📢 “FAULT STATUS – LOW SWITCH”

It started with a tiny alarm blinking on the SCADA panel.

Not red. No sound. Just… unobtrusive. Yellow.
Label: “FAULT STATUS – LOW SWITCH”

“Well, that’s low, right?” said Wiesiek from the night shift. “It was already on when I arrived.”

“I thought it was leftover from the weekend,” added Marek from the day shift. “What am I, an electrician?”

“I didn’t even look at it because it was my coffee break day,” said Staszek from the afternoon shift. “My coffee break synced up with the biologist’s. That’s how it happened.”

THE ALARM LASTED FOR THREE SHIFTS. 27 HOURS.

🕵️‍♂️ Zdzichu launches an investigation

True to my self-appointed role as the plant’s archivist, I sat down to review the incident log.

Time of occurrence: 04:12
Response time: none
Comment: none
Paper note: none
Status at the morning briefing: yellow and shiny like margarine in the break room

I gathered the team. Wiesiek, Marek, and Staszek sat like they were at a formal inquiry.

“Who was first?” I ask.
“He was!” they say in unison.

📈 Expert analysis (that’s me + a marker)

Using the latest technology (a marker and a flipchart advertising fertilizers from 2008), I developed a schedule for ignoring the alarm:

1. Night shift: “It was already on.”
2. Day shift: “Not me.”
3. Afternoon shift: “But nobody reported it.”

Everyone did nothing. But in full compliance with procedure.

⚙️ What kind of alarm was it?

After downloading the manufacturer’s catalog, translating it from Czech, and making a coffee—I determined that:

“LOW SWITCH” means there’s slack in the contacts of the aeration valve, which may (but doesn’t necessarily) cause flow miscalibration and flooding of the secondary clarifier.

So, a delayed-action bomb. And for three shifts, we fed it with ignorance.

🔧 The Fix

I grabbed a screwdriver, a 10mm wrench, and a piece of rubber from a pen advertising a water and sewage conference.

I turned it, reconnected it, reset the system—and the alarm went off.

I stuck on a sticker:
“If it blinks again – DON’T PRETEND YOU DON’T SEE IT”

💬 Zdzichu’s golden nugget of wisdom

Sometimes it’s not about the malfunction. It’s about who’s first to say, “Not me.”