Comment on: End the stonewalling: Army Corps of Engineers needs urgency on Category 5 plans on January

The Time-Picayune's call for speed versus quality has three tragic implications: First it shifts the focus away from the quality of the methods the Corps is using, secondly, it promotes individual, potential un-integrated projects that resulted in a "system in name only". And thirdly it assumes that Louisiana "officials" have the near and long term safety of citizens as their highest priority. Neither of these options is in the interest of Louisiana's citizens.

Regarding the Corps methods, the process the Corps adopted for decision making was not only complex it was fatally flawed by modern standards of best requirements engineering practices. Whereas the Corps asked Corps- and self-selected observers to evaluate a total system in terms of Congressional "results of value" such as return on investment and national ecology objectives, they should have identify the "real" stakeholders and asked them to identify THEIR stakes or needed results of value. This wasn't done and needs to be redone.

In it's IPET report, the Corps admitter that one of the root causes of the failure of the flood protection systems was it that was not an integrated system calling it a "system in name only". There is absolutely no evidence that the Corps has taken this to heart and looked for best practices, such as Systems Engineering for an approach to a safety-critical systems. Systems Engineering provides explicit mechanisms for managing risk, interfaces, requirements, and sustainability. None of these practices were in place and few of them have been correctly applied post-Katrina

Finally, Louisiana officials are as responsible for the Katrina failures as the Corps and despite the cosmetic shuffling of levee boards, continue to abrogate their responsibility for total system management Instead we find parish officials returning to form by denying real safety risks in the form of uncertified levees and blocking needs for home elevations.

The Road Home adopted a documented, official policy of speed before quality and wound up taking longer and costing more. Our levees are super-critical to our survival as a state where the quality of our safety protection is so low that national insurance companies will no longer write home owner policies. The Times-Picayune should strongly behind doing things right when it comes to risks to our person and properties.

Posted on End the stonewalling: Army Corps of Engineers needs urgency on Category 5 plans on January 20, 2009, 9:14AM