in Arizona. Here's this other power plant in in basically kind of the same thing.
Paul
Absolutely, yeah, I think I was very involved with the internship program, after I started working there, I feel like our best path to getting the best candidates possible, it's really to, through an internship to build up your pipeline, that way that works, not only engineering, but in the maintenance, we had an internship program there too. And it's just, you know, it really gets a good picture of the people that you want to hire, and they get a good picture of what you are as a company as well. So for, you know, three months or whatever, so he was really good. It's a really good concept. And I'm glad to see that, that we do it over here as well.
William Krieger
Well, along with internships comes a lot of mentorship. You know, I talked to a lot of leaders, not only in our company, but other companies. And one of the common themes is that, you know, none of us got here where we're at necessarily our own, there was always someone there to help us out or mentor us along. Have you had mentors like that in your career in? Could you maybe talk about a great mentorship moment?
Paul
Yeah, we, I had, you know, several mentors, from where I started as an engineer. And I think I work with a lot of a lot of folks that had been there when the power plant was initially built and started. And they were about to retire, but they had just a wealth of knowledge on the plant itself. And, you know, there was one particular engineer that had been there for a long time. And he really taught me, you know, the importance of supporting operations. And, and really, what your job is an engineer at a power plant is, is to support whatever operations needs to have an operational focus to understand that the operators are your customers. And no matter how many what is going on, you need to be always thinking about what does operation need to be able to run this power plant in a safe and event free manner? So I think that kind of stuck with me. And that's one of the things that led me into wanting to go into operations as well.
William Krieger
So along with that, I know you've only been here for six months, but during your career, have you provided mentorship to other young engineers coming up?
Paul
Yeah, I, I had, I was always again, I was involved with the internship program after I started. So I always made it a point to request my HR department to assign interns to my, to my department, and then I would develop plans for them for the summer and have a good idea what is it that I would want to learn, like, if there anything that I didn't get well on my internship that I would want for them to learn. And the main thing was always trying to get them to work on something that requires a lot of plant like walking down and understanding equipment and being around an operating power plant, because you don't see any of that in school at all. So the more field time that they had, the better I think their experience was going to be. So I was very involved with trying to, you know, get him through all that as much as possible.
William Krieger
Well, you know, you've been very successful in what you do. And it's always great to give back, especially through those internship programs, because that's really, you know, getting people right when they're starting out and maybe helping them through some things. And I like what you said there about, hey, there were some things I didn't get. So I want to make sure that these folks are getting those things that I didn't get. You know, the other question I have is, you came here from Venezuela, you know, we talked before there's some infrastructure problems down there. There are a times without water times without electricity. I know that you still have family that are in Venezuela, and what's that like, for you when you go back and visit?
Paul
Yeah, um, so it's, uh, you know, it's tough. People over there, try to live their lives fulfilled as possible, just like we do here. You know, my dad still lives down there and sometimes I talked to him any, you know, he tells me that like, oh, yeah, you know, we don't power went out today or power went out last week like three or four different times for a few hours and you know, at the beginning, maybe they were bothered, but now I think everyone just kind of copes and with the reality of their situation and they still find a way to be happy, even with some of the struggles, like, you know, they're like my dad's building didn't have there was a period of almost two years where they would only get running water for one day out of the week. And then the rest of the week was 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night for you know, over a year, like almost two years and until they all got together, and dug have some, but someone put a deep well in it so that anyone in their apartment buildings and the surrounding ones could get running water all the time. And now they have water. So talk about agility, right. And we talked about agility a lot at work. And, you know, there's people in other countries that don't have the same privileges that we have as Americans and, and they have to be really agile in their day-to-day activity. So yeah, it's ongoing. But you know, it's just reality for them.
William Krieger
You know, the other thing Paul, I wanted to ask you about was, you know, you went to ASU, you got your degree in engineering, you've been working in the power industry for a while, was an engineer something you always wanted to be like, when you were a kid? Did you like, oh, I want to be an engineer, or, you know, what really kind of sparked that interest for you?
Paul
Well, I think, for me from usually, culturally, engineering is at least a set the higher sciences and math and things like that STEM careers are very popular with, you know, just families just want their kids to grow up to be either engineers, or, you know, doctors, lawyers, things like that. So I knew I was always good at math and science and things like that. And you really have to study that much to be able to do well in school. So when I, my plan, when I was still down there was to graduate and go to engineering school, because like, that's what my friends were doing. That's what we were doing. So my parents were definitely fine with that. So that was my plan originally. And then, when I moved up here, I had no idea. But then I knew I was like, Hey, I know I'm smart enough to do this. And, and I've always wanted to be in a field that was challenging and technical. And so that's kind of why I picked it.
William Krieger
You're actually fulfilling what it is you have wanted to do with your life.
Paul
Yeah, I'd say so for sure. I think. Yeah, so far, so good.
William Krieger
Well, and I guess another question, too, is that, you know, as a successful engineer, doing the work that you do, do you ever see yourself as an example, or, as someone that someone would look up to, you know, many times we talk about, you know, different career fields, and maybe people don't feel like that they can get into those fields. But, you know, you are a great example, you ever see yourself as kind of that example of what people can do if they put their mind to it?
