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Hundreds of engineers could be dismissed from the countrys biggest energy supplier by the end of the week as a bitter nine-month battle in the UKs latest fire and rehire debacle reaches its climax.

The standoff between British Gas executives and trade union representatives at GMB will come to a head on 1 April, when scores of the engineers responsible for servicing and repairing office and home boilers will be forced to accept longer working hours or lose their jobs entirely.

For the last nine months it has been the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing I think about when I go to sleep. The pressure were under is terrible, says one veteran British Gas engineer. Chris, 51, has worked for the company since 1987 but asked not to be named in full because he may be forced to accept the new terms and remain at the company to support his family.

Honestly, its made me ill. Its made everybody ill. We just cant understand how badly weve been treated why?

The tougher terms affect the entire 20,000 strong British Gas workforce, but its 7,500 service engineers who carry out repairs for 3.6m customers who use British Gas for servicing their machines fear they will take a disproportionate toll on their lives and livelihoods. British Gas claims that the percentage which have accepted the changes are in the high 90s leaving up to 1,000 to face a stark choice in the days ahead.

A kick in the teeth is probably the best way to put it, says Ciara Arrowsmith, 37, who resigned from British Gas in protest last month after 13 years as a service and repair engineer in Sunderland. I was always very loyal to the company, but I felt that what they were doing was immoral, she says.

British Gas set out the fire and rehire plans last summer as part of a formal consultation process with trade unions. The company said it hoped to streamline its employment contracts, and increase productivity, to help rescue the business from the risk of financial ruin. Trade unions said the plan amounted to bullying by threatening to set fire to jobs, terms and conditions.

It just became a really toxic atmosphere. I felt completely betrayed and it wasnt good for my mental health. I had to go on to medication, but now Im off, says Arrowsmith. It was just the uncertainty of what it was going to mean for the future because Ive got two young children. There are loads of people with young kids, with carer responsibilities. This strike was not about money, it was about time.

Under the new terms, full-time engineers would be required to work an extra three hours a week, 40 hours in total, and would not be paid a higher rate to work when required on weekends and public holidays.

Its a sad state of affairs, says another British Gas engineer, wary of using his full name. Paul, 45, has worked for British Gas in the London area since the early 1990s. He reluctantly accepted the companys new terms last week (two kids, big mortgage) but has continued to picket with union members to protest the companys heavy handed threats.

Most engineers have been with the company for a minimum of 10 years, going up to 40 years. We all have British Gas ingrained in us. If you cut us in half, you can read British Gas right the way through, he says.

Before the dispute erupted, many engineers had continued to fix home boilers and heating systems through the first wave of the pandemic, in full PPE, and had half-thought the company might give us a pat on the back for that, that we might get a bonus, says Paul. Then you find out that behind the scenes they have been plotting to effectively rip up our contracts.

He blames the company for allowing inefficiency to creep in, and expecting frontline engineers to bear the brunt of the decade-long commercial decline, which has sunk profits to record lows.

This is certainly not a position anyone wants to be in, says Chris OShea, chief executive of Centrica, parent company of British Gas. How did we get here? Our business has been declining for a number of years. Weve lost a million customers in the last 10 years. Our productivity has declined substantially.

The groups full-year earnings tumbled by more than a third to an all-time low of 80m last year, a fraction of the suppliers record-high annual profits of 742m reported 10 years ago, before a steady decline which toppled its parent company from the FTSE 100.

The decline of British Gas, once a jewel in the crown of Margaret Thatchers privatisation agenda, has accelerated as an army of nimble energy supply start-ups increased their market share by offering rock-bottom deals. Meanwhile British Gas boiler repairs and servicing have been eroded by a fleet of local white van engineers and repair experts, who can also afford to undercut British Gas rates.

Our costs are between one-third and one-half higher than the person with a white van, and that is an unsustainable position, says OShea. Without change we would continue to decline. So I took the decision to engage with all four of our trade unions Unite, Unison, Prospect and GMB to discuss this and seek a negotiated settlement. And we managed to achieve one with all but the GMB. Its deeply regrettable. But its about the long-term sustainability of our business, he says.

Weve tried as hard as we can to be fair. The vast majority are with us. Theres still time for everyone to join us too. But everyones got their own choice, and I feel strongly that everyone has to make the right decision for them and their families, OShea says.

For workers at British Gas, faced with a choice between working for less and unemployment, there are less than three days left to decide.

Original post:

A kick in the teeth: British Gas engineers face losing their jobs or longer working hours - The Guardian

Organizations large enough to have one or more data teams typically have a mix of data scientists, data engineers and data analysts on those teams. However, as companies become increasingly digital, they must be able to utilize massive amounts of data intelligently in a timely manner at scale. Achieving all that may require the addition of a DataOps engineer who can help the company operationalize its data.

DataOps is an Agile approach to data management that focuses on improving communication and automation of how data flows between data managers and data users in different parts of the organization. The goal of DataOps is to quickly deliver business value from data. It's also common in a DataOps framework to automate different portions of the data pipeline to improve data usability and value.

