My name is Marie- Isabelle, and I've been working for TDF for almost 26 years, and in the planning department for the last four years, for the South-East region in Lyon. My job is to create and draw up schedules for maintenance technicians. It's a schedule we draw up for weeks S+1, S+2, S+3, for the long term as possible. Planning the technicians' work means taking into account all the requests we receive, whether from project managers or external subcontractors, as well as all the preventive maintenance that TDF owes its customers.
You need several skills. The first is organization, responsiveness, and also the ability to stand back because things come to us in a hurry, so you need to be able to stand back and communicate. You also need to be firm with all the people who make requests of us, because the schedule has to be coherent and optimized. We also have to keep an open dialogue with the various players who make requests of us. We have to give them access to our sites and make our technicians available, so that they can carry out their projects. We have to be psychologist, pedagogue and very patient, because everyone wants the first place as soon as possible, and that's not always possible.
My main satisfaction comes from the final exchange with the team leader, when I was able to draw up the most optimal schedule possible, which matched the expectations of all the players involved, so that the technicians could carry out the work in optimum conditions, under the team leader's orchestration. These are small weekly satisfactions to planning.
My most vivid memory of the planning, which is actually very close, is the confinement. In just a few days, we had to adapt to living at home. We had to carry out the same work with far more constraints, since the instructions were daily. We had to continue with the technicians, who were very committed to making the same efforts for all our customers, and it was a very special event.
Over 25 years ago, it was one of the few companies that gave women a chance. I studied engineering, and it was one of the few companies to give me a chance, to integrate a maintenance team, and then also to allow me to evolve, to go through different professions to arrive today in planning.