Paul
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, again, I was, I feel like I'm very fortunate and lucky that things kind of played out the way they did for me and not everyone has as easy as opportunities. Or as you know, coming from different backgrounds may not have the same, the same path that that I've had, but at the same time, I do feel like you know, everyone that I've talked to my cousins or siblings or when any, anyone younger my interns when I was an engineer, I definitely try to, you know, explain what I went through and how I got to where I am and, and then indeed, like, if you really feel like that you want to get challenged yourself by going to through a more technical program and something that requires a lot of effort you can do it. Like you said, if you put your mind into it, and you have the right condition set for you, but so yeah, I definitely have always been involved in kind of mentorship programs with younger engineers and through people in school at ASU, I work with them a little bit. And then I was judged the national science fair that they did at Phoenix, one time. So I've been trying to be involved in mentorship type roles. And I really enjoy that as well to kind of share some of my learnings over the years. So yeah, I guess I, I've been involved with that.
William Krieger
Well, and you know, you said it a couple of times, you've been fortunate that your path was not necessarily easy, but easier than some other folks. I'm just curious was, has there ever been a time, Paul, when you were just like, you know, you're like, oh, I don't know if I can do this? Like, have you ever been challenged to the point where you were almost doubting your ability to do something? And how did you overcome that?
Paul
Yeah, absolutely. I think the best example was trying to get through my nuclear licensing program, initial training program. So in order to become a senior reactor operator, from just being an engineer, you have to go through almost two-and-a-half-year process of just training. And it's, it's grueling training, it's you have to learn everything about a nuclear reactor, how everything works, you have to learn some nuclear physics, a lot more thermo, which I had strong background on. So that was fine. The electrical theory, you have to learn all kinds of stuff, and then you have to learn how to operate a nuclear power plant. And most of the folks that I was in training with, we're all former Navy nukes. So they had already gone through, you know, six years of practice in the Navy to do that want the same job that I was training from scratch, and I was training to be a senior reactor operator, which means I had to do both the reactor operator jobs and the senior director of better jobs, and I had to train for both, because my license will be allow me to do both jobs. So it was, there was definitely times that I thought, like, there's no way I'm going to be able to, like, get through this program. And, you know, I, I really just like, talk to as many trainers as I could, like, try to see, like, just look for reinforcement from my peers, and from trainers, like, hey, this is possible, this is how you can do it. And let's figure out a plan to get through some of the areas that you're deficient on and try to find a structure so that it doesn't look so daunting that you can do you know, kind of one topic at a time, or get extra time in the simulator. You know, we put hundreds of hours of extra time in the simulator to make sure I knew everything I needed to know. And then but eventually, I mean, I got through it. And he was the most humbling experience of my entire life. And the hardest thing I've ever done by far, like academically, so there were definitely times that I thought I couldn't do it. But you know, we ended up pulling through it at the end.
William Krieger
That sounds like an awful lot of work, and very, very stressful you know that kind of brings me to another question. So, you know, you spent a lot of time in Arizona, you've moved your family, here to Michigan, you have young children, you have a very demanding job. Here, I'm sure that your job was demanding as well in Arizona. And so what do you do to take care of yourself? The reason I ask is that many times, as leaders, as hardworking people, we really concern ourselves with making sure other people are taken care of, and we don't necessarily take care of ourselves. So I'm wondering, Paul, are there things that you do to make sure that you're taking care of yourself?
Paul
I try to, I like I enjoy running, I enjoy biking. Working out living an active and healthy lifestyle. We, my wife, and I really enjoy all those things. But with that said, you know, still kind of figuring out how our routine is, and our kids been wanting to my wife. She's a physician assistant in psychiatry, so she's pretty busy also. So trying to find time to not take away from our kids, right, and then us doing some things that we like to do, it's still challenging, and we're still trying to figure out a way to, to be more active and get back to, you know, the activity level that we had when, when we were back in Arizona. And I think, like, I think we just signed up to do a 5k in a few weeks in Holland for the tulip time Festival, and, you know, that helps us sometimes, like if we have something that we just sign up for, that kind of forces us to train a little bit and get out there and be active. So that's, that's what we've been doing so far. But you know, hopefully, we'll get to a more regular routine.
William Krieger
Excellent. So it does sound like you had a good routine. And now it's just a matter of getting back to that. So it's good to know that you do think about taking care of yourself. And that goes a long way with your overall wellbeing. So Paul, we are getting close to the end of the podcast. But before I go, I'm just wondering if there's any message that you would like the audience to take away from our conversation today?
Paul
Yeah, I think, you know, one thing I've learned throughout my career is to, to try to be as humble as possible when in a professional setting, or anywhere, really, but at work. Be open to feedback, I can't tell you enough, like how much that's helped me, especially in the second half of my career, after I transitioned to operations and went through the training program, just understanding that you only are going to get better if you are open and willing to accept feedback and use it and be aware of the things that you're not doing right, or the things that you could do better. Never take anything personal when people try to give you some sort of feedback and always look at you first and see what is the I'm not doing right for my department that I could, that I could fix, or I could help get better at so that I can make my department, or my team get to the next level. So I think that's, uh, leave you guys with that. And hopefully we can reflect on that and keep growing.
William Krieger
That’s great Paul, it's an excellent message for the audience. Thanks for taking the time out to be on the podcast and I look forward to talking to you again in the future.
Paul
Great. Well, thank you so much, Bill. appreciate the invite.
William Krieger
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