“Watching two engineers argue is like watching pigs wallow in mud. Eventually you figure out that they do it because they like to.” — Anonymous I’m still learning better ways to do HazOps. And since there are better ways, then what I am doing now couldn’t possibly be the best. So, what is the RIGHT [...]
“A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood.” George S. Patton, Jr. I intended to begin with “A good plan, well executed, is better than a perfect plan, poorly executed,” but when I checked, that’s not what General Patton said. What he said was “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than [...]
“Everything is impossible until it is done.” — Robert H. Goddard In 1921, annoyed with ignorant criticism, Robert Goddard published a piece in Scientific American in defense of the potential for travel to the moon. It’s always easier to say something is impossible than to address the potential of it happening. Double Jeopardy When someone [...]
“If your house were burning down and you could take away one thing, what would it be?”…”I’d take the fire.” — Jean Cocteau, interviewed by André Fraigneau The images of the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral burning broke my heart. I am grateful that people and organizations around the world have vowed to contribute to the [...]
“It’s not how we make mistakes, but how we correct them that defines us.” — Rachel Wolchin One of the most common recommendations made as a result of incident safety investigations is “improved training,” especially when the investigation concludes that the incident was the result of an error. It is not because training is so [...]
“As they depend, not upon the agent, but upon fortune, they cannot be the proper foundation for any sentiment” — Adam Smith We all believe that people should follow safety rules all the time. Not because there is a harmful outcome every time someone violates a safety rule or commits an unsafe act. Because usually [...]
“Human genius has limits, but stupidity does not.” — Alexandre Dumas, fils Everyone we have ever worked with is accepting, if not downright enthusiastic, about managing process safety. Likewise, everyone we have ever worked with is no more enthusiastic about complying with Process Safety Management than they are about getting a root canal. In part, [...]
“The failure of a layer of protection to prevent an incident is not the initiating cause of the incident.” The United States just joined much of the world in grounding the Boeing 737 Max 8 and Max 9. The tipping point was not the crash of Indonesian Lion Air Flight 610 into the Java Sea [...]
“No matter how bad things are, you can always make things worse.” — Randy Pausch The term “worst case” lacks rigor. Let’s stop using it. “Worst case” doesn’t really mean what we think it means and it confuses people. More often than not, the term is an obstacle to good analysis, not an aid. What [...]
“With a chemical alarm, you’re going to build one that is oversensitive because you would rather the alarm go off and give you a false alarm than to err on the other side.” —General Norman Schwarzkopf False alarms and spurious trips are inconvenient and annoying. They shut down operations that are running well, imposing the [...]
