People, Planet, Profits & Projects

I was planning to end the series which included The Promise of the Waxworm and Terror Under the Tundra, after those two posts. However, the statistics revealed that the posts received so much attention that I felt compelled to write a capstone third entry, and in that way, to make this a trilogy.  Somehow (perhaps it's the influence of Star Wars) a trilogy seems...better.  It’s poetic (well, that’s a stretch, really) to note that this post comes back to the Waxworm, with both the snake and the worm having a similar body shape.  See – I told you it was a stretch!

This entry discusses a project (this is a project management blog, after all) called The American Security Project (ASP).  There’s the reference to the asp.  There’s another connection, too.  There’s a sense that we are –as a country – falling into a sense of complacency with respect to the threat of climate change.  It’s a bit like falling asleep ad dreaming that ‘everything is okay’ – and it’s fine to go back to carbon-centric, non-renewable fuels and relax regulations…relax…everything.  And that reminded me of the asp as well:

From Wikipedia: According to Plutarch (quoted by Ussher), Cleopatra tested various deadly poisons on condemned persons and concluded that the bite of the asp (from aspis—Egyptian cobra, not European asp) was the least terrible way to die; the venom brought sleepiness and heaviness without spasms of pain.

So my point here is that we need to avoid the sleepiness and wake up to the reality of climate change even if it is not affecting us directly, right now.  Let’s shift now to the ASP of the acronym mentioned above.

Here’s the opening statement from the ASP homepage.  In and of itself it is worth a read:

Climate change alone will not cause wars, but it serves as an “Accelerant of Instability” or a “Threat Multiplier” that makes already existing threats worse. The threat of global warming for security will manifest through a range of effects: resource scarcity, extreme weather, food scarcity, water insecurity, and sea level rise will all threaten societies around the world. Too many governments are not prepared for these threats, either because they do not have the resources or because they have not planned ahead. How societies and governments respond to the increase in instability will determine whether climate change will lead to war.

As a project manager, you should recognize this as the background of risk identification in your projects.  Remember the concept of a risk trigger?  A risk trigger is something that makes you think that a threat is about to happen or perhaps is already happening, but you may not yet have seen it in practice.  An example of a risk trigger for a forest ranger would obviously be smoke.  “Where there’s smoke there’s fire”, right?  However, a less-obvious but just as important risk trigger is “Ten consecutive days without rain”, because even though there’s no smoke, this would increase the likelihood of a forest fire above average.  For more on the definition of a risk trigger, see this link.  The ten consecutive dry days are an “accelerant of instability” with respect to fire.  Similarly, climate change is an “accelerant of instability” or a “threat multiplier” for a whole series of threats to the US (and really any) government.

ASP is directed by a board that is nonpartisan and is made up of retired brigadier generals, well-known news commentators, retired vice Admirals, former secretaries of the Department of Defense… a very impressive group – so this is not a radical or partisan organization.  It is worth your time to look through the Board membership, on this link.

As an example of the “threat multiplier”, let’s look at one major issue: the refugee crises around the world.  ASP has written a report, which you can download here, called Perspective: Preventing the World’s  Next Refugee Crisis.  Here’s a summary:

In an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, four countries: Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen are all on the verge of famine at the same time. A catastrophe of this magnitude would perpetuate mass migrations of people as well as create environments for terrorist groups to prosper.  This report details the unique factors that have driven each of these four countries to their current levels of instability while also discussing their common challenges. This report examines the high levels of conflict that exist in all four countries, with close attention to how the security ramifications of climate change have contributed to these conflicts.  Most importantly, this report concludes with a discussion on how the world can avoid new, destabilizing disasters similar to the Syrian refugee crisis. 

