[Rhodes22-list] My Interview With Broin & Associates, Inc.

[Ronald Lipton]

Roger,

   Again, best of luck, I am glad to hear that the ice is breaking.
There is another interesting hydrogen economy article at:
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-12/p39.html
which discusses some of the detailed technical issues.

Ron

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger Pihlaja" <cen09402 at centurytel.net>
To: "The Rhodes 22 mail list" <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 5:56 AM
Subject: [Rhodes22-list] My Interview With Broin & Associates, Inc.


Hi Everyone,

I figured you might be curious about my telephone interview for the 
Technical Manager position at the Michigan Ethanol plant in Caro, MI.

Well, there's good news & bad news.  I was on the phone for about 75 minutes 
with Jerry Baker from Broin & Associates, Inc. yesterday, which is a good 
long interview.  Jerry started out by apologising regarding no interview 
back in September, 2004.  There was apparently some sort of missed 
communication between the Michigan Ethanol plant in Caro, MI and the Broin 
corporate headquarters in Sioux Falls, SD.  The information packet about me 
never reached the decision making managers at the corporate headquarters. 
So, it would appear my strategies to send a thank you letter to the hiring 
manager back in October, 2004 as well as send a packet directly to Sioux 
Falls, SD this time around were correct.  I was also able to find out the 
person they hired back in September, 2004 never showed up.  The Technical 
Manager position at the Caro, MI plant has been vacant all this time!  Broin 
sounds like a wonderful company to work for.  To date, they've engineered 
and built 20 corn-to-ethanol plants and they operate 14 of these plants. 
Two more of their ethanol plants will start-up and come on-line in 2005 and 
they will start construction of three more this year.  So, business is 
booming for them!  Broin is #2 in their industry, behind Archer Daniels 
Midland.

We discussed my biowaste to energy recovery ideas and my Bio-Energy Corp. 
business plan.  Jerry probed me with some technical questions designed to 
determine my in-depth knowledge of the dry milling route for the 
corn-to-ethanol process.  I think I handled those pretty well.  I asked him 
if Broin was disappointed that the energy bill didn't make it thru congress 
last fall.  He said Broin was sort of glad it hadn't passed despite all the 
subsidies in it for corn-to-ethanol.  It seems Broin ethanol plants are 
already profitable without the federal subsidies.  The subsidies would just 
keep a lot of inefficient competitors in the game!

Two issues came up that didn't go as well as I would have liked.  For the 
Technical Manager position in Caro, MI; Broin seemed to be looking for 
someone with experience in running and troubleshooting industrial scale 
fermentation reactors.  The Dow Chemical Co. doesn't run any fermentation 
type chemical processes.  At Michigan Tech University, I took a class in 
industrial microbiology, which discussed the theory & practice of these 
types of processes.  I pointed out my formal training; but, I had to admit 
I've never actually run a commercial scale fermentation process.  I asked 
if, as Technical Manager at the Caro plant, would I be able to call on my 
counterparts in the other 14 ethanol plants that Broin operates as well as 
the central engineering dept. at the corporate headquarters for 
troubleshooting assistance with the fermentation section of the process?  Of 
course, those resources would be available to me.  Aren't there also some 
lead operators with years of experience at the Caro plant?  I told Jerry 
that with all the resources available to back me up and my own expertise in 
process design and troubleshooting, I thought I could come up to speed on 
the fermentation reactors pretty quickly.  Other than the fermentation 
reactors, I've had direct experience with all the other unit operations in 
the plant.

The other issue that came up was my relative lack of management experience, 
despite my long career.  Just as at MRI in Kansas City, MO, I tried to use 
my experience as Chief Engineer at the ceramics market development plant in 
Russellville, AR as well as my Boy Scout Wood Badge management training. 
The experience in Russellville was from 1987-1990, which is not very recent. 
Jerry didn't seem to react very favorably to the Wood Badge management 
course either.  I e-mailed him some supplemental information on the Wood 
Badge program, which may help.  I used the same strategy at MRI when the 
issue of my management expertise came up & it seemed to work much better 
there.  I don't know, it's much easier to judge reactions and body language 
when you're sitting across a desk from the interviewer vs. over the phone.

Jerry also told me they were looking to hire some folks for their central 
engineering group in Sioux Falls, SD.  He told me my background made me 
sound like a much better fit for their central engineering group.  But, the 
hiring decision hasn't been made on those positions yet.  Jerry said he'd be 
contacting the rest of the candidates for the Technical Manager position in 
Caro, MI this week.  The next steps would be face to face interviews in 
Sioux Falls, SD and Caro, MI.  I should know one way or the other by next 
week.  Naturally, Deb is rooting for the position in Caro, MI and dislikes 
the thought of a move to Sioux Falls, SD even worse than Kansas City, MO. 
But, stay tuned!

FYI, for those of you that follow this subject, the January, 2005 issue of 
Popular Science magazine has an interesting article on the hydrogen economy.

Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilibrium
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