Comment on: Oily words can't hide the sticky truth: Jarvis DeBerry

Now that we have (some) consensus of what went wrong, engineering and inspections, its time to focus on how to fix it.

Systems engineers (remember "system in name only" have a practice, apparently unknown to the wildcating oil and gas industry or MMS, called resilience systems engineering, that deal with risks that are complicated , low frequency and very high (safety) consequences. The heart of resilience systems engineering is, like the Dutch flood protection policy: to put safety first; and use a disciplined, risk-centered systems approach.

Making quick fixes is the more challenging because it will, like NASA in the Columbia disaster, require a radical cultural transformation. Such transformations require a lot of time and some hard rethinking which won't start until the players recognize they need to change.

Look up resilience systems engineering to find out more about the only viable solution to preventing , surviving and recovering from a Katrina or a Deepwater Horizon - http://www.resilience-engineering.org/

Posted on Oily words can't hide the sticky truth: Jarvis DeBerry on June 25, 2010, 11:48AM