I was speaking with a friend that is a project manager, and he was telling me about a new project to install a new air compressor / dryer / receiver system for an existing facility. The new air system would provide air for recently completed and planned organic growth. And I was amazed at the… Read more »
Posts By: John
How does a Project Manager Verify that a Job is Done Well
While the obvious answer is … if the project KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are met, then the job is done well, is this answer good enough? The global financial crisis was brought on in part by organisations meeting their KPIs. So it is clear to me that the KPI approach in isolation is not adequate,… Read more »
IS IT POSSIBLE FOR INDUSTRY TO USE THE TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE TO ACHIEVE THE RESULTS THAT WERE NOT OBTAINED IN COPENHAGEN
I am sure everyone is familiar with the concept of the triple bottom line (economic success, ecological succes, social responsibility success), so I will not elaborate on the three components. As I write this, the UN climate change meeting in Copenhagen has completed, with an outcome that many would call disappointing. One possible reason for… Read more »
THE BENEFITS OF PUBLIC TRAINING OVER IN HOUSE TRAINING
The information in this article is entirely anecdotal. I recently delivered two unrelated training courses in the United Arab Emirates. One was a public course. There were 12 delegates from 4 companies (and maybe more importantly, 4 countries). The other was an in-house course. There were 13 delegates, and because it was an in-house course,… Read more »
CANDID CAMERA and Evaluating Non Instrumented Safety Systems
Recently, we delivered a training course on IEC 61508 and 61511 (the two standards that form the basis for many safety instrumented systems in the process industries). The course was developed by another company, and it does a good job of showing how other “things” supplement safety instrumented systems. One of the best examples from… Read more »
Does Training only Benefit the Employee
I am noticing an interesting but disturbing trend … companies are cutting back on training. In his article in the July 2009 issue of “Hydrocarbon Processing”, Heinz Bloch goes so far as to say this about company management and training “…Management will not support what it deems of little value….” (and I do not think… Read more »
How do YOU select a facilitator for a risk assessment
While delivering a training course on risk assessment, one of the delegates asked that particular question. In thinking about it, my answer needed two parts: 1. I needed to genuinely answer his question 2. I needed to not provide a blatant description of myself (while I may not always succeed, I do try to be… Read more »
WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN WE EXPECT YOUNG GRADUATE ENGINEERS TO HAVE EXCELLENT COMPUTER SKILLS
When we hire a graduate engineer to join our organisation (something we did quite frequently before the global financial crisis), we probably expected them to have “excellent computer skills”. What are “excellent computer skills”? Recently, I introduced a final year engineering student to an internet search engine called “Google”. Did this person have “excellent computer… Read more »
ARE INSTRUMENTATION ENGINEERS BECOMING THE NEW SAFETY ENGINEERS OR SHOULD PROCESS CHEMICAL ENGINEERS TAKE IT BACK FROM THEM
Every so often, I read an article that really grabs me. I read one the other day in “The Chemical Engineer” magazine (March 2009). The author (Clive de Salis) opens with the sentence … “To have a SIL- (safety integrity level) rated safety loop is not a success, it’s a failure….” How could one not… Read more »