That's where I come from. That's a real fact.
That is Heart Bay in South Africa
and up in that valley is my house over there.
It's about 20 kilometres outside of Cape Town.
Some more facts.
I wanted to really thank Christophe for inviting me.
It's been a very enlightening experience for me.
It's been my life that I ever think I would go to a conference
and somebody would be quoting from the original of it.
It was for me. Engineers don't come across that often.
Neither do they come across Wittgenstein.
I really wanted to thank you for inviting me.
I wanted to try and give a very pragmatic perspective on facts
as we encounter them as engineers.
Before I go on to talk about facts,
I came across this blog. This is the blog of Mr Heisenberg.
Every engineer goes through this kind of
discourse from Heisenberg to Einstein
to Bohr. You get inculcated
as a young engineer that there is some kind of
doubt and variability about truth and exactness.
Then you go into the real world.
I wanted to start with a story. There being
so many literature professors here
and narratologists, I thought I'd better start with a story.
Some numbers of years ago, I was involved
with the development of this instrument over here.
It's called an oil view analyser. What it does,
it generalises industrial lubricants. Much as you would take a sample of blood
and send it off to a laboratory and it would tell you about your pathology,
you can take a sample of lubricant that circulates
around the machine and wets all the dynamic parts
and it degrades and there's a lot of information in that lubricant
and you take the data
and you interpret the data and it becomes
information from which you can take some kind of actions.
Now, we had this instrument and we'd been selling it.
I was based in the United States and we'd been selling it for about
18 months and we probably had a hundred or so of these instruments
out across the world in factories and nuclear
power plants and ships and a variety of
other applications. One day I took some oil
and I started testing it
in the laboratory and I got this kind
of response over here and one shouldn't get that kind
of response from an instrument that you're trying to get
a linear reaction and I was a little bit
concerned and I redid the test in the laboratory. This is
fundamental test with chemical instrumentation and
infrared spectrometer and I still got this kind of
non-linear response over there and I spoke to the guy
who actually did the equations that sit with
inside that instrument over there and I got some very defensive behavior
from him so I went and spoke to his subordinate
and said what was happening? I'm not getting that kind of data out of this
and there was some silence and he told me what happened.
His manager who was a gentleman by the name
of Ray was getting this kind of response as well
and this was in one of the southern states of the United States
and the three of them that were doing the development
they closed their door being southern Baptists, they got down on their
hands and knees and they drew a linear line
like that and boy did I get a fright
because you first of all in the United States with all the
contingent liabilities of an instrument like this going up
to absolutely vital production sites and the possibility
of legal action being taken against you
and so I immediately had to go and speak to the management of this company
we didn't have to do a recall on these hundred odd instruments, we could do a firmware change
once we got the equations right but facts are very important
and in engineering
we talk about facts in many different ways, one of which is appropriate
calibration and the calibration was wrong in this instrument over here
and however much one
wants to go and quote Mr Heisenberg you have to have a high degree
of certainty when you're making engineering decisions
because lots of
assets are at risk, lives are at risk and
livelihoods are at risk when one is making significant engineering
decisions, now anybody recognize that?
correct
correct, one can be ambiguous about things
but a fact without any kind of
hesitation is that is not going to work
properly again
and another fact is the consequence
of Deepwater Horizon is the share price
of BP which halved in a very short period of time
it was plunged in half and
let's say the value of the company was halved by an
incident like this and I love this I picked it up
on the web, that's the engineers
on Deepwater Horizon
but I think in their defense it was engineers
who rectified the situation as well
you can't get away from engineering but we live at increased
risk, absolutely increased risk around the world
we like the product that comes from Deepwater Horizon
I can't remember the depth, I think it's about two miles
below the surface that they're actually operating
huge complexity, huge engineering challenge
and huge risk, it's a case in South Africa
where we are mining
also two kilometers underground, we're putting people down there
the temperature is about sixty degrees centigrade, you have to cool
people with ice packs on to mine every day and you put
people at risk
anybody recognize that?
