Equipped to serve

The school's point man for help in putting together the tools they need for project work, Mr Abdul Hamid regards the teachers and students who turn to him as his non-paying "customers", each with specific needs and constraints. "Even if they approach me with lists of the equipment they require at the eleventh hour, I will accommodate as much as I can because you have to understand their situation," he shares.

It helps that he possesses a calm demeanour and a methodological mind that seldom misses the mark. "You need to be very patient because not every request that comes in can be immediately met," he adds. "For example, sometimes equipment which is not available in the laboratory is needed, so I need to source for it elsewhere."

Innovative and effective procedures devised by Mr Abdul Hamid enhance the experience of science students and teachers in the laboratories.

Mr Abdul Hamid is often engaged in MacGyver-like tinkering to find solutions that would let the classes focus on the science rather than the setting up. For instance, when the school underwent a PRIME upgrading exercise between 2006 and 2009, he faced the challenge of shifting the laboratory facilities to temporary holding premises and back to the refurbished campus. To make this move without disrupting the curriculum and ensuring that both sites have comparable facilities, Mr Abdul Hamid and his team worked through the vacation period to convert two normal rooms into makeshift Physics laboratories and transform a storeroom into a life sciences laboratory with all the necessary fittings.

There's always a spanner in the works, and when the Bunsen burners used at the holding site were found to be incompatible with the new school laboratories, Mr Abdul Hamid had to draw upon good old fashioned ingenuity. The burners were designed for different gas pressures. "So I researched and experimented by making the holes of the burners a bit bigger, and it worked," he recalls of his effort, which proved to be safe and saved the school the cost of buying a new batch of burners.

Finding answers that work

Teacher, too, have benefited from Mr Abdul Hamid's bent for simple but effective fixes. Science Practical Assessment sessions were previously cumbersome to administer as teachers found it hard to pick out students using small number tags placed on their tables. "So at a meeting, I suggested having students wear vests with their assigned numbers so that they are more easily identifiable," he says. This idea, which allowed teachers to easily identify individual students from any vantage point in the laboratory, took off and paved the way for more efficient assessments today.

Mr Abdul Hamid has chalked up twenty-three years of invaluable service to Bukit Panjang Government High School.

Mr Abdul Hamid's proclivity for practical solutions even extends to the contractors who handle the school's trash. Concerned that the workers were getting cuts from pieces of glass, he devised a safer way to dispose of waste materials from the laboratories. "I thought, why not get a styrofoam box and put all the broken things inside?" he wondered. "Once the box is full, we can seal it with a 'Danger!' label so that people will be careful when they throw out these items."

Such initiatives and a constant supply of innovation are traits that have earned Mr Abdul Hamid the trust and confidence of teachers at the school, who often turn to him for ideas to resolve technical hiccups. "I'm happy that they have never rejected whatever I have suggested so far," quips Mr Abdul Hamid, whose favourite phrase is one that delighted colleagues often utter after trying out his proposals: "It works!"