October 28, 2022
What do music and woodworking have in common? Here at Pason, it’s Barry.
Barry has been a lover of music all his life. He even has a CD collection of over 2,000 albums. Throw in his passion for woodworking, which he discovered in his university years as a hobby, and you’ve got some pretty unique projects on the go!
“Recently, I’ve been interested in audio electronics,” he says. “My first audio project was a stereo where I designed the audio controls electronics (preamp & volume meter driver) while combining it with an off-the-shelf speaker amplifier.”
Melding his woodworking talent, he used solid cherry to build the stereo enclosure.
“The speakers were built from a kit but required attaching cherry veneer to match the amplifier,” he says.
Tapping further into Barry’s creativity, he’s thinking about how he’d love to take the woodworking/electronics concept even further by incorporating the look of a large 1940s radio with a touchscreen and computer interface.
Barry’s love for woodworking led him to join the Southern Alberta Woodworkers Society (SAWS) board of directors between 2015 and 2019. He was even the president of the society from 2016-18.
“I was part of their exhibition committee in 2015, 2017 and 2019, where I was responsible for photographing the entries submitted to the exhibition, as well as designing and publishing the catalogue,” he says.
“The photographs were featured in the Canadian Woodworking & Home Improvement magazine and the Furniture & Cabinet Making magazine in the United Kingdom.”
Barry loves a good project that challenges him — one of the many things he enjoys about working for Pason as a Technical Project Lead. His work experience includes exploration, production, and distribution within the oil & gas industry.
“I do a few different things that would fall under the Technical Project Lead,” he says. “I have been leading the Automation team, responsible for the AutoDriller and Pivot projects. A large part includes the electronic devices used to control the rig.”
Barry’s job consists of a mix of technical challenges and project administration. “I enjoy the mental effort required for both.”
He adds that he’s fortunate to have worked on many key projects over his tenure at Pason. As you can likely guess, creativity is something he likes best, especially when it comes to firmware design/development.
A project of importance to Barry includes his involvement with the Universal Junction Box (UJB), an application that runs as the primary source of sensor data for Pason’s Electronic Drilling Recorder (EDR) traces. This is something he’s been involved with since its design stage both as a project lead and firmware developer.
“I maintain much of the UJB’s firmware for general operations as well as the PVT ‘brain’ that runs inside the UJB,” he says. “I manage the UJB releases to the field and coordinate the UJB development with the EDR team.”
UJB is also a critical application for the AutoDriller, Pivot and PVT manual alarms.
Recently, Barry has been working on the Omni RigComm Application (ORCA), a RigComm communication engine that allows for greater connectivity between RigComm devices at the rig.
Barry has been with the organization for 20-plus years — specifically, 27 in the firmware/software engineering industry!
He appreciates experiencing Pason’s culture year after year, placing specific importance on working well together.
“Overall, I think our organization has done a great job making people feel like they are part of a team,” he says.
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