it's a certain power plant, nuclear power plant in Japan
and I put that up there, if we look at what happened
within the Deepwater Horizon
disaster over there, it was
managers who were chasing production
they were elevating risk, they were thinking that they could
cut corners, they probably were eyeing their bonuses
and their share options schemes and they took a kind of deep breath
and said let's just go for it, we are doing what's best
for the company and the consequence of
not managing risk adequately and exposing themselves
to this situation was disastrous
now if we go to this nuclear
power plant over there, we have the opposite
situation, where the major
damage and the lasting damage at Fukuyama
is from the spent fuel rods that were
stored on site, there was an accumulation of 20
or 25 years spent fuel rods that were
contained in this water reservoir
and year after year, they stored them on site, because they didn't
make a decision as to what to do with them, it was a political
decision that needed to be made, but because of innate conservatism
perhaps the cost, the political exposure of
transporting them, they had to take them from Japan and probably off to the UK
for them to be reworked, nobody
was ready to make that decision, so they kept them and they kept them and they kept them
and then they had this once in a 1000 year type event
which has caused all this lasting damage, the main damage
is from the spent fuel rods that were kept there, so the juxtaposition
of risk that we have from Deep Horizon
and Fukuyama is one,
the guys were chasing production, exposing
to a higher risk situation, and the other
there was very conservative non-decision making in the management
which also increased the risk, so somewhere
in between we have to find a happy medium, and then just for
further perspective, I put something
about the Toyota accelerator
sticking disaster that
Toyota was exposed to, this fine company who had this incredible
reputation for quality, it was a kind of quicker, faster,
cheaper situation that also halved their share price
and had the chairman of Toyota going to the US Congress
and apologizing. Now
as an engineer, you are
exposed to situations where you're trying to balance
risk, cost and performance
and it's complicated, it's complicated at times
and it's really complicated
when you're not master of your own destiny because
money comes to it, and I think we've talked about money many
number of times today and boy is it a tricky issue
it's not a scientific
factor that you can control, and then within the
engineering environment there is the increasing importance
of sustainability, and sustainability comes in two
forms, one is the environmental
sustainability, but also the sustainability
of performance, if you get performance it's almost
a metastable state and to keep performance
at a good level you have to put a lot of energy and activities
to hold it there.
I don't know if this is a fact or not, but if we're
looking, we're talking a little bit about risk now and the management of risk
there's absolutely clear evidence to show, this is
published scientific research over here, that
good risk managers are
rewarded, so I go across to
many different organisations around the world and I say
guys we need to manage risk because you will be rewarded if you manage
risk, let me just take one of these risk
measurement factors over here, these are the 20% best in class
risk managers over here, and if you're in the top 20% of risk
managers over here, you will have only about 3%
of revenue loss from deviations and problems and issues
as opposed to if you're in the middle of the pack you will have a 12%
revenue loss, and if your revenue in a large organisation is billions
and billions of whatever currency you want, that's a significant amount of money
so small amounts of investment make you a more productive
and rewarded organisation, so we talk about that
and because engineers
are not very conceptual people
we deal with specifications, so
engineers feel very comfortable when there's a specification
and they go out and they read the specification and they
adhere and they apply the specification to their organisations
and these days there's specifications for many things
there's specifications of how to measure health and safety
and there's specifications for measuring quality
and there's specifications for measuring environmental
risk, and within the mental
model of lots of engineers and engineering
managers, they go and take ISO 9000 as a fact
now if we go and apply this specification, it comes
from ISO, ISO there's no better place, that's the gold standard of
facts, and we go and put that in place and we've done our job
now
we also sit as most
people do in the context of life
in the 21st century, kind of bound by
our own personal belief systems and we've got
law and ethics and morality which are
handed down to us, then we get the phone call
and the lovely circle
of ethics and morality and law kind of get distorted when the phone
call arrives, and
there goes the best intentions, the phone call
why haven't you made your production this month, or your cost
overruns are at 20% for the second month in a row
so there go best intentions
and in order to manage best intentions
engineers feel very comfortable to go
back to specifications, I'm in specification
and we get a conformance mindset
