The Ledger of Better Work
Team Profile: Mahil Dudhat, Associate Engineer
The moment came while Mahil Dudhat was doing the same work for the third time.
Not similar work. The same work. A familiar template. A familiar task. A familiar need to track technical information, document a process, and leave something useful behind for the next person. But because one piece of information had changed during execution, he found himself starting again.
“I don’t mind doing work,” he says. “But I don’t want to lose good work that I’ve done in the past.”
That frustration became the starting point for OTLedger, a web application Mahil began building from scratch about eight months ago. But the story is not really about software. Not entirely. It is about the kind of person who sees a recurring problem and refuses to shrug it off. It is about a young engineer who is already thinking in systems, risk, usability, knowledge transfer and long-term value. And it is about the kind of team that helps that thinking take shape.
Building a Better System
At InnoTech Engineering, Mahil has spent the past three years working in a world where small details matter because the stakes are physical, operational, financial and human. His work sits at the intersection of operational technology, industrial automation and control systems, cybersecurity, data infrastructure and engineering discipline. In practical terms, that can mean helping move data securely from plant-floor controllers to business systems, supporting patching and OT infrastructure sustainment work, preparing asset inventories and helping clients use operational data to make better decisions.
That day-to-day exposure shaped the way he saw the gap OTLedger is trying to address.
Why Operational Knowledge Gets Lost
In industrial automation, teams often rely on static Excel sheets, Word documents, SharePoint folders, email threads, Teams messages and the memory of experienced people. A technician may need an IP address for a PLC controller. Someone else may need to know the right sequence for a patching task. A junior person may need to understand how a senior engineer completed a similar job last time. The information may exist somewhere, but finding it, trusting it and using it consistently is another matter.
From Task Tracking to Risk Reduction
Mahil describes OTLedger as a way to structure day-to-day tasks so people can complete them with the right data and references, reducing the risk of human error. It records changes, captures workflow history, generates reports and helps turn scattered task knowledge into reusable assets. The ambition is not just to make work easier in the moment, but to build a data engine that could eventually help teams prepare for audits, understand risk and mature their systems over time.
That is an unusually expansive view for someone early in his career. Mahil is not looking only at the task in front of him. He is asking what the task means, what risk it mitigates, what information it creates and how that information could help the next person.
Engineering as Risk Management
His definition of engineering makes that clear.
“Engineering is a tool that’s being used to mitigate various risks in business and society,” he says, naming health, environmental, financial, and operational risk as part of the picture. In his view, every task connects back to a larger purpose. The challenge is that individual contributors do not always have the full context to see that larger purpose. Tools, workflows, and documentation should help them find it.
Learning Through Mentorship and Trust
That way of thinking has been nurtured at InnoTech.
Mahil joined the company as a student while completing his master’s degree, working full-time in the summers and part-time during the school year. What he found was not just technical experience, but mentorship. He describes learning from business leaders, engineering leaders, intermediate staff and junior colleagues, each with a different lens on the industry. Much of that knowledge, he says, is not something you can get from books or the internet.
It is the kind of knowledge that gets transferred through project work, questions, examples and trust.
The Confidence to Acknowledge What You Don’t Know
For Mahil, that trust is rooted in a commitment to competency that’s core to the company culture. This doesn’t mean that everyone is expected to know everything about every situation. In fact, he says one of the things that builds trust on the team is the willingness to say, clearly, when something is outside a person’s expertise.
“We always say it out loud when we don’t know about a portion of the thing that we are going to work on,” he says. “And in such cases, we go out and find somebody who has that knowledge.”
In environments where professional responsibility matters, confidence comes from knowing the limits of your knowledge, finding the right expertise, learning from the work and becoming stronger the next time.
A Culture That Makes Innovation Possible
Mahil credits InnoTech’s leadership with reinforcing that approach: ask questions, keep things straightforward, innovate where possible, and feel comfortable saying no when you do not know. That kind of culture gives young engineers room to grow without lowering the standard.
It also helps explain why Mahil’s OTLedger project is more than a side project. It is a reflection of the environment around him. He is surrounded by people who value quality, competence, clarity, practical learning and the disciplined use of data. OTLedger is what happens when a curious engineer absorbs those values and starts building.
Taking OTLedger Beyond InnoTech
This year, Mahil will present OTLedger at ISA Calgary, one of North America’s largest gatherings for automation professionals. He submitted the abstract while the tool was still in its early stages. Being accepted felt validating, he says, but also raised the bar. His audience will be people who live these challenges every day.
The pressure doesn’t seem to scare him.
“It’s worth trying,” he says. “It may work, it may not, but until you try, you won’t know.”
Building Something Useful
That sentence may be the clearest window into Mahil’s promise as an engineer. He is not claiming to have solved everything. He is not presenting OTLedger as a finished answer. He is building, testing, listening and refining. He is trying to make something useful, not merely impressive.
And in that, he illustrates something important about InnoTech: high-performing teams are not only measured by what they deliver today. They’re measured by the people they develop, the standards they uphold, and the kind of thinking they make possible.