NEVER IN THE DARK · ERIC

For Eric, the air inside a generator container must keep moving.

Before a standby generator ever has to step in during a power failure, the calculations need to be right. For his graduation thesis, Eric mapped the airflow through a generator container. Crucial work, because an overheating generator would cause exactly the kind of failure it is meant to prevent. He then turned to the noise those same containers produce, using simulation software that brought it to life in colourful, detailed images.

He joined as an intern through StageMax, but kept coming back as a working student. And probably not for the last time. “It was mainly the colleagues and the working atmosphere that made me want to keep coming back,” he says.

He still clearly remembers his first impression. Martijn Kuipers came to meet him for an informal chat and immediately put him at ease: “No need to be formal.”

One lesson has stayed with him: “Really listening to colleagues and understanding that everyone looks at things from the perspective of their own field is something you mainly learn in practice.”

When it comes to sound measurements at Zwart, there is a running joke: “One decibel is no decibel.” It captures the attention to the smallest details that Eric’s work involved, and just how much can depend on them.

He is now studying for a university master’s degree. He rates his time at Zwart an eight or a nine out of ten. And as for a final goodbye? “I actually think of it as: until next time,” he says. Who knows, in a few years he might be back as an R&D Engineer, a role that does not even exist at Zwart yet.

What Eric keeps going: the calculations that keep a generator from overheating or making too much noise.

Unseen. Essential.