• 20 million lives are at risk of famine in Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. The situation in each country has been escalated by severe weather and dryness linked to climate change.
• Although not the sole factor for the instability, climate change has accelerated the systemic threats that exist in each country to make each case more aggravated.
• Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen already have a heightened vulnerability to climate change because of their reliance on subsistence agriculture and food imports. When extreme weather linked to climate change collides with other systemic threats in this susceptible environment it contributes to chaos and conflict.
• Challenges that exist in all four countries such as impotent governments, rapid population growth, and local terrorist initiatives are amplified by severe droughts which are exacerbated by climate change.
• Failure to address this crisis will result in the deaths of thousands, create refugee crises similar to the one currently emanating from the Syrian civil war, and provide militant terrorist organizations with fertile grounds for recruiting new members.
• The United States and the international community need to take swift action to mitigate this disaster as this situation has substantial destabilizing potential. At this stage, the U.S. should provide robust support to international organizations such as the UN in order to prevent certain catastrophe.

The report is full of research, supported by references to (for example) the latest NASA imagery.  Here’s an example, regarding the “threat accelerator” of drought in Yemen.

I’m aware that some of you may look at all of this with a cynical view, perhaps doubting climate change or perhaps disagreeing with the worldview of this group.

Forget all that for a moment.

If nothing else, take a project management lesson from the perspective.  Take a look at the words in the bullets above.  They should sound familiar, because they are (naturally) written in the narrative of the PMBOK® Guide: words like “avoid”, “mitigate”, “threats” are prevalent not only in this teaser but in the document itself.  The concept of a risk trigger is fundamental to our practice as project managers and one you need to allow your projects to succeed and to provide lasting benefits realization.

I of course hope you share the concern, the understanding of the facts, and the view of this report, but even if not, I think we can all stand to learn more about risk, risk triggers, and risk response and avoid the ‘sleepiness and heaviness’ that can befall us if we suffer the “bite of the asp”.

In my previous post (The Promise of the Waxworm) I discussed some of the ideas of secondary risk, applied lightly to concepts of sustainability and focused more on the definition of secondary and residual risk.  Consider this post a sequel.  In this post, I’d like to tie the concept a little more tightly to climate change to illustrate a rather extreme form of secondary risk which almost sounds like residual risk (leftover risk) because of the lengths of time involved.  However – it is indeed secondary risk – particularly secondary threat, perhaps a big one, as you’ll see.

You may want to be seated for this, it’s a bit alarming.  Are you seated?  Okay.  Proceed.

Let’s start with a quote from the BBC Earth article from which most of the inspiration for this blog post arrived.

“scientists have discovered intact 1918 Spanish flu virus in corpses buried in mass graves in Alaska's tundra. Smallpox and the bubonic plague are also likely buried in Siberia.”

And unfortunately, it is not just ‘scientists discovering’, or laboratories or rats.  It is about real people, suffering illness or even death from such problems.  As an example from the article:

"In August 2016, in a remote corner of Siberian tundra called the Yamal Peninsula in the Arctic Circle, a 12-year-old boy died and at least twenty people were hospitalised after being infected by anthrax.

The theory is that, over 75 years ago, a reindeer infected with anthrax died and its frozen carcass became trapped under a layer of frozen soil, known as permafrost. There it stayed until a heatwave in the summer of 2016, when the permafrost thawed.

This exposed the reindeer corpse and released infectious anthrax into nearby water and soil, and then into the food supply. More than 2,000 reindeer grazing nearby became infected, which then led to the small number of human cases."

So, yes.  This is about the fact that global warming (whatever the cause) and other activities are bringing back some ‘golden oldies’ and ‘one-hit wonders’ that we really, really didn’t want to hear ever again.

As a reminder, secondary risk is a new risk (usually a threat – and in this case, definitely a threat) caused by a risk treatment or risk response.   In this case, the new risk is actually not caused by a risk response, it is caused by global warming.  And here’s a little-known fact: global warming is occurring at a much faster rate and with more extreme effect in Arctic regions than anywhere else on the planet.

So for those of you who may say “so what?” to the melting ice, and even the sea-level rise, I’m not sure you’d say “so what?” to the rejuvenation of viruses and microbes for which current humans do not have any built-up immunity.

