Practice doesn’t make perfect – it shows you how many ways you can screw-up. I’m a big believer in practice.
I was working on a project to improve a company’s emergency preparedness that began with a risk assessment which then led to many interesting adventures. One adventure was a little bit of practice to test how they could operate during an extended power outage.
The extra guards didn’t show-up on time. The maintenance staff didn’t want to play the game unless they got time and a half. Someone had pilfered about half of the plywood with an intumescent coating intended for window coverings. The fancy locking system left all the doors open on one side of the building. So far, so good!
Wandering around outside, I was marvelling at how quiet the generators were – those mufflers were really good. Things were going just fine and I was enjoying the nice spring day and then the generators started to make strange sounds, then they belched black smoke. Then they died an ignoble death. Oh well, we got through four and one half hours and the imaginary blackout became permanent.
Now it was time to earn my keep. I had to quantify the screw-ups. The worst was the generator failures. All the generators died as if on cue. We traced this to a single diesel fuel source for all the generators. A single point of failure is never good.
I learned that the new low sulfur diesel creates a storage problem. While the reduced sulfur is good for the environment, it eventually mixes with water that condenses in the fuel tank to form black sediment or emulsified water that can damage the engines. No system was in place to deal with this problem. Some research revealed the type of filtering system needed to maintain the usability of the fuel.
No good deed goes unpunished. I became the point man for the efforts to correct this situation. Product sourcing, procurement, and construction – who knew I could do all that stuff?