Embracing the unknown

From braving the fastest roller coasters to cruising around the world with Royal Caribbean, Orlando employee Amanda McCormick seeks out new adventures both on and off the clock. Her willingness to embrace the unknown is why Amanda excels in her role as a project manager for complex projects in Gas Services.

Amanda oversees the mods and upgrades on gas turbines. Working closely with the team of engineers, buyers, field service, finance and customers means she touches every part of an outage.

“The best part of my job is working on first-time applications – the innovative projects. I like that we learn on the fly, problem-solving with the engineers as we go. I get to learn something new almost every day,” she explains.

She began her career at Siemens Energy 12 years ago learning all about the business as a warranty engineer. She then spent several years solely working on V machine upgrades, becoming a subject matter expert. Next, she moved into long-term program management, which gave her a higher viewpoint working on bigger contracts and is now working in mods and upgrades again where she was involved in one of her favorite projects to date – the Constellation project.  

“It was exciting to be part of the groundbreaking technology test at Constellation’s Hillabee Generating Station,” Amanda says. “I worked with engineering and our vendors on the hardware procurement and delivery of all the components that went into the hydrogen test, keeping the customer informed of scheduling along the way.”

The project wasn’t without its challenges. “We had just 6 months from conception to implementation on what would normally be a two-year project! Plus, it was over the holiday months and during the peak of outage season.”

But the stress that comes with such a high-impact project didn’t faze the team.

“Knowing that you can lean on team members to help you through challenging times makes everything easier,” Amanda says. “You don’t have to solve every problem on your own. If an issue comes up, the entire team jumps in to help. By sharing issues, we can keep them from becoming bigger ones.”

“In the end, we set an industry record for blending high concentrations of hydrogen with natural gas! This is fantastic, not only for Siemens Energy, but also the US.” 

Setting records is nothing new to Amanda. In 2010, she placed first in the World Flowriding Championships at Wavehouse Sentosa in Singapore in the Ladies Division. Flowriding is like skateboarding on water, only the water is shooting up at you at speeds up to 30 mph on an artificial sheet wave where you perform tricks like shuv-its, ollies, and 360s.

Amanda doesn’t flowboard professionally anymore, but she does carve the epic wave when she’s on a cruise, which, it turns out, is frequently. “I’ve traveled to 45 countries and taken more than 80 cruises to amazing places like Egypt, Australia and the Mediterranean. In November I’m taking my dream trip to the Maldives, which will include a cruise to Singapore,” she says. 

Her extensive travels have provided Amanda the opportunity to pursue her two other favorite hobbies. She loves music of all kinds and attends about 30 concerts a year, from Mitchell Tenpenny to Adele. Not one to remain stationary for long, she also craves a thrilling roller coaster ride. While her favorite coaster is the Manta® at Sea World Orlando, the scariest was Cedar Point’s Top Thrill Dragster, which speeds from 0 to 120 mph in 4 seconds, then climbs straight up a 420-foot tower and freefalls 90 degrees down the other side. All in 30 seconds!

Amanda brings her enthusiasm for living large to work as well.

“Do what makes you happy. I’m fortunate to have a job that I love, working with diverse people around the world to provide something everyone needs – power. If you make a living doing something you love, it brings positivity to your life. And that makes it easy to get up and go to work each day.”