February Articles

Downtime and WOW (waiting on weather)

I am, as always, into “hurry up and wait” mode. The condition caused by working on a multi million dollar project. When the cost of waiting around for somebody to do something increases to a certain threshold the people who are paying the bills start to get a little twitchy. If there is nothing that can be done because, for example something has been broken, then the people onshore with there fingers on there wallets begin to ask this question. “What is happening next?” invariably followed by “Can we do anything to be ready for the next event?” This is not a bad thing planning ahead is good. Saving time and money is good. Unfortunately the end result is “hurry up and wait”. The end result means that additional pressure is put on to try and be ahead of the curve and that is usually when things get missed. People have a tendency towards panic and this is a perfectly normal response to pressure. But the truly gifted person is the one that can keep there heads while all around are losing theirs. The condition of hurry up and wait only seams to last a short while. People on the rig then settle down into “nothing worse can happen” mode. The example from this week is a broken drill line. All hands are mobilized to assist with slipping and cutting a piece of damaged drill line cable. The job takes place at a sensible pace to carry out the work safely and in the background everyone is saying “what’s next?” So we start to do some work which will get us “ahead of the curve” this involves testing some tools in our case. We get so far and the crane that is being used to fix the drill line is working right overhead of where we need to set things up. We retreat into our warm cosy cabin and wait. We sit here waiting for the drill line to be fixed asking ourselves “what’s happening next?” So the question maybe doesn’t just come from the people onshore with there itchy twitchy fingers on there wallets. Maybe it comes from every individual who has been brought up to ask the question “what’s next?” from drive and ambition to get things done and the satisfaction of getting to the end of a day and being able to say “we got something done, what are we going to do tomorrow?” so maybe the example of hurry up and wait isn’t an accurate representation of what is going on. We really aren’t hurrying up to wait we are hurrying up to get things done, to have achieved something and recognize that we have achieved something. Are we really being hurried? Or are we hurrying ourselves on? Trying to achieve by rushing. This doesn’t make any sense, to rush to achieve. Better to slow down and achieve. Then the achievement can be recognized and savored.

Zen Master Scott (from the Tao of Cox)

Home from home

You arrive out to the place you will eat, sleep live and work. You expect you will never see anything as bad as the last rig you just left. When you are handed the card and the medic says “Your on nights”
“No” you reply “I am on days, didn’t my employer let you know what we are out here to do?”
“Sorry mate, lifeboat 3, the briefing is at 08:20hrs” military time suggests you respect his authoritie!
You wonder into the cabin, stow your gear, and then go to stick your toilet bag in the head. The smell meets you as you open the door. Glancing into the shower tray you see enough mildew and mould to grow potatoes in. You dump your bag and lift the lid of the toilet seat to be met by your cabin mate’s dinner. “hmmmm”, this will be what you call home for a week or two.

Scott

International Bright Young Thing

The industry is changing. Everyone wants to maximize profit and there is a shortage of people to work offshore. This usually means getting whoever will put on a hard hat. The net result of this is a truly multicultural, multilingual crew. All of whom speak varying degrees of English( the common denominator in the North Sea). It would be tremendously bigoted of me to suggest that our Serbian mud loggers have worse English than some, but yesterday he told me that his colleague had gone for meat. This said our driller from “the Broch” has his share of problems getting the message across too. With his thick Doric it is often a good thing to ask “Sorry could you repeat that please?” to be met with “am aff fir ma tatties”.

Ghengis McCann