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Nicolas BOQUET
French citizen
Chilling and Air Conditioning Maintenance,
Holding Company, Paris, France. Supervisor.
BTS (two-year diploma) in Chilling and Air
Conditioning followed by a third year of
study devoted to quality management.
Seniority in the Group: four and a half
years (since end-2001) with the Holding
Company.
I began my career with a maintenance company,
where I managed chilling and air conditioning
installation audits and site commissioning.
After a few years with a service provider,
I was looking for a change.
48 floors above
ground and 5 below.
I answered an ad for a maintenance supervisor
at the Group’s headquarters. I was
interested in the job and by the idea of
working on the customer side of things.
I realized the scope of the mission when
I went to my first job interview, on the
38th floor of a skyscraper that houses 4,000
people. I hadn’t imagined that it
was such a large site.
After some tests and an interview with the
recruiting officer, my future superiors
and a career manager, I joined the headquarters’
technical department as Supervisor of Chilling
and Air Conditioning Maintenance. The department
has around 20 people.
My job is to track maintenance and carry
out renovation work. I manage operations
end-to-end, from collecting needs, expressing
them to outside service providers, selecting
a contractor, tracking quality and taking
delivery of projects. To give you an idea
of what this entails, the headquarters building
has 48 floors above ground and 5 below,
with nearly 4,000 air conditioning units.
It is classified as a very tall building
(or IGH according to the French abbreviation).
Obtaining certification to understand the
specific challenges of very tall buildings.
The safety and maintenance regulations for
IGHs are many and complex. To understand
them better, I made a request for training
at my annual performance review. In 2005,
I took a two-week skills-set course that
gave me a State diploma as a first-degree
IGH security agent. This is the level required
for firemen who work in very tall buildings.
It was an inter-company course given by
an independent organization. I learned about
standards, the certification required to
access electrical rooms, and, most important,
regulatory requirements for fire alarm systems
in very tall buildings. At the end of the
course, we were given a test with theoretical
questions and more hands-on situational
analysis that lasted half a day.
The training has come in very useful in
my daily work. It helps me understand the
different constraints in each project because
I now know the reasons behind the regulations.
Since I’ve been with Total, I’ve
had two training sessions a year—three
this year. It’s worth it when you
gain new skills and get a better view of
the challenges involved in your job.
I have a large number of projects and studies
on the burner at the moment, all very different
and exciting. I’m not at all bored
with what I do, even if it’s always
in the same building. I must say that it’s
nice to contribute to everyone’s well-being
and to have the resources I need to carry
out my mission.
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