My 7-year-old son figured out how to stop the gushing oil well. As a ‘manager’ I ran a small experiment and led him to a sensible answer. I turned on the garden hose and asked my son how he would stop the flow of water without turning off the spigot. His first reaction was to step on the hose. When that didn’t fully do the trick he proceeded to cover the end of the hose with his hand. By now the flow was only 20% of the original, and my son was drenched. He then looked at me and said, “dad, if we can push something into this ‘hole’ so that I can hold it with my hand I think I can stop it!” EUREKA!, the kid figured it out…
I quickly sketched an adapted version of the “plug-and-hand” for the gushing well. After all, the two physics concepts at play here are: 1) Pressure, 2) Area of the orifice… and the rules that apply on the surface also apply at 5000ft under water.
The problem that has plagued BP is that they failed miserably at containment (and their management is fully responsible for this). In their mind, this oil is being wasted, and every solution they try to come up with is one way or another trying to ‘recover’ some of the oil. They have been trying to somehow capture and transport the oil to surface ships thus spending all their brain power on pie in the sky solutions that have never been tried before. This problem is systematic and likely not isolated to BP, but to every single oil company out there. When you consider the cost of drilling a well, every containment solution which has been developed has to do with the ability to continue recovering the oil. Even the blowout preventer is designed to be “re-tapped”. Except for the ‘top-kill’ process, not a single solution exists in an oil company’s arsenal to fully and completely disable a well.
In the context of ideation or brainstorming, the problem or challenge was incorrectly framed by BP management and perhaps even the US government. BP has clearly been looking for solutions that can recover some or all of the oil (until that relief well is completed), and the US government has been focused on cleanup and containment (how to keep the oil from damaging the shoreline)… but no one has truly looked at how to effectively plug the well.
Granted, this solution is in its simplest form, but I’m sure that the “engineers” which have the schematics of the blowout preventer, the size of the pipe and oil pressure which must be suppressed can define a variation that can effectively “PLUG THE WELL”.
The irony here, is that in BP’s struggle to ‘salvage’ some of the oil in order to sell it, they have effectively incurred more costs on the cleanup bill.
So the moral of the story… there are two:
1) As the Baden-Powell once said: “Be prepared.”
2) Not framing the problem correctly can lead to a tremendous waste of “collective-intelligence. This can be the difference between over-engineering a solution and finding one ‘under our noses’.
It would be interesting to know the internal discussions going on both at BP and within the government about how to fix this problem. I suspect that this option is "known" but has not been used because of a short term focus on recovering oil for the money, and keeping the well up and running.
ReplyDeleteYour basic premise here is dead sound, and I hope this piece becomes widely read. It should be widely distributed as it is an important perspective.
I am not sure if this simple solution is actually known at the decision making levels. I would assume it is, but as an engineer myself, we often look for complex solutions to simple problems. We sometimes tend to "overengineer" and this is mostly due to two factors: a) the highly competitive nature of the engineering trade, b) the corporate culture where one is working.
ReplyDeleteI would not be surprised that many BP engineers are holding their breath and not putting forth the simple "under their nose" ideas only because as with many organizations these are tipically laughed at... and that is a problem that stems from the culture management has engrained in their team. Another reason could be the lack of an adequate idea management process. These engineers don't have effective ways of communicating their ideas beyond their silos.
The "overengineering" reminds me of a story I heard about NASA's development for an instrument that would allow astronauts to write in zero-gravity. They spent a lot of tax-payer money engineering a pressurized pen, while the Soviets decided to use a pencil.
Bob Eckert piles on...
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with your assessment. It's the old saw: "When you define the problem appropriately, the solution becomes self evident"
I'll promote this post via social media, and ask you all to do the same. And no, my brother Guido does not own a concrete plant in the gulf states.
In a related development, our buddy Mark Roser is closing in on implementation of an incredibly elegant solution to solve the problem of "What might be all the ways to help the gulf marshes recover more rapidly?" He's currently engaged in environmental impact trials in both freshwater and saltwater marshes and should be making initial announcements shortly. We'll need your help to promote the solution rapidly if his trials pan out, as it is implementation will be significantly helped by gulf states citizen activism. stay tuned to our blog for the latest update / announcement.
http://innovationblogsite.typepad.com/newandimprovedinnovation/
Am not sure why Kevin Costner's solution isn't being jumped on and more of the technology he offers isn't being immediately built and expanded. It's even a routine that was designed to recover the oil from the water! BP should love that.
ReplyDeleteBP appears to be ignoring the effects of the spill, without a clue how to do cleanup that is at all effective. There's a huge news cover up on the extent of the problem. The reporting that is going on is inadequate and reporters are being limited from taking pictures of the effects.
So if BP and everyone else ignores cleaning up, it will become "old news" and then everyone can continue to ignore it. BP can tie all effects of their actions up in court for decades...while the animals die off and people's livelihoods disappear too. It won't be long. In a matter of months it will be a moot point, and everyone can say, "what a shame" and move away to go on with their lives...so they're hoping.
This will be a bit different and I don't think it will die off. Unlike PWS (Alaska) and spills in other parts of the world, the Gulf Coast has millions of visitors who go there to enjoy family time and "de-stress". Losing this piece of paradise will not be forgotten.
ReplyDeleteWith that amount of oil floating aroun, it will be years, if not decades, before any evidence of oil is completely gone from the area. The beaches will have that "rainbow" film coverring the water for many years.