hey Petrofac this is engineering, let large, bespoke, not just a pile of pipes and pressurised containers joined together that you have so much trouble getting together.

Where the gas pipeline re-enters the sea after its short land crossing from the Laggan-Tormore field via the gas plant whose infrastructure we are attempting to build despite our client’s gross incompetence at managing anything that’s not metal !!

Well here’s real metal engineering, the world’s biggest pipe laying barge, starting work on a 243 km pipeline to St Fergus.

Oil and gas stuff can make you stand back and admire, then they get involved in ground works, get lost, stay away you nodding donkeys cant, wont understand no matter how much money you throw at it via consultants.

In Shetland we live in an purpose built accommodation block, a polecat has been seen by various people who have reported the sightings to me of a polecat living underneath our new building. One sighting was of the polecat dragging a rabbit underneath the building. My Brother found a dead polecat on the road near our Sella Ness camp, On the Sunday equinox I was delayed as I forgot to forward my alarm, so on exiting the camp 1 hour late my brother had a surprise in the van, a dead polecat. We put the polecat back near where it had met its demise on the road near the camp. That short drive in a small van was very persuasive that a polecat stinks, not of death,  just stinks, mixture of cat’s piss and fox, not recommended.

Ariel photo show the multicoloured camp with Shetlands highest hill beyond.

However I have been contemplating the oil’s industries situation where they seek to micro manage their projects by strict adherence to what they want sub-contractors to adhere to born from risk analysis of the cost of failure. Having a QC background in construction, I appreciate and fully endorse QC. But does micro managed QA fulfil a proper function with all systems? I feel that Oil & Gas micro management is born from being able to afford it, along with the tools (computers) and document controllers, to expedite it and the very necessary need to build a safe plant from multitudinous sources of equipment.

So far so even handed, but to use a QA system where everything has to be approved by the main contractor and the ultimate client, is for simple civil works, just nuts. An inability to run two systems depending on complexity and criticality of failure. The oil and gas industry have one system of max control. and i am beginning to see the use of computers as key to the functioning of such systems. Imagine using a manual document control system?! using pen and paper and draughtsmen doing drawings. You would think twice about having weekly meetings where monthly ones would suffice, or daily conversations would suffice, the ease with which computers can draw, copy amend, type, track, amend and save as a pdf  have made us slaves to the computer.

I do regularly hear senior managers complain about numbers of emails and the time to deal with them. It is so easy to cc everybody or a trail of people into an email, email systems need to have a system of must read now, must read, read when time allows, read only if  the date is etc.  That is one measure that could help control having useful time at a computer instead of clicking to delete unwanted or unessential emails.

We must use computers to help us manage better, that means managing time at computers to give us more time to manage the business of construction, health care etc

Being from the mainland, there is a strange to me, drinking behaviour. It is hiring a bus for a party, birthday, anniversary, just being a weekend day !! and going around several pubs. Its a lot like going round the halls for the squads at Up Helly A’s. So there we were in the Welcome Inn in Mossbank, our get a few pints haunt,  and it was flooded by this party. I have no idea what it was for or why it was fancy dress, but given some tempting shots I had the camera out of the pocket and took a few snaps. Some of my colleagues appear, they are the ones without wigs or makeup.

The Oil and Gas industry has an obsessive mindset regarding QA and safety, micro managing through documents, an example may illustrate; we have all had difficulties with concrete pre and post supply, and this from QA major suppliers who weigh batch (that is a subject of a previous post), add a small island company without QA and volumetric mixers and your document control spins into an upper Xerox dimension. to further complicate this how about two specifications one in precedence over the other but the lower one can be used if the client decides the main contractor’s approved contract spec is underachieving. So the example, as volumetric batchers have batcher men as operators, they need to be identified as qualified to operate the machine, so, as well as the controlling doc at a pour, the pour sheet, we in addition need a checksheet that identifies the volumetric mixer and the batcherman.  It is not difficult but exemplifies the level of control sought, nae demanded. It is yet more paper to keep collected and dealt with as a kept record.