And in the BBC Earth article there are many examples – not just Spanish Flu.  More “oldies but goodies” include:

•     Antrhax
•     Smallpox
•     Pithovirus sibericum (giant virus)
•     Mollivirus sibericum (giant virus - see photo below)

Microbes live a long time when they’re properly frozen.  A really, really long time.  From the article:

Recently, scientists managed to revive an 8-million-year-old bacterium that had been lying dormant in ice, beneath the surface of a glacier in the Beacon and Mullins valleys of Antarctica.

The other thing to consider as a project manager – especially if you are involved in exploration, mining, or energy, is this:

“global warming does not have to directly melt permafrost to pose a threat. Because the Arctic sea ice is melting, the north shore of Siberia has become more easily accessible by sea. As a result, industrial exploitation, including mining for gold and minerals, and drilling for oil and natural gas, is now becoming profitable. At the moment, these regions are deserted and the deep permafrost layers are left alone.  However, these ancient layers could be exposed by the digging involved in mining and drilling operations."
 

Do you have this threat listed in your risk register?  You may want to at least consider it.  Sounds like science fiction but it turns out to be science fact – and that means it's a project management fact.

There's a recent story in the news about waxworms.  Several outlets covered it but I like this coverage from ABC (Australia). 

I love how the story opens:

“Scientist and amateur beekeeper Federica Bertocchini picked parasitic wax worms from the honeycomb of her beehives and left them sitting in a plastic bag.

When she returned to the bag, it was riddled with holes and many of the worms had escaped.

It was that chance discovery that led her to collaborate with scientists at the University of Cambridge in England to unearth the possibility of using worms to munch through the world's plastic problem.”

Why do I like this opening so much? 

---It expresses the idea of a threat becoming an opportunity

---It shows the value of science

---It has a promise to solve a problem for the planet

Let’s take these one by one.

Threats and Opportunities

PMI defines risk as “an uncertain event, which, it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on project objectives”.  In this case, we have a threat, which Bertocchini was treating (or responding to) by removing and bagging the worms.  The risk response had a secondary risk, which in this case was an opportunity.  Usually, a secondary risk is a threat.  For example, if you think of an air bag as a response to the threat of vehicle impact, you would not expect (but must consider) that the air bag could also have a negative result.  That’s what happened with Takata airbags (from a story in Consumer Reports):

“At the heart of the problem is the airbag’s inflator, a metal cartridge loaded with propellant wafers, which in some cases has ignited with explosive force. If the inflator housing ruptures in a crash, metal shards from the airbag can be sprayed throughout the passenger cabin—a potentially disastrous outcome from a supposedly life-saving device”

So: the risk response generates a new risk - in this case clearly a threat.

The Value of Science

We’ve just witnessed The March For Science around the globe.  The need for people to understand what science brings to the table.  I think most project managers know and appreciate the value of science, and would tend not to be ‘deniers’ of the facts that scientists provide, so I won’t dwell on this – but it is worth mentioning.

The Promise of the Waxworm

I know – this sounds like the name of a horrifically drippy romance novel or perhaps a Dan Brown thriller.  But in this case it’s about the breaking down of polyethylene and a chance to solve a problem of concern to all of us.  From the story:

People around the world use about 1 trillion plastic bags each year, the study said, and more than 45 million tonnes of polyethylene plastics are produced annually.  "The caterpillar produces something that breaks the chemical bond, perhaps in its salivary glands or a symbiotic bacteria in its gut," said Cambridge University's Paolo Bombelli said.  "If a single enzyme is responsible for this chemical process, its reproduction on a large scale using biotechnological methods should be achievable."

As project managers we must be aware of risks in both forms – threat and opportunity – as well as the idea of secondary risk.  And, I would also argue that when it comes to any of these concepts, the focus should be on the long term, your project’s realizations of benefits, not only the specific and direct objectives of the project. 

Next time you launch a project, think about the waxworm!

In today’s Boston Sunday Globe, in the front page of their Address section, has a feature story about how climate change worries have ‘taken a back seat’ in terms of Boston’s sizzling real estate market.  People are buying up Beantown properties (including those along the shoreline) despite the well-documented sea-level effects expected for Boston in the longer term.

