2025 Atigun Awards spotlight: Daniel Oliva, Engineer of the Year
Alyeska Site Engineer Daniel Oliva is considered a go-to by many for technical support and troubleshooting. The Engineering Work Order workbook, designed by Oliva and coined “Daniel’s spreadsheet,” has helped align priorities between Operations & Maintenance and Engineering departments with its prioritization scale and common rating methodology. Daniel regularly contributes with designs, drawings and specifications to several projects and extensive field engineering support.
Dan recently shared some of his TAPS highlights, and why he loves his job and many teammates in this Q&A.
How did you feel when you heard you won this award?
Shocked, with a healthy measure of disbelief. Knowing the depth and breadth of my current backlog and in-progress promise fulfilment, it was quite heartwarming to find so many supported this nomination and award with praise instead of pitchforks.
What is your favorite part of your job?
Sleuthing and troubleshooting on all manner of systems. When asked what I do for work, I generally reply that I am variant of Sherlock Holmes playing the game of Clue, only with an engineering twist where the suspects have asset tag numbers, and I spend my time chasing out leads and collecting clues in the form of drawings, original design basis, modifications to date often spanning far too many separate databases, and finally identifying a probable root cause for failure, all to be able to declare “Professor Cavitation, in the Library, with NPSHa < NPSHr.”
Do you have a favorite day on TAPS? Tell us about it!
Every single day, (well almost, there certainly has been a handful of rough ones). In all honesty, I truly can’t think of a singular experience that outshines the others, I feel fortunate to have been a part of many interesting and exceptional projects throughout the last 13 or so years, ranging from days spent with friends at PS01 during major piping upgrades and E&A completion to upgrades to allow pigging the VMT Crude Headers.
Is there anyone you’d like to recognize who has helped you along the way or supports your work?
The list of team members who have helped along the way is far too long to list individually or even by department, but I would like to give a shout out to a few groups in particular who made this possible. First and foremost, my former coworkers with Houston Contracting, who took the time to show me so many details and nuances of construction through the years. Likewise with the amazing VMT Maintenance Team, a multitude of Engineers and Technicians who have freely shared so much knowledge over my time on TAPS, the VMT Planners, without whom I would still be trying to figure out my job, and of course, the incredible support of my current manager, Julia Redington. Since this award seems to be largely based upon my efforts to build new tools to help us tackle work more efficiently, I would like to add a special mention of appreciation to Todd Hicks, who has regularly helped to keep my Excel VBA/Macro skills sharp over the last decade.