All documents  are approved, or rather put into the system under review, and are returned with comments, comments are dealt with and docs are re-issued. The main docs are the main contractors specifications, our inspection and test plans (ITPs) based on meeting the requirements of the specification, and the risk assessment method statement (RAMS) on how we intend to build the item safely. For concrete we have an approved spec, an approved RAMS an approved ITP and now newly implemented, under review,  a pre-accreditation ITP as we will conduct the the factory testing till the supplier becomes accredited to supply concrete to BS EN 206, this ITP was amended by me up to the time I was due to fly and the previous night, basically due to a concrete trial on temporary works going pear shaped I had to add to our ITP what the supplier has to do to prevent the mishap re-occurring. about half of the ITP’s rows, some 14, produce some sort of paper outcome. This self generates document control work and indeed may have to be uploaded into the doc control system under, of course, a transmittal, that in itself needs signed and sent back and then filed.

The RAMS, SPECs and ITPs with their checksheets need to be controlled by us to our staff as well as with our client. That in itself is a task to stop documents moving around uncontrolled, particularly where we have the design responsibility and not the main contractor. What has all this to do with materials engineering? well duplicate roles of materials engineering with QA and doing doc control when the doc controller is on leave cycle. My pal Bass is rejoining us as QA manager and a local doc controller is to be employed, but already we are playing catchup and have fluky IT connections, temporary offices, and inadequate stationery, to label, to file, to put it on a shelf, to date stamp and mark as controlled or uncontrolled.

A good moan helps !!

Never even mentioned TQs, NCRs, materials approvals, audits, vendor audits, internal audits, registers, matrices, issue of drawings, meetings…………

First tour of 18 days on and 9 days off which includes two travel days. No time off in 18 days, except to watch some morning rugby, where we played well but lost to the old enemy. Surprisingly I got used to the work cycle, working weekends well what else was I to do? well could have taken some more pictures, these sunsets were from the same place on different nights, luckily I had transport so could chase the sun to the west when it looked promising. I have to say I have about 20 really good shots and was well pleased with the results. Aurora Borealis next, some of the guys have already tried and have good shots but not the sky lit up with stunning shots. I hope to take my EOS 550 up and try HD movies of the northern lights. The Island is stunning and you can just about stick your camera lens anywhere and get a good shot. I attended (as a member) the Shetlands bird club meeting on rare species in the UK given by the chairman of the UK committee on accepting breeding of rare birds. It was well attended, and I was struck , yet again, by the community spirit in the Shetlands, the venue was the Islesburgh hall, it had about 12 rooms all occupied, from folk singing, looked like crib playing, to creative stitching, that was  just one night, amazing.

I will not describe the project right now as it would all be defaming, suffice to say how to make a simple construction project complicated, have the oil and gas industry as a client.

click on the above to see the key personnel, well minus Mr Jeffrey, who bailed out today. The city of Edinburgh council have gagged the successful contractor Bilfinger Berger, so we will all receive a one sided account, and furthermore TIE have spent 80% of the budgeted sum and are now considering whether to continue with the project or not.
WHAT A BLOOMING SCANDAL
The Burghers of Edinburgh should be more reactionary and bringing those councillors who voted for this obviously ill thought out scheme to account. At the very least all those who voted for approval of this project should not be returned in elections.
No doubt the truth will be the first victim as everyone responsible seeks to distance themselves from the stark reality of money just wasted by incompetence.
The plain fact remains, the buses work just fine, and that’s just as well, as whatever shape the tram / trams end up as, the buses will still transport the people.
The trams project when most of the details are wrung out of the system will be a classic business studies case of how to fail, from conception to inception.

Well it blooming well will disturb them when their silver birch,  bramble  and wet land is transformed into a landscape’s architects helical world of imported Chinese granite. No doubt the environmental statement has the impacts as slight.

This is biodiversity land being wasted.

Dear Falkirk council

yours annoyed

and I took my first trip on the Falkirk wheel last week, designed by RMJM and built by Butterly Engineering, naw it wisnae, it was built by Morrison Construction, get your facts right Falkirk council. The wheel was designed by RMJM ( with Morrison and Butterly input) and the whole project was a Morrison Construction one.

Dear Falkirk council

yours annoyed

http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/news/Forth-Replacement-Crossing-preferred-bidder-announced

well done to all the bidding team and thanks for the celebratory lunch today. The proper one will be a double hog roast near 24 Ravelston terrace !