Maintenance, a Homeland Security Issue

Almost every industrial maintenance person I've ever met takes their job pretty serious. Plant management usually understands that maintenance is not a just about allocating resources to protect resources, but the health and safety of our fellow employees often depends on us doing our jobs well. Paul Studebaker of PlantServices.com suggests Reports on an incident.

A recent pipeline explosion is just another disaster on U.S. soil that could have been prevented by solid maintenance practices, writes Paul Studebaker, Editor in Chief.

As the latest in a series of events that includes flooding New Orleans, neglecting Walter Reed Army Medical Center and collapsing the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi in Minneapolis, the November 28 explosion on a major Canadian-U.S. crude-oil pipeline showed once again that terrorists would be hard-pressed to match the damage we can do to ourselves with engineering, maintenance and management mistakes.

The explosion killed two maintenance workers. Then it spooked speculators into raising oil prices by more than $3 a barrel to $95 on November 29. Those of us in the rapidly-freezing Midwest were terrorized by loose talk of fuel oil and gasoline shortages, and only somewhat reassured when U.S. Department of Energy spokesperson Megan Barnett promised to consider tapping the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Later that day, oil futures investors discovered that the incident would have no appreciable effect on U.S. supplies because the pipeline was already shut down for maintenance and would be back in service in three days. Just in case, OPEC announced plans to step up production by half-a-million barrels a day, more than enough to cover any deficit. (Oil exporters don’t want the United States to learn how to do without.)

This incident is coupled with a shutdown of the 1-10 Atchafalaya throughway last month,

Louisiana state police have reopened a stretch of Interstate 10 between Lafayette and Baton Rouge that has been closed since Nov. 15 because of a natural gas well blowout, the Associated Press reported Monday, Nov. 26.

Troopers and highway workers removed cones and barricades to allow traffic through in both directions at about 7 p.m. Sunday, according to the AP.

The 55-mile corridor over the Atchafalaya Basin between Louisiana State Route 415 and I-49 -- part of a major route between Houston and New Orleans -- was not damaged seriously, authorities said.

Paul Studebaker has somne suggestions though;

Maybe what the United States really needs is a Department of Homeland Integrity to go along with our Department of Homeland Security. We could invest some of the billions of dollars we spend trying to fend off external threats on educating people about the costs and value of sound infrastructure, the payback on sound maintenance practices and the indispensable roles of reliability-enforcement personnel including facility managers, engineers and technicians.

The Corps of Engineers could become the core of a national effort to recruit, train and employ an army of experts to search out, identify and exorcise the structural and procedural deficiencies that daily threaten the well-being of our citizens. We’d save lives, improve our environment, and increase the efficiency of our infrastructure. If we did it right, we ought to be able to make a profit.

And then he asks "Who's with me". While asking for government intervention is asking for trouble. He does bring to our attention that plant maintenance issues may be national security issues, and that there are folks looking at having Uncle give us another hand. Those of us who deal with maintenance issues and government regulations know just how unhelpful the government help can be.

posted by Ray L. @ 6:35 AM 0 Comments Links to this post.

It's A Birthday

This month the lowly transistor turns 60. I don't know if there is another moment in the past century that has become so significant. Eric Berger reflects;

the transistor turns 60. Has anything been as transformative?

Born in the now defunct Bell labs, one has to to wonder if these folks really understood how significant their new discovery was.

IN DECEMBER 1947, Bells Labs scientists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain first revealed what would come to be known as the transistor.

They held the future in their hands - a device that would replace vacuum tubes in 10 years, and 60 years later has transformed electronics.

Inventions change things; great inventions change everything.

It was a different time. Bell labs developed the technologies and the rest of the world ran with it.
Bell labs is gone, but their legacy is built into every radio computer and piece of electronics we make. I have to wonder what the one great invention of this century will be.

posted by Ray L. @ 10:28 AM 0 Comments Links to this post.