The article says that if you are out looking for real estate this weekend (a very nice spring weekend in Boston, as it turns out) climate change “may sound like a tinny alarm bell from a distant, dystopian future”.  But real estate investments are not “for the moment”, they are for the long-haul.

Nela Richardson, chief economist at the real estate brokerage Redfin, agrees that buyers just aren’t reacting to climate change. “What we see, especially in the Boston area, is a lot of those coastal properties are high-end real estate, and they sell at a premium,” she said. “I think the psychology is, It’s too far away for me to worry about it.”

Or, is there something else at play here?  Massachusetts actually has some very good science and planning around climate change and perhaps, just perhaps, people are putting their faith in actions by the city and the Commonwealth’s Governor Charlie Baker.  Planners are actually considering a huge sea wall from the community of Hull to Deer Island.  See figure below, from the Boston Globe in February.  Imagine the project management opportunities for that program!

But let’s get back to the issue.  There are resources available to help with decisions – if you want to take the long term into account.  One of the most interesting is the tool from Sasaki that lets you see the effects of sea level rise – plus the effect of storms, in four scenarios.  To me, what was interesting was that Boston’s Logan Airport is actually underwater in the most extreme of the four scenarios.  But even in the less extreme situations, many properties (of high commercial value) are at risk.  See the figure below, generated from this interactive map. 

What are the take-aways for project managers, regardless of whether you say “Car” or “Cah”?  After all, the sea is not rising only in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

The take-away - just this:

Your project – like a home purchase – is more than just a “purchase and sale” agreement.  It “lives” longer than the date at which the project is handed over to the client.  The effects – economic, social, and ecological – continue past that date when you move on to another project.

You should be looking at the equivalent of the Sasaki maps which you make project decisions.

In this case, you don’t want to literally be part of the “wave of the future”.

Alstom has successfully tested a hydrogen-powered train which has as its exhaust only … water.

The train uses fuel cells (like the Toyota Mirai), and is intended to go into service carrying passengers in Germany in late 2017 or early 2018.  Let’s start with just a little science: how does a fuel cell work?

Fuel Cell basics

A fuel cell is a device that generates electricity by a chemical reaction. Every fuel cell has two electrodes, one positive and one negative, called, respectively, the anode and cathode. The reactions that produce electricity take place at the electrodes.

Every fuel cell also has an electrolyte, which carries electrically charged particles from one electrode to the other, and a catalyst, which speeds the reactions at the electrodes.

Hydrogen is the basic fuel, but fuel cells also require oxygen. One great appeal of fuel cells is that they generate electricity with very little pollution–much of the hydrogen and oxygen used in generating electricity ultimately combine to form a harmless byproduct, namely water.

This description is courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.  You can read the entire article here.

So, since these types of engines only produce water, can you drink it?  Turns out… yes!  See this article from Wired in which the editor appears on video, actually drinking the exhaust of the Toyota Mirai.

Let's get back to the train project.

Here’s the press release from Alstom:

Despite numerous electrification projects in several countries, a significant part of Europe’s rail network will remain non-electrified in the long term. In many countries, the number of diesel trains in circulation is still high – more than 4,000 cars in Germany, for instance.

Coradia iLint is a new CO2-emission-free regional train and alternative to diesel power. It is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, its only emission being steam and condensed water while operating with a low level of noise. Alstom is among the first railway manufacturers in the world to develop a passenger train based on such a technology. To make the deployment of the Coradia iLint as simple as possible for operators, Alstom offers a complete package, consisting of the train and maintenance, as well as also the whole hydrogen infrastructure out of one hand thanks to help from partners.

The full press release is available here.

Related videos and stories:

This is a big deal for project managers, not only in the train projects themselves but also infrastructure.  These trains need hydrogen filling stations. Where do these come from?  Well, it depends on the location, but in the UK, the government is committing hundreds of millions of pounds to creating the appropriate infrastructure for hydrogen vehicles.  See this statement from the UK Government.

Statement from UK Government 2016

Stay tuned to this blog, we’ll keep you up to date as this project moves from this testing phase to initiation and execution!