What do you do when fellow engineer wants to crash project?

[SiliconWizard]

What do you do when a fellow employee wants to sabotage, or crash a project?

I was working for a co who had a high temp SMPS sent in for fixing….a “guy” (research fellow in power electronics) was working on it for a week…..he coudlnt fix it and couldn’t say what was wrong. So Then they sent me in to fix it…….i fixed it in a day…..it was easy……the “guy” , when I realised the inductors were too low value, told me “don’t bother fixing it” (kind of whispering it to me, like tempting me to crash the project)….but I told him I would…he then ran to his desk and brought the correct inductor calc…I thought…”howcome you never told the boss this last week”. …..You told me not to fix the inductor….then when I start fixing it…you then immediately show the correct calc  that fixes it….but you withheld this from the company last week…only when you saw I was fixing It did you start coming forward with the solutions…
What do you do?

As others have said, you need to figure out his motives. There may be a rationale that is not just "sabotaging" the company.

But also, as you describe it, do not necessarily assume that the guy had actually found a fix while he was working on it. Maybe he just did not. And then the fact you were commissioned to take over may have just motivated him to work harder on it just to avoid passing as a lame engineer compared to you. And possibly he did find the fix thanks to a few hints you mau have told him when you started working on it. Sounds very plausible to me.

So all in all, I'd say either indeed he knows things about this project you don't and has a reason for "crashing it" or at least making it linger, or it's just a matter of competition between coworkers. Without more info, I'd be tempted to think it's the latter. I've seen this kind of stuff happen quite a few times. Not many people like to be shown inadequate for a task while a coworker gets it done quickly.

[nctnico]

So all in all, I'd say either indeed he knows things about this project you don't and has a reason for "crashing it" or at least making it linger, or it's just a matter of competition between coworkers. Without more info, I'd be tempted to think it's the latter. I've seen this kind of stuff happen quite a few times. Not many people like to be shown inadequate for a task while a coworker gets it done quickly.

The latter sounds plausible. I've also seen people suddenly move faster when I got their task handed to me.

[AndyBeez]

I have one simple question: who on that project is, or has, the design authority?

Just stop pissinn around and call a meeting with that person/s to figure a way forward. And move forward under their authority. It's how engineering teams have been dealing with conflicting ideas for decades.

[Gyro]

treez / Faringdon uses 'I' and 'we' interchangeably - you can never tell whether it's another pet project that he's trying to push to some Chinese company or whether he's managed to add yet another 'employer' to the dozens on his CV [Ed: as a contractor].