by Bernard McGrath, Inspection Validation Centre
There never seems enough time to do all the things you want to do: there is the day job which gets in the way but needs to be done because it funds all the other activities; there are the jobs in the home and garden; family and friends to spend time with and holidays to take; trying to make time to keep fit; books to read and DVDs to watch. And, on top of all these, this summer there is the World Cup, the European Athletic Championships and then the Commonwealth Games to watch. I'm sure you will be able to come up with a similar list of commitments you have to undertake and activities which you would like more time to concentrate on.
There are only 24 hours in a day and whether we like it or not there is a limit to what one individual can do in that time. This lesson was brought home during the senate hearings on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. When asked if he had been briefed on the progress of the drilling of the Macondo well before the well blew, BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward replied that the only knowledge he had of the well was in April when oil was discovered. When questioned further about whether he was aware of what had happened regarding the rig before the blow-out, Mr Hayward answered: "With respect, sir, we drill hundreds of wells a year all over the world."
We expect individuals to be responsible for what organisations do (and that responsibility is used as a justification for the large remuneration packages that such individuals are given but that's another article in a different magazine!) but the reality is that those individuals, as described by Mr Hayward above, and just like me and you, have a limited finite capacity. So although he has ultimate responsibility for a rig that costs $420,000/day to hire and, as we now know, had the potential to blow leading to costs of $3.5 billion (as of 10 July 2010), he knew nothing about it because it is beyond an individual's human capacity to know about each of the "hundreds of wells a year all over the world".
The cult of the individual took an even greater and more obvious knock in the football world cup. Rooney and Ronaldo were just two of the superstars who underperformed against expectations. Yet when you look at the countries which did do well – USA, Ghana, Germany and Spain – it is not individuals that come to mind but the team. It doesn't matter how good an individual is, even in individual sports such as tennis, athletics and cycling (I have managed to juggle writing this and watching the end of the stage of the Tour de France!), if they don't have a team supporting them, they don't succeed.
In NDT we also have a cult of the individual – the operator – but without the sort of worship which normally goes with cults! A number of years ago I attended a meeting regarding a particular inspection result. The meeting has stuck in my mind because I had cauliflower soup for the first time in the hotel the night before! But that is not all. The great and the good attended the meeting: people with years of experience of analysing automated data, developing inspections and specifying qualifications. However, the meeting was not allowed to come to a consensus about a particular indication because they had not been specifically qualified! Sentencing of the indication was placed on the shoulders of a qualified individual operator.
I am going to refrain from imposing my views on you. I want you to think about the following questions:
- In critical inspections do we place too much onus on individual operators?
- Knowing that humans are susceptible to errors and that vigilance increases when more than one individual is present, should operators operate in pairs whenever possible?
- Do we give operators the support team they require?
Please note that the views expressed in this column are the author's own personal ramblings for the purpose of encouraging discussion within the NDT Newspaper. They do not represent the views of the IVC, Serco Assurance or the HSE who funded the PANI projects.
Letters can be mailed to The Editor, NDT News, Newton Building, St George's Avenue, Northampton NN2 6JB. Fax: 01604 89 3861; Email: ndtnews@bindt.org or email Bernard McGrath direct at Bernard.McGrath@sercoassurance.com
