Road Warrior - VEMS Installation

I felt like a road warrior last week, but a little background before I get into that.  Our T3 division has developed a software solution called Pocket Solutions which runs on PDAs to assist clients with Visible Emissions monitoring in the field (method 9 & method 22).  Its a great tool that eliminates paper in the field - if you've ever been to a cement plant or other industrial site you'll understand why paper reports can be a major hassle with the dirt and wind.  I helped write three proposals for installation of our latest VEMS version a couple of weeks ago.  One of the cement plants that wanted to upgrade let us know that they didn't have the budget for it this year, then we received a call from their corporate ISO compliance officer the next day advising that he had made the decision to make VEMS their corporate standard to assist with ISO compliance.  That was great news for us, except that they wanted us in Oklahoma early the next week.  Now comes the road warrior bit.  A Senior Consultant and I picked up a rental car last Tuesday and headed to Oklahoma around noon.  We arrived at the hotel about 7:30 PM & grabbed a bite to eat.  We were on the road to the cement plant by 7:30 AM the next morning and spent the entire day on site taking digital pictures of their emission sources and loading the desktop version of the software onto five computers.  Back at the hotel that night I loaded the PDAs with the proper software while the other consultant modified the digital pictures of the emission sources for the database.  Normally I would have been part of the training the next day for the plant staff, but I was needed back in Kansas City for the first ever Trinity Boot Camp (more on this in another post).  So I was up early for a 2 hour drive to the Oklahoma City airport, where my flight would put me back in KC just in time for Boot Camp.  The road warrior feeling really didn't set in until the long hours of Boot Camp started taking their toll.  It was a successful software installation & feedback from our client was very positive.  We're planning another trip to Iowa in a couple of weeks for another software installation at another cement plant.  After that OTJ training, I'm taking over the VEMS installations and will be responsible for them from that point forward.  I welcome the challenge and the responsibility.