Unique Undertakings
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by Richard Maltzman,
Dave Shirley
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Richard Maltzman
Dave Shirley
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Date
(Photo: Dudarev Mikhail/Shutterstock)
What is a project?
PMI says that a project is: “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.”
This blog post is going to take “undertaken” to new depths. I mean, we are talking about seriously under. Undersea, that is.
Most readers will be familiar with the so-called “Deepwater Horizon” incident, also sometimes called the BP gulf oil spill, which occurred in 2010. By the way of trivia, the well itself was BP’s Macondo Well – the Deepwater Horizon was the name of the platform, owned by a different company, called TransOcean. But anyway, that was so long ago. Surely that is history and we’re done with that news, right? The Gulf has recovered, tourism is back, and all is ‘well’ (excuse the pun).
Not quite.
A lot goes on below the surface of the ocean – a lot that is not seen. And as some scientists and restoration project leaders have been saying lately – we have to be careful of the “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome here.
To refresh your memory about the incident, I draw from a recent article in the Boston Globe:
“BP’s out-of-control well spat oil for 87 days into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Much of it never reached the surface, kept in the depths both by chemical dispersants sprayed to keep the oil from reaching shorelines and by natural forces.”
In fact 1.84 million US gallons (7,000 m3) of Corexit oil dispersant were distributed over the area to prevent the oil from doing damage to shorelines. So that oil – and the dispersant itself had nowhere to go but…down.
“Studies estimated up to about 30 percent of the more than 172 million gallons of oil released from the well remained in the gulf and up to about 3,250 square miles of the seafloor was affected — an area nearly the size of Yellowstone National Park.”
The oil reached as far as Tampa Bay and the Florida panhandle according to the Tampa Bay Times:
“Oil continued to be found as far from the Macondo site as the waters off the Florida Panhandle and Tampa Bay, where scientists said the oil and dispersant mixture is embedded in the sand.”
As you may know, in April of this year, a federal judge approved a $20 billion settlement/payment from BP to cover the spill’s environmental and economic damage. But how much of that money is aimed at restoring the deep ocean? The answer: less than 1.4%, a paltry $273 million — has been earmarked for restoring the deep ocean over the next 15 years.
Granted, this still is a number much larger than zero. What can project leaders do about restoring the ocean floor with this funding? Well, now we have to dig into the other “U” word from PMI’s definition of the word project – “unique”.
From the Globe article:
‘‘We’re trying to do something that we’ve never done before,’’ said Erik Cordes, a Temple University coral expert who’s studied the corals damaged by the spill and worked on the government’s restoration plans. ‘‘We are in uncharted waters here.’’
“A government restoration plan suggests dumping oyster shell, limestone, and manufactured ‘‘reef balls’’ into the ocean in the hope that coral and fish colonize them.
You can watch a rather bizarre video about a form of these reef balls here. You’ll have to watch it to find out, but it gives a whole new meaning to the word “undertaking”!
The actual reef balls referred to in the Globe article are described here.
It goes on to say:
The plan also considers transplanting healthy coral to reefs hit by the oil. The plan notes this has never been done in deep waters, just as growing deep-sea coral in laboratories has not been attempted.
As project managers there are several lessons here.
- First and foremost, as we wrote about in our book, Green Project Management, the long-term thinking in risk identification has to be dominant. The Macondo Well identified a sum total of zero (yes, zero, zilch, zip) safety and environmental risks. Their Risk Register drop-down box did not even include those risk categories. BP corporate had provided them but the local project team, motivated by huge incentives to meet operational efficiency Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), did not include them in the Macondo project. We need to assure that this doesn’t stay in PM culture. We’ve worked to add long-term considerations into the 6th Edition PMBOK® Guide with over 10 formal proposals to focus on long-term thinking in project planning, in particular in the area of risk identification
- Next, we should take some pride in the fact that we can apply good project management techniques to the restoration efforts. Even if the project itself encountered the blowout valve failure and other poor follow-up project decisions, the series of new ‘rescue’ initiatives (projects) can hopefully make progress to reverse some of the damage from the Gulf oil spill of 2010.
- Finally, we can use these examples to illustrate just how unique and how “under” our undertakings can be as project managers!
Posted
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Richard Maltzman
on: June 02, 2016 01:08 AM |
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