How an Almaty resident mastered the rare profession of a rigging fitter
Every single job is valuable and useful in its own way. However there are some of them that only few people have heard of. Baigenews.kz correspondent met a fitter for repair and manufacture of rigging lifting devices in Almaty and learned about the particular responsibility he bears to a large number of people.
Rigging is a set of measures for loading and unloading of various cargoes, which due to its size or weight cannot be manually transported. To lift, for example, huge gate valves for heating pipelines weighing 800 kg and other heavy metal structures, loads weighing about a ton or more, you need special devices called slings. Such powerful slings are not sold in stores and do not deliver to enterprises from factories, and make their own from a simple ordinary steel rope. There are different slings – not only the usual two loops, but also ring slings, with hooks, chain slings, and they are made by a master whose profession is called a fitter for repair and manufacture of rigging lifting devices.
44-year-old Daulet Myrzhikbayev got a job in 2013 at Energoremont PRP under AlES. At first, he worked as a locksmith for repairing shut-off valves, as part of a team repairing shut-off valves, defecting, dismantling, cleaning gate valves for pipes of various diameters. The direct supervisor, having seen how Daulet can work with tools and metal, in 2015 offered him to learn a unique profession of rigger in parallel. During 3 years, while Daulet was helping Vladimir Gennadyevich Zaitsev, who was working as a rigger at that time, he learned from him all the subtleties of the rare specialty – how to take measurements, make braiding and many other things. When Zaitsev retired in 2018, Daulet himself became the only master at the company.
The principle of work of the rigger is as follows. A request is received by the master rigger with dimensions, drawings, and the specialist gets to work. He winds off the required diameter of the rope, cuts it, installs it on his work bench, makes a braid, puts a tag indicating the permissible load capacity, makes a record in the journal, after production sets the resulting sling on the test bench and if there are no problems, the sling is transferred to the shop where it was originally ordered.
“Our customers-locksmiths, by using these slings, lift heavy loads, large metal structures, stop valves, pipes, which come here for repair and after repair are used in the work of AlES. My duties also include testing safety belts once every six months. It is necessary for safety of work at height. When guys bring them, I put them on the test stand, look at the integrity of the chain or tape, depending on the design, also check the lock, the carabiner and put a tag. In our shop and at the facilities of the whole AlES, safety is observed very strictly. They even bring cutting stones to me for incoming inspection, here I have a test bench”б said Daulet Myrzhikbayev.
Recently, our hero learned that his rare profession in Kazakhstan comes from the Netherlands. He was lucky enough to be on vacation in that country, and during a visit to a shipbuilding museum, he learned that local sailors began using rigging mechanisms as far back as the 1600’s. Even the word «strope» or «sling» is translated from Dutch as «loop». Daulet saw a lot of historical machines in the museum, on which sailors used to weave these slings. In Kazakhstan, our hero has never met any masters in weaving heavy-duty loops, except for his teacher.
«This profession is not an easy one. First of all, the strops I make are used to lift very heavy loads, and if you make a strop poorly, an accident involving it can end someone’s life. Therefore, the work is very serious. Each sling is recorded in a log, checked by my immediate superior, the foreman. When I first came here to study, at first it was difficult in the shop, but when I gained experience, it was easier. This work does not tolerate haste, you need to carefully and painstakingly count the number of punctures, the size of the braid, take into account the turn – how to turn the machine to make it easier to make a puncture, you need experience. I think my serious attitude and a good teacher helped me get used to it», Daulet explained. He added that in addition to a technical mindset, a rigger must have good physical fitness. That’s why Energoremont has its own gym, where Daulet and other employees can warm up and pump up their arms during breaks.
«When you make strops, most of the strain is on your arms. I come in the morning, do my warm-up and get to work right away. It happens that in the afternoon I have time to do push-ups and squats, as well as to pump up on the bar. I work mostly alone, but guys, when my job is this hard – and sometimes I had 22 mm and 30 mm diameter strops, which have to be uncoiled, my colleagues help me to uncoil them, because it is hard to uncoil them alone – the cable is all greased. We uncoil it together and I install it, and then I braid it myself. In general, fellas sometimes help me, I wouldn’t say that I’m here alone all the time, but most of the time I work on my own», said Daulet Myrzhikbayev.
Thanks to my supervisors, he is now a member of the AlES tug-of-war team, and for the second year he and his colleagues go to competitions and win prizes. For example, this year he took the third place, but the most important thing is that this physical training is necessary in work.
In the process of work, our hero does not forget the words of his teacher.
«He always said – take your time. You need to believe in yourself and everything will work out, there is no need for haste. He was not very talkative, more as if in practice showed, prompted, taught, thanks to him I have been here alone for so many years. I have my own process – braided, made, put up a tag, wrote in the journal, tested, handed over. The process is automatic. When the diameter is large and guys help me, I show them how to do it, some of our employees already know how to do something. I think there is nothing so difficult in this work, I’m used to it, I guess. And I think that anyone can be taught, if they want to. They don’t send students to me yet, it’s too early. When I reach the pre-retirement age, maybe they will give me one then. It would be nice to teach someone, to show them. You can learn from hand to hand, the main thing is the desire to have hands from the right place, but if there is no desire, I think it will not work here. You don’t need to hurry, you need to count, pierce, tighten, prepare everything, you need stamina and patience, otherwise you can spoil the material and lose time if you rush. At first there were defects, I had to remake the product to make it successfully tested on the machine, but now experience, knowledge and responsibility play their role and there are no more defects», emphasized Daulet.
Now he and his wife have 2 children. Their daughter recently got married, and their son is in the 4th grade, knows languages well, studies perfectly and is fond of computers. Although both sports and car repair are interesting to him.
«When I repair cars, he helps me, he already knows which tools are needed where – screwdriver, keys, sizes, in general, for this age is normal, although I think he is more interested in IT-technologies, he may become a programmer. He was also fond of sports, now it’s just the first shift, it’s not very convenient to take him to classes, but when he was studying from the second shift he attended the karate sports section, which he had been practicing since he was 4 years old», Daulet said.
Daulet Myrzhikbayev states that it is not easy to instill in the younger generation a love of working professions in the current time of computerization, whereas in his childhood it was easier to fall in love with this business, it was more accessible. He knows this by example. During his schooling (it was Soviet times) he went to auto shop, helped neighbors and his school teacher Oleg Vasilievich in repairing cars. While serving in the army, the unit commander, having seen Daulet’s skills, who already then knew how to charge a battery, how to remove it, how to unscrew it, put him in the unit for servicing military equipment. In the second year of service Daulet was already in the sergeant’s staff and was more in charge. After the army he got a job at a service station, where he worked for about 9 years, and then his fate connected him with «Energoremont» and the rare profession of rigger.
Daulet Myrzhikbayev appears to be quiet and calm. But colleagues talk about him as the soul of the company, noting that at work he likes to play kindly jokes on colleagues. In his free time he repairs cars, especially since his wife is a car lover with experience and periodically needs to monitor the condition of her personal vehicles – good thing is that Daulet’s mother has a private house, where he has his own corner for repairing cars. Also the representative of a rare working profession with his family likes to travel in his free time. That’s how he is, Daulet Myrzhikbayev – an atlante of the repair shop with a rare profession, a modest and responsible man, loved and respected by his colleagues both as a specialist and as a person.