What is everyone's take on chaing Enbridge's approch of tackling risks?
19 replies (most recent on top)
@1mwvc+1sjJVVay, that’s funny and also untrue. Take a look at any of our American peers. They are far more efficient and everything costs a whole lot less to maintain and put in service. The only thing Canadians do is try to gold plate everything unnecessarily adding to the bureaucracy of this place.
Don’t throw stones at the Canadians. They’ve been bailing you out for years.
The leadership of N75 is not a good choice, I believe Calgary will figure that out soon.
Lots of better choices.
Well call it risk management or delayed maintenance if you like.
Here in Ontario the budget cuts of drastically needed repairs and replacement of so much is big mistake in my opinion.
Risk is a four letter word.
Wait for it …..
Also - on a similar note. Has anyone seen the McKinsey N-75 bill hitting any of their projects? I was looking at some of the budgets for my projects and the project controls lines are enormous for some of my projects and I was told they are hiding the McKinsey costs in that line item. It amounts to at least $80k. Spread that over several hundred projects and you get an idea of the magnitude of that invoice. Insane.
I've only been here a bit over a year now in Projects , but in the last month or so, I am starting to see some small trickles of hope on the risk tolerance front. There seems to be a pretty strong urge from the top to influence the business units to make it easier to do our jobs. One avenue for managing risk is to revise some of our engineering and construction specifications to a state that is more industry-standard and fit for purpose instead of gold plated. Also cutting out Enbridge SME-created processes and deliverables that are not required by some regulatory code or law. I think ultimately there is a lot we can do to better manage risk without really compromising reliability.
One of the biggest things Enbridge can do to more sensibly manage risk is to move Enbridge headquarters from Canada to the US though. That conservative Canadian culture is one of the biggest culprits there is in all of this risk aversion, let's just be honest 😜.
“There are a lot of unknown and if you really knew . You wouldn’t say you know. The amount of maintenance that is done just keeps the system above the water line. If that level of work drops due to risk management then it’s kicking the can or postponing that incident.”
I agree with this, with a large portion of enbridge infrastructure really old/aging (some as old as 70yrs) I am not sure what portion of risk management is tolerable. The damage a huge leak can cause goes beyond money and social license.
There are multiple moving parts and it’s a very dynamic habitat which some people underestimate. It stable until an incident happens and then it’s not stable.
There are a lot of unknown and if you really knew . You wouldn’t say you know. The amount of maintenance that is done just keeps the system above the water line. If that level of work drops due to risk management then it’s kicking the can or postponing that incident. Go research what happened to PG&E. Let me use a vehicle tire that is liable to run over nail once every year. You can only patch it for so long at some point . It will make sense to replace the tire.
It is likely that I am closer to the maintenance of the entire network than you are. While I can't account for every foot of pipe, I'm very aware of maintenance patterns of the last twenty years, and I'm reasonably plugged into the results of most pig runs.
What I'm saying is that the implication that an 80 year old network is inherently unstable or unsafe just isn't correct. If it were ignored, all the things you mention would come into play. But the lines are not ignored.
Even our largest accident in Michigan wasn't the result of neglect. It was in large part because of the misinterpretation of the data from the scans... and the horrific culture that allowed the repeated restart attempts over many hours... lots of blame to spread around. But line neglect isn't an issue.
So you think that very feet of the pipeline has been dug? That’s why I say most folks are clueless on how much work it’s required to keep the system intact. We are talking about an infrastructure as old as the model T ford
The pipeline system is every second affected by soil stress, environmental and even microbes
Calling the system 80 years old is, while technically true, operationally false. The system has undergone 80 years of digs, repairs, and replacement.
N75 equals kick the can down the road so that the execs can keep their bonus and not take care of the old golden goose which is the pipeline. The system is approaching 80 years and they want to treat it like an asset built in 2019
The people who make all this initiatives have no clue or experience on what is going on.
Their initiative/interest is typically self serving
They have probably been in their role for few months
We need to drive decision-making back down to lower levels. The current decision-making process has, for 10 years now, seen all decisions of consequence pushed to a VP level or higher. Can't run a company efficiently like that. De-centralize control. Centralization has not delivered the cost savings it promised but has instead introduced mind-numbing and moral-ki-ling bureaucracy. We have good employees, why are we scared to empower them?
The whole N75 is an initiative with bloated business jargon. But I got to say, Enbridge has a multitude of bearacratic processes and risk management practices that effectively stifles internal innovation and growth. Ultimately, we need to eliminate these barriers to foster growth and be a leader in the energy industry. But, with the current leaders we have, I am not sure Enbridge will achieve its goals.
It is necessary to survive as a company. Our culture the last few years has been to eliminate risk at all cost. This approach is extremely costly and is not sustainable. Some level of risk is inherent in what we do; you have to manage it appropriately. There is risk every time you get in your car to drive somewhere. Does that mean you are never going to leave your house; no, it means you manage the risk.
Risk management is just a kick off phrase of we do not wish to spend money on anything unless absolutely necessary.
Unfortunately this may bring more incidents in the future.
I don't work in a part of the company directly impacted it, nor do I know much about the subject matter. The communication about it made me instantly think - ok, so they are cutting corners to save money and trying to make it sound fancy and innovative. Nothing new here.
Will the last one out please turn off the lights.....
Is this the next reorganization/layoff in the fall?