In December, 1984 in the city of Bhopal in central India, a Union Carbide Pesticide plant would fail and release tonnes of toxic gas into the city, killing thousands of people. It was the worst industrial disaster in human history. We follow the threads and trace back the root causes behind the incident at Bhopal.
Where It All Began The advent of generic personal computers running application software for the purposes of control systems HMIs (aka SCADA) is a practice than began during the 1980s, however became the preferred method of human machine interface with a control system by the 1990s to such a degree that customised user interface devices are used only in a handful of situations. Usually when ruggedness and harsh conditions drive a requirement for physically hardened screens or physical buttons that a personal computer can not provide.
Milestones are often tied to customer design reviews, factory acceptance tests and site acceptance tests. Having spent much of my career on the design side it’s been interesting representing a client and my perspective can’t help but be refined in the process. Reviews are often considered to be onerous tasks that “have to be done” in order to meet an often arbitrary schedule milestone. They are regularly treated with contempt and those seeking changes are often muffled, given token concessions or even silenced completely.
Engineering is about the design, construction and operation of engines, machines and structures. Engineers are bound