engineers are very comfortable with a conformance
mindset and you're
operating against the standard, that's a fact, I'm within standard
and you're preventing value from slipping and it's a
very defensive position to be, and sure it manages
risk, it absolutely manages risk, but
if you sit there, the Koreans probably don't have
that kind of mindset, they have
a performance mindset, at best the performance mindset is a very
competitive and advantageous place to be
and there's a whole lot of other criteria
within the performance mindset, abused
the conformance mindset leads to a Fukushima
this is Cellarfield, that's another nuclear site over there
and because they're managing a high amount of risk
they like and they feel very comfortable within the mental model
which perhaps becomes a fact to them
this is where we have to operate and there's no ability
to diverge from a set of operating conditions
I worked at Cellarfield, this time last year I did a project
at Cellarfield and they hadn't changed anything for 20 years
even if they'd got a new piece of equipment, they hadn't changed anything for 20 years
they didn't even know where all the equipment was, in perhaps the most
riskiest site in Europe, because they were locked in this conformance
mindset, and being locked in there, they had
exposed their organisation to a significantly larger risk
than if they'd been adaptable, the worst case
of performance is the BP, Deeparazan
example over there, and the verdict is out, still at this point
in time, where the people will actually go to jail as a consequence of that
and if you take the devaluation of the net value of BP
it will take them many, many decades
to recreate that value through their future
endeavour, so this conformance
versus performance mindset is something
which I believe needs to be managed
you have to have both the elements
of conformance and the elements of performance
and create some kind of balancing
creative tension within organisations
for you to manage correctly
seize opportunity and ensure
that investments are productive and
people are not overexposed to risks and communities, are not overexposed
to the effects of what you have
going on next to those communities
that's a conclusion that I've made over the last couple of years, and I ask myself
is this a fact? As far as I can
conclude as an engineer, I think it is a fact, I'm convinced
of it, that you have to have, you cannot be on one side, you cannot be
on the other, and I think if we look at our own lives
we are used to living in creative tension with many things
I think if we take, you know, it's
six o'clock on a Friday evening, I don't know about in Germany
but it's six o'clock on a Friday evening, I want to be home with my family
and there's a creative tension between professional life
and home life, and you have to hold them in equilibrium if you're going to be
insane, you know, if you say I'm not going to go home
until, you know, you're taking away from your family and if you just say
I'm just going to stay at home all the time, you're probably not going to hold your job
so you have to have many things in life in creative tension
and I think for balanced
management into the future, as we are in a riskier and riskier
world, in my mind it's a fact that we have to
hold conformance and performance in this kind of
creative tension and manage it as effectively as we can
So, you know,
I kind of get to the end of my presentation, it's kind of late
on a Friday afternoon and say, okay, started
off as a young engineer and a young student
where we are told that there's huge variability
you can't be specific about anything, exposed to the
real world where if you don't manage
very complex processes, they can get away
with you, and if you don't manage decisions
really well, they can get away from you, and if you don't manage
the transition that we talked about earlier today
in some of the presentations, there's data to information
transition, things can get away with you, and I think
you know, if we are
a thousand years looking back at ourselves, much like you did
with Edward looking back right into history and people look back at us
we're in an age where we're accumulating huge amounts
of data. I know that the university here
has over the last couple of years tried to implement
SAP with the promise, they will sell it
to you as a fact, but with the promise of having a better, more managed
existence. I think when we look
back in a thousand years back now, there was the
promise of data into information, there's
billions and billions of whatever country you want to think about
that's been invested in this data to information, but it's just data
and it's so complex to completely implement that
they're never completely implemented. So
I think a fact is that we have to spend a lot more time
making sense of data, taking it
into information, and especially within the engineering
environment, once we have information, take that into
action. So I think in conclusion
I say that
we as engineers, we're like everybody else, we're exposed
to very complex pools and making very, very
complex risk decisions
and we have to have the flexibility of mind to adjudicate
how best to make those decisions and we have
to be able to transcend different
mindsets of both performance and conformance to be successful
and that's a fact. Thank you.