The DataOps engineer helps make that all happen.

Some believe data engineer and DataOps engineer roles are interchangeable, even though the latter title is relatively new. The common thread between the two is making data available for use by data scientists, data analysts and others.

Those that perceive the DataOps role as distinctly different typically describe it as a type of architect role. Robert Eichelman, senior technical architect of cloud and big data at ManpowerGroup Global, said DataOps engineers support the data sourcing and utilization cycle by defining and supporting the workspace process and technologies that others use to source, transform and manifest data.

"In most cases, this position knows how the data is utilized across the organization, but they usually never work with it directly," said Eichelman.

Brian Ray, global data science lead at digital transformation firm Maven Wave, said although data engineering is not new, it's reached a point of complexity where organizations need someone focused on the underlying infrastructure to make it more scalable, especially in the cloud. DataOps engineers also oversee the monitoring of data pipelines and infrastructure as well as the governance of the whole data engineering operation.

"DataOps engineers are architects of the enterprise's information stack," said Dave Mariani, co-founder and chief technology officer of AtScale, which offers online analytical processing solutions for enterprise analytics. "In the digital age we live in, data is the difference between winning and losing for enterprises."

The DevOps movement began about 20 years ago, arising from the realization that the speed of business was outpacing software delivery. To address that gap, many software teams adopted an Agile methodology, but there were still disconnects between the development and operations teams that necessitated the need for DevOps.

The DataOps engineer provides data engineers with guidance and design support around workflows and information pipelines and flows, code reviews, all new processes and workflows around utilizing data. Robert EichelmanSenior technical architect of cloud and big data, ManpowerGroup Global

Fast forward two decades, and DevOps teams now adopt continuous integration/continuous delivery, which involves building automated pipelines. Data teams have followed a similar trend with the emergence of automated pipelines.

DevOps and DataOps share several other key similarities:

"The DataOps engineer provides data engineers with guidance and design support around workflows and information pipelines and flows, code reviews, all new processes and workflows around utilizing data," Eichelman said. "[They] also help select the tools the overall team uses."

Poor choices in arbitrarily selected tools and technology can cripple an organization's ability to be flexible, he said.

Alicia Frame, director of graph data science at graph database provider Neo4j, said the lack of a DataOps engineer is a sign of an immature team.

"You have some really well-meaning data scientists with a Ph.D. trying to write ETL code, but if they make a mistake in the joins somewhere along the way, they've messed up the data pipeline because it's not their area of expertise," Frame said.

The best way to hire the "right" DataOps engineer is to understand what your organization wants to accomplish, what constraints exist and how the DataOps engineer role complements other members of the data team.

"I think often when companies are trying to hire DataOps engineers, they don't really know what the role is because it's a newer role, so they don't know what to look for," Frame said.

It's also imperative to consult other members of the data team and ask what specific skills a DataOps engineer should have to work with your pipeline.

"[The role] is often hired without the input of the IT department, who could say, 'This is the architecture. These are the things you should probably consider,'" Frame said.

According to Eichelman, companies tend to make the following three mistakes when hiring DataOps engineers:

"The [DataOps engineer] role evolved from problems encountered with data engineering role mistakes and missteps," said Eichelman.

Many organizations with the DataOps engineer role still make major mistakes because there are few blueprinted process solutions, he added. And it can be hard for organizations to influence others across all levels of the enterprise.

The DataOps engineer is a relatively new role that's growing in importance as organizations attempt to operationalize more data. While data scientists and data analysts can help the company drive more business value from data, they need to pull in data sets from different data sources and use it at scale in a governed way. In short, what the DataOps engineer does tends to fall outside the skill sets of other members on the data team.

Read more from the original source:

A look at the DataOps engineer role and responsibilities - TechTarget

OKEECHOBEE, Fla. Over the weekend the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began to reduce Lake Okeechobee releases to the Caloosahatchee River to 1,500 cubic feet per second as measured at the W.P. Franklin Lock and Dam (while making no changes to the current 500 flow out of St. Lucie Lock and Dam (S-80) that began March 6th.

The lake stage is at 14.67 feet. The lake has fallen 0.74 feet in the past 30 days but is still 2.55 feet higher than it was one year ago and 2.53 feet higher than it was two years ago. Rainfall could result in higher releases than the targets due to local basin runoff. The releases will be re-evaluated regularly.

After several months of holding steady, the lake began to recede in the past few weeks, and we anticipate that to accelerate from increased evapotranspiration and dry conditions as we move further into the dry season, said Col. Andrew Kelly, Jacksonville District commander.

Recently, water users have taken more water south, and the southern portion of the system has begun to return to more normal levels after a very wet Fall of 2020 limited the flows south earlier this dry season.

For more information on water level and flows data for Lake Okeechobee, visit the Corps water management website by clicking here.

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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reduce Lake Okeechobee releases to the Caloosahatchee River - Fox 4