Who's in charge?
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One thing that's becoming clear is that there were more problems with the Deepwater Horizon than just mastering the technology of drilling in ultra-deep water. Sunday, the NY Times ran an excellent story headlined: "In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Oil Rig."
Deep in the story, you'll find this. It's a quote from Tad W. Patzek. He's chairman of the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at the University of Texas.
"It’s a very complex operation in which the human element has not been aligned with the complexity of the system."
The technology was complex, all right. But the project management was complicated, but straightforward.
There's a difference between "complex" and "complicated." It's the difference between raising a child (complex) and building an office building (complicated).
When something is complicated you start with the idea that anything can go wrong. You set up tracking, communication, and decision systems to deal with that when it happens. Then you put someone in charge and give them the power to enforce the rules.
The big problems on Deepwater Horizon didn't happen because the technology challenge was new and complex. They happened because the project was poorly run, with no clear chain of authority. Here's an exchange from the Times article.
Curt R. Kuchta, the rig’s captain, responding to an investigator's question of who was in charge: "It’s pretty well understood amongst the crew who’s in charge."
Coast Guard investigator: "How do they know that?"
Captain Kuchta: "I guess, I don’t know, but it's pretty well - everyone knows."
So no one was in charge. And when that happens any manager can assume that someone else is responsible and paying attention. Things might have been different if there was someone in charge.
Maybe the person in charge would have noticed as exception piled upon exception. Maybe the person in charge would have said, "I don't care if the feds don't require a response plan for a blowout, we need to have one." Maybe the person in charge would have said "We're not going any farther until we have a containment dome on site." Or maybe the person in charge would have drawn the line when BP (no person is named) violated some of its own standards.
But there wasn't anyone in charge. Instead BP and the regulatory agencies and Halliburton and Transocean exchanged emails. Instead eleven crew from the rig are dead. Instead the apocryphal oil slick is spreading more and more every day.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Wally--
You're right on target with your observations on this disaster. And you're also articulating very rudimentary concepts of management. Despite a world of MBA programs, multiple online forums, and a tsunami of management books, major corporations with multi-billion dollar projects are neglecting the basics.
How to get anyone to listen remains a challenge. Listening in this sentence means invest real capital in good ideas.
all the best,
Michael
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Thanks for the support, Michael. Part of the answer, I think, is that leadership isn't learned from books. It seems to me that on this incident, no one really wanted the responsibility.
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Wally,
You've articulated the exact issue that's bothered me since the situation began - No One Planned For The Worst Possible Scenario.
I'm part of a small financial planning practice with a total of four ee's including the owner. Our worst possible scenario would be the owner's sudden death. We have a plan in place should the WPS occur.
I have the sinking feeling that, even if we do require these off shore rigs to have WPS plans in place, we won't require them for each individual platform. What we'll end up with is a company-wide plan that doesn't apply to X unique rig/situation/department.
It's an unfortunate lesson we can all learn from.
-K-
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Thanks, Katrina. One thing that seems to have been missing is what we used to call "adult supervision." There was no one to say, "I don't care if you're behind schedule and over budget. But I do care that we adhere to recognized safety standards."
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This was an excellent analysis and I think you're dead on as well, Wally.
The implications of this disaster are going to affect so many more companies than BP, Halliburton and Transocean. It's disheartening, as someone who works in the oil industry, that all companies, no matter how safely they operate, will have their reputations damaged by this as well.
It's tragic that we lost 11 members of our family to what was probably a totally preventable accident. It's horrifying and heartbreaking what's happening to the Gulf of Mexico, our fish, our birds, and people's livelihoods on the Gulf Coast. It seems like the news gets worse every day, as far as the environmental impact and the truth or untruth of what happened.
I hope that for generations to come, we never forget this, and that we do everything in our power to make sure it never happens again.
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Thanks for that impassioned comment. It's hard to know what good will come of this. It will be even worse if none does.
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Everyone is responsible for this environmental disaster: Halliburton, Transocean, BP, who had no security safeguards as proposed by law, Dick Cheney, who held secret meetings with the oil executives, Bill Clinton who allowed oil companies to drill in deep waters, George W. Bush, who was supposed to oversee all the agencies, including the Dept of Interior and the MMM. All are responsible and should be held responsible, civilly and crimally.
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Is anyone in the current administration at all responsible? What about our President who claimed responsibility?
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There are lots of folks you can extend the blame to. I'd add the current administration. They've been in charge for long enough. Certainly the regulators who didn't regulate much would be on the list. Some commentators have suggested that "the environmentalists" should share in the blame for making less-dangerous alternatives like shallower water drilling and drilling in Alaska impossible. In the end, though if you really want to throw a wide net, this is a Pogo situation. We have met the enemy and he is us. After all we're the ones who create the demand for oil.
I think there are big issues here. But I also think that fixing some of the management problems would go a long way toward making things better while bigger brains than mine work on the larger issues of energy policy, drilling technology, and politics.
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