Update on the Gulf Oil Spill

A few weeks back I posted my views regarding the events that took place on the off shore oil well that resulted in millions of gallons of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico and more important the deaths of 11 workers. At the time of the blog I also guessed that this event while preventable would result in a whole lot of finger pointing, the demand for a root cause analysis and a focus on one or two probable causes. What I didn't recognize was how the most recent effects on wildlife and environmental damages would draw our attention away from making sure an incident like this never happens again. Instead we are now focused on who is to blame in regard to keeping the oil from reaching the beaches as well as marshes and wildlife that depends on a clean environment.

The most incredible thing in regard to this entire disaster is the amount of money companies and governments have to spend when they are reacting to catastrophic events in comparison to what they are willing to spend up front on a formal Reliability Centered Maintenance analysis that would have ensured that the failure NEVER happened to begin with or at a minimum reduced the probability of failure to close to zero.

Instead we have a mess, we have 11 dead workers, an uncontrolled oil spill 5,000 feet below the surface, hundreds of seafood workers have lost their source of income and the finger pointing goes on. As the pressure increases we make futile attempts to control the oil, stop the leak and protect our coastline and I still have to wonder could a thorough RCM analysis have prevented all of this? Did the 11 people who died on that platform know about the failure modes that cost them their lives?

My experience in facilitating Reliability Centered Maintenance answers yes to both questions. Reliability Centered Maintenance was designed to ensure the inherent designed reliability of an asset by developing a complete maintenance strategy based on known and probable failure modes identified by a cross-functional team of people who engineer, design, maintain and operate the equipment. I have yet to facilitate a RCM analysis with this type of team that didn't know the failure modes of their equipment as well as the risk and consequences of each. In identifying each failure mode and the potential consequences we would also be well aware of the effects each would have on our Health, Safety, Environment and operational capability of the equipment. Reliability and Safety depend on a proactive culture that demands on a thorough review of our design, and the failure modes associated with each component in that design. When we are not proactive, when we elect to not perform a thorough RCM analysis we are left with no choice but to look back and guess, hoping to solve what the LA Times called "a confluence of unfortunate events."