Instem Computer Systems, Staffordshire, UK

After university, I started work as a software developer for Instem Computer Systems, Stone, Staffordshire. At the time (1989-1993)Instem specialised in industrial computer systems and electronics.

Instem Computer Systems was one division in a small group of companies that make up Instem Plc. The other two divisions provide electronic manufacturing services and laboratory systems.

At that time Instem Computer Systems developed and integrated Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Systems for the utility industries. The Division focused on the UK utilities, and in particular Electricity Generation, Electricity Transmission, Electricity Distribution, Water and Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing.

Despite their fairly small size, Instem had an impressive clientele and track record. In the power generation, transmission and distribution industries Instem's clients included Nuclear Electric, National Grid Company, National Power, PowerGen, East Midlands Electricity, Midlands Electricity, Manachester and NorthWest Electricity and South West Electricity.

The company was established in 1970 and went public in 1984. Instem's facilities are still located in Stone, Staffordshire, just off the M6 motorway in the centre of the UK.

At Instem I worked on four major projects:

• Littlebrook: This project produced a complete, replacement monitoring system for the Littlebrook oil-fired, power station in Kent, UK. The system was written in C and FORTRAN for a network of Digital Micro-VAX machines con nected to Insteam's I-Range data acquisition devices.
  
• CSM: The Cable Section Monitoring (CSM)system project collected and processed information from electricity transmission cables belonging to the UK National Grid. Again, largely written in C and FORTRAN for Digital Micro-VAX machines but with the added twist of multiple Unix workstations providing an X-Windows-based user interface.
  
• Aberthaw: This project developed a new Automated Boiler Control system for the Aberthawcoal-fired, power station in South Wales. This project was written in the old Central Electricity Generating Board's (CEGB's) Generic CUTLASS language and ran on 16-bit Digital PDP-11 machines, a big step backwards from the modern 32-bit Micro-VAX's -based systems written in C and FORTRAN of the previous two projects.
  
• MEB/EME: This project updated of electricity substation remote monitoring and control systems for the East Midlands Electricity Board, UK and the Midlands Electricity Board, UK.Although there were separate contracts with the two clients, the software development aspects of projects were so similar that they shared development resources. This time it was embedded C running on a Motorola 68020 based industrial computer and included a four month trip to Calgary, Canada to work closely with the software engineers of industrial computer's manufacturer.

I left Instem in the summer of 1993 after getting married and moved to Singapore.