Effective work procedures have been at the source of many major failures through out history in the Oil and Gas Industry. I think the problem is two fold, one, if we have a effective procedure does anyone follow it? second, if we don't have a repeatable procedure why not?
What are your thoughts? Tell me what you think.
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3 comments:
Ricky,
Great post but I think you are missing something.
Although the details and investigation of the cause are still out - there seems to be evidence supporting lax reliability standards (known failures and failure modes without action) and a cowboy operations executive tasked with "git er done" that led up to this event.
SMRP SIG can take the lead in ensuring that Reliability is a ethical and moral responsibility along with just plain good business. 11 people are dead and the Gulf will take decades to recover if ever. Peoples lives are ruined over BPs management decisions.
We do not need to be looking out for BP. They have an army of lawyers,accountants and PR agents doing that.
Unless I am missing something the BP corporate charter promising shareholders that they will exert every effort to make profit - is still the operating context of BP. That may be at odds with solving this problem.
It is time for a direct Federal response.
If Hugo Chavez or some terrorist organization dumped that much oil in the Gulf we would view it as an act of war!
Reliability has long been ignored by corporations - and it is up to us - the maintenance and reliability professional community - to ensure that like safety - reliability is an ethical and moral responsibility for ALL companies who have the privilege of being able to operate using the generous resources of the United States of America.
Let's not waste this opportunity.
Terrence O'Hanlon, CMRP
Publisher
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This situation brings up conflicting thoughts on how to address. On one side, you have a company that seems to make decisions based on obtaining the most profit it can, regardless of the consequences. I don't know if that is true or not, but it appears that way. If that is true, trying to save "BP" in spite of itself would not go very far. If, on the other hand, the perception is wrong, and the senior management is willing to listen to reason, we would stand a very good chance of mitigating some of the negativeness being displayed towards BP, and ultimately towards the entire oil industry.
It seems that the key to successfully intervening would be to have BP (and by default the entire industry) understand and agree to the benefits and profitability behind Reliability Centered Maintenance. I don't work in that industry, but hopefully there are sufficient numbers of reliability professionals that can participate in and help direct any "outside" assistance that we can offer. That might be a good place to start by the way. At the same time, the senior management needs to believe this would help or it won't happen, regardless of our intentions.
Darrell Myers, CPMM
Reliability Specialist
I appreciate your comments Terry and Darrell. I do know that most companies do not have repeatable procedures and if they do no one follows them. So I ask, what is truly the problem.
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