Titanic Disasters

It has been said that Business should take care of business issues and Development should take care of development issues. UserStories are one way of encouraging this separation of responsibility, yet it is never quite that easy. Business controls the money and demands accountability. Business may affect careers as well.

In the movie Titanic the designer of the ship was obligated to reduce the number of lifeboats in the design. As well, the ship's captain was strong-armed into running the ship at unsafe speeds. Both were implicitly threatened by their employer, the Business, and both could probably be held legally liable for their actions. The designer definitely could be held liable owing to the legal status of engineering as a profession.

Is there any recourse for the engineer other than to hold her ground and possibly be dismissed for asserting engineering judgement? It is easy to find the right thing to do in this situation, yet it is hard to demand of engineers the courage that is necessary when Business holds most of the cards. No pun on UserStory cards intended. :-)

Doubtless there are legal recourses if one were dismissed or otherwise damaged for refusing to do a wrong thing. I don't know of any case when it really happened, but I've only been doing this stuff for 35 years or so. One can always document the concern, talk to the next level of boss up, resign, request reassignment, go to the press, ... More likely one gets talked into it rather than threatened into it. Makes better movies with the threat, tho. --RonJeffries

One rarely gets screwed for actually doing a good job. --rj

See LieOrStreet.

The engineer can make it clear that "It isn't going to work, no matter what we do. If we must do it, then we'll do our best, and try to minimize the damage, but it will be a loss, quite possibly a big one." Business will, of course, hear only "blah blah we'll do our best blah blah", and will later complain that "You told me we could do it! You said it would be our best project ever!", but their subconscious will have noted what was really said (and most likely put in writing), and may reflect on it when they're not angry and defensive. Assuming that they both survive the disaster(s), then after a few of 'em, Business might start listening to the engineer, having seen the business effects of not doing so.

Concur. This is why I write stuff down, folks. I've had more than one job site boss who has complained that I didn't do something or that I did something wrong or whatever, but then I whipped out my ThreeRingBinder of stuff that I'd written down and rubbed their little noses in it. Clients don't often remember when they make a dumb mistake. It's up to us to remind them.

Indeed. Sometimes the only value in documentation is covering your caboose.

The BP oil fiasco should perhaps force us to reflect on the unknowability of complex systems. I'm still not comfortable with nuclear power. BP-like companies will be building, designing, and running them. I'll instead elect to pay a roughly 30% surcharge for solar, wind, and geothermal for a lower risk profile, or at least less DiscontinuitySpikes in the risk profile. -t

But you are equating the failure modes that are not the same. In modern nuclear reactors, the leak results are not the same as the leaks of an artesian oil reserve. Three Mile Island killed nobody, and the environmental impact was trivial. There is no chance of ongoing leaks of massive proportions with ANY nuclear power plant.

Nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong `~;& 7* bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb[

The BP oil fiasco should perhaps force us to reflect on the unknowability of complex systems

Pure bullshit. Oil drilling is a well-established technology. BP's systems are simple, but their corporate culture constantly pressures their engineers to run their hardware to exhaustion, to save a buck. Plenty of oil rigs have gotten in trouble, and most relied on their backups. BP's corporate culture is the problem. Don't pass the blame by saying "oh boo hoo we needed the oil, but oil rigs are complex!" BP punished whistle blowers. They knew perfectly well, on April 18th, how close they were to disaster, and like an addict they could not stop themselves. --PhlIp

Regardless of technology, they somehow managed to get away with dangerous corner cutting, perhaps because of a too-cozy relationship with the Feds. It could happen again with nuclear power.

But the scope if possible disaster is vastly lower - nuclear reactors are not pressurized resevoirs of billions of tons of plutonium - the worst case for them is a few dozen miles getting irradiated, and perhaps a 2-3x increase in background radiation downwind - not great, but much less impact than the BP oil spill.

I question the "much" in "much less".

From the top, per TheScarcityGame...

Big oil won the race to become the first high-energy solution. Unlike coal, you can pump it. So Big Oil has perverted our politics ever since. _Every_ war is fought over oil, including every secret war, and including Mexico's current civil war. Drugs, terrorism, etc are just convenient distractions. And bad things happen to people researching alternatives, such as Henry Ford's electric car factory. It blew up when a Bush was in town. They started out as the official "fixers" for Standard Oil, just as the bin Ladens were always the "fixers" for the Saudis.

When Three Mile Island had a relatively small mishap, Big Oil quietly exploited the situation to remain dominant. We commissioned no more nukes. But nuclear power never was competitive to begin with - it's only "popular" because - as Iran demonstrates - it's a stepping-stone to nuclear weapons.

The solution is to harness the sun. But the main problem with solar energy is you can't dominate it. Solar collectors by their nature are distributed, so nobody can seize a choke point (such as the Niger Delta) and send in troops to die defending it.

If the fix for the situation is the kind of heterogeneous, distributed, adaptive network that all us engineers find so useful and powerful these days... then gee I guess it's our turn! --PhlIp

See: WarStories