Engineers Speeding Through Growing Tasks On Compressing Timelines Dismissing Human Factors
This time of the year is full of people getting together and so a good time to talk about how tasks can sometimes drive us apart. We must communicate and focus on the larger balance in perspective needed and not constrict cycle times further, squeezing out time needed to diligently consider human factors and the gestalt of small components. This applies to all of our projects as petroleum engineers and geoscientists, etc. yet is most apparent because of recent events and new focuses in deepwater. Has all of the extra work required to obtain a permit to drill in the deepwater regions of the Gulf of Mexico exacerbated problems that led to the swamping of a world class deepwater drilling rig and 11 of its finest, into a fiery grave in the abyss? Experts in disaster investigation name all sorts of things as causal and they can and do range from material flaws, mechanical malfunctions, poor design and acts of God. The experts have claimed the biggest blot on the reputation of our industry to date as having organizational causes, “systemic failure”, that resulted in “cavalier attitudes” to the actual hazards in maintaining barriers that were ultimately human barriers. How can this happen and still can it? Part of the reason for the failure was strict and harsh timelines caused by an intense focus on profit and expenses that led to implied mandates to cut time and corners and yet also by the government and its lease requirement timelines. The result? Engineers and managers so focused on the task at hand yet blinded to the realities of the only thing between pressures threatening to blowout. The person on the frontline making decisions that are the only resistance left. People, offering in the form of the human barriers, requiring information from every source and routinely in danger of not communicating with one another on a very basic level. The humans. The human barriers. These timelines create engineers and engineering teams so very focused on the task at hand that it leaves little time to actually consider the people involved and the dilemmas they are consistently confronting. Designs must past design reviews and meet worst case discharge loads yet we all still miss the fact that the disaster that lead to all of these regulations and design process increases wasn’t caused by design flaws at all and were simply the result of a project team too busy and seemingly uninterested to check on one another to see how things were going and what predicaments were being dealt with. Doing the opposite and piling on complications with absolute disregard that the cognitive load passed critical levels for a person at the sharp end of the engineering and operations design implementation. There were many engineers that were pointing to the condition of the rig, the lack of centralizers and yet these same engineers and managers were absolutely unconcerned and seemingly giddy about the fact that their job involved basically the equivalent of a process scavenger hunt akin to “The Amazing Race” in which items on a checklist are the only focus completely oblivious to the small yet important detail this situation put people involved in executing the designs made in this process one mistake away from a disaster? Yes, they are under tremendous pressure to perform correctly, make perfect decisions and are in essence between rocks and hard places to work with insufficient support and procedures and designs that require the one thing people cannot deliver; perfection.
Conclusion: There is a better way and it involves balance and awareness of the situation that although everyone knows this is important it is being sacrificed still. Is it too hard to believe that something or someone might fail in this scenario? The humans involved in operations are actually the reason blowouts don’t happen more. Our computers give us readouts and say the likelihood of a pressure this high is tiny and yet they are wrong so often and yet time and time again, in steps a person on the rig to shut the well in before the well blows out. Drilling is an inherently dangerous operation in which we replace an effective natural pressure barrier, rock and its overburden, with a human barrier consisting of a hydrostatic column and control device, BOP, susceptible to mechanical, material and human failure. We are still, very near needing humans to be perfect to keep our projects safe and people are not perfect and yet we perform better in better situations. While some people perform great in task oriented situations like “The Amazing Race” drilling projects require more than simply achieving stage gates in spandex and so engineering and human factors and some diligent research into the unknown we encounter fairly regularly still must be a balanced part of the process and yet it is not too often and once is too often enough. The government plays a role as well and the lease timelines seems antiquated in light of the cycle times now required and the lack of consideration of this seems to add even more stress than necessary and for what? Considering the experts reports on cause and effect this must be considered complicit in the problem and not the solution. Oh and also blaming a person carrying out a confusing, piecemealed design and procedure and requiring/expecting perfection is childish, counter productive and misses these points entirely. Perfection of humans must not be requisite in projects and that is easily mitigated on teams that communicate and work together not in blame and yet in understanding, respect and watching each other’s backs and not throwing one another “under the bus”. Yes, we all must perform and be accountable and yet no we mustn’t forget we are not soldiers marching single file into battle and yet we are people that must organize to carryout dangerous activities that the world wants, needs and demands and return home to our families, communities; and to humanity.