Being not sure whether we will have to travel the whole day to get to our training place, we entered the E.H.Cooray building 5 minutes before 8.30. Dr. Narendra briefed us on the training we’re going to experience during the upcoming 4 weeks. His idea about this new training schedule was, that it was a failure like the module system in our university. As he says, if we were to write an exam paper at the end of each year, covering all what we learnt during that year, students will have to do their day to day work in order to pass the examination. What’s learnt throughout the year will stay in our head longer, as he suggests. In the module system, anyone can take the notes from a friend, study during the last few hours, and pass the examination. He further explained, for the student who really wants to learn engineering, the new training schedule is good; it covers all the areas and the interested student will learn as much possible during the week there. If any student were to stay at one place for 6 months, he will have to learn something about at least that industry. This way, the student who’s not interested, will not learn anything. When he goes to industry, it will be very hard for him to cope up. My opinion is this is true, up to certain level.

Luckily we didn’t have to move anywhere. Our first week at LECO was in their Engineering Division at the LECO Head Office in Kollupitiya.


LECO only distributes electrical energy. Their assets are scattered all over their operating region. To carefully manage them and make plans for future demands, LECO maintains a massive Geo Information System (GIS). We learned how this maintained, the instruments used, on going development projects of the GIS and many more details.




On the latter half of the day, we looked into construction Manuals. They explain, in 4 volumes, the correct way to carry out all sorts of constructions that LECO does. For example, laying cables.

The purchase division showed us how they order material to the company. They have a specification that they send to their registered suppliers. They send in quotations. The purchasing division evaluates them, gets authorization from the senior management and complets the transaction.