I recently saw a map of the Nord Stream Project pipeline, linking Russia and Germany. It runs under the Baltic Sea, following very close to the seabed boundaries between Russia and Finland and Estonia and Finland before entering Swedish water. It then enters German waters near the German-Polish subsea boundary. Why is this being done?… Read more »
Posts Categorized: News
The “Forgotten” Member of the Triple Bottom Line
Recently I was delivering a guest lecture at one of the Australian universities, and I had to stop my lecture because I had lost the audience. I was able to get them back, but only by abandoning my prepared talk and instead speaking “off the top of my head”. The reason I had lost my… Read more »
Some of the Hidden Costs of Carbon Management
I recently read a news article out of the USA regarding electric cars. It seems the US government receives revenue from transportation fuel taxes, which is used cross-country highway maintenance. This government revenue stream would be lost if all cars became electric cars. Naturally, a road “does not know” if the cars are fossil fuel… Read more »
Portable Experience – Taking Skills Across Industries
I am continually fascinated by how inconsistently people and organisations treat technical skills that should be “portable” across industries. By “portable” I mean skills that can be used immediately in a variety of industries. Let us consider two extreme examples … facility layout and photocopy machines. A person that has spent a career doing layout… Read more »
A Question of Qualifications
An elite athlete retired from his sport (a team sport). This elite athlete is recognised as not one of the greatest ever, but in the next tier below the greatest ever. He was an integral member of the “unofficial world championship team” as his sport had no official world championship. His retirement had an immediate… Read more »
Nature’s Various Forms and Distributions of Water
As I write this, I am amazed at how nature is distributing water around the world + Western Europe has just been hit with a very large snowfall that has crippled aviation and transportation + At various times in December, parts of North America also received very large snowfalls, and aviation and transportation has also… Read more »
One Alternative to Address the Skill Shortage
I am sure you have experienced them … the short periods of time where you really do have too much work, and you need to delegate some in order to meet all of your deadlines. If you are like most organisations, your co-workers are also fully loaded with their own obligations, so the only way… Read more »
The Cost and Value of Good Advice
Recently I was listening to the musical comic Allan Sherman sing “Good Advice”. It is a silly song about how he (Allan Sherman) travels through history, and gives advice to some of the greats of the past – which results in the greats of history achieving their destiny. Here is one verse about the great… Read more »
Which is more Green – Air or Water?
I have been observing many debates about “industry going green”, but one I have not heard is … “what is the more green basic cooling utility – air or water?” Anecdotally, I think the current (overly simplistic) answer is … if you have steam, it is probably better for you to have cooling water. If… Read more »
The Benefits of a Clear and Simple Message
One quotation from the great physicist Albert Einstein has become embedded in my training practices: + “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” And this is especially true when explaining subtle technical issues to management. Here in Australia we recently had a federal election, and I had the opportunity to… Read more »