http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-cavnar/a-v…

At the moment of the disaster they had a party on the oil rig to celebrate 7 years of accident free operation… A lesson can be that you get used to the risks but never should turn your back on them.

1) I would like to see more of a focus on prevention of this happening again, immediately.

I would like to see a great deal of attention brought to the prevention of recurrance of this type of disaster. Short term actions like verification of proper operation of all similar shutoff valves (especially from the same valve manufacturer) in use throughout the world should be publicly available and immediately completed. To have this happen once is tragic, to let the same thing happen again would be unthinkable. Understanding the true causes of why this occured and preventing the recurrance should be the first priority.

2) Ensure the proper incentives are in place for ongoing future risk reduction.

A well run company is one that protects itself against risks to its assets. The goal of a well run company is to increase the future value of the company and that includes avoiding risks to the value of the company. Risks like the protection of ongoing operational asset (I am sure the rig was making money for BP) as well as reducing the risks of damages, fines and lawsuits.

However, I also know that not every company is well run. Not all companies have excellent engineering, quality and safety professionals. I would expect as a logical outcome that operations like oil rigs that contain risks to the public should have an ongoing system of checks and balances (like a manditory auditing system to ensure all safety equipment like shutoff valves are in good operational order). A key role of government is to ensure the safety of the public and the health of its citizens. A good system of checks and balances with healthy tension of outside auditing for the public safety.

Back to the author's original question (which is excellent) on the role of inventors and the importance of failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA).

FMEA is a well understood product development tool and it is used to a great extent by automotive and aerospace companies as part of thier product design and production validation processes.

Some public engineering design tool companies sell automated FMEA tools that reduce the effort it takes to do this critical process well.

In this case, the innovators of this oil rig included a risk reduction device in the design (shutoff valves). What was not done was to ensure the valve was maintained and would operate properly if needed and that is the key to learning here.

The failure mode risk is only reduced if the risk protection devices actually work over a lifetime. This is typically called out in a Control Plan in manufacturing.

A great analogy is your home's electrical circuit breakers. It is recommended to cycle them annually to test for proper operation. How many of us actually cycle our circuit breakers annually like recommended? How many of us cycle out GFCI plugs in our bathrooms like we are supposed to? I know that I do not.

Some sort of onging verification of safety equipment operation is needed in addition to a good FMEA for key safety areas.

Thanks again to the author for a good question and I hope that the FMEA's and robust Control Plans for the oil industry are reviewed and they are updated to ensure ongoing compliance to risk reduction.

In my opinion it is the same logic as what caused the financial crisis: Taking risks can be profitable and when regulations allow for it, then risks will be taken. As a society we can not rely on companies that they do not gamble. If after a wrong gamble the company is gone, so be it. But if their gambling affects the society, the society has to intervene.

Of course any invention has to be tested against known failures until deployment. But the risk factor will always attract people to gamble. But if it is also true probably the only right way to lower the risk is to ensure the decision makers are not only powerful but too pragmatic and scrupulous.

But honestly, looking at the current BP’s disaster, it is too hard to believe the spilling was not considered neither by BP nor government who issued the license. It is too obvious to skip it. So, I do not think it is an engineering problem but rather greasiness. And we need to turn to psychoanalytics for a solution.

I heard from oil industri people that this was almost unlikely to happen due to all different kind of hardware solutions on the see floor to shout the valve…. But it happend anyway….

I think that worst case senario planing, risk analysis, FMEA's etc. is a must have, but also very simple, ready to go fallback solutions.

Then we really should start to get rid of our dependence of oil and find better alternative solution.

The real issue is that companies take the road to profit and cut as much cost as possible. Often times that means implementing the extra technology that can save lives or the enviornment in the face of disaster. When you talk about human life and our ecosystem there should be no price too high. There should be no excuse for execitives not listening to the designers and project managers when they publish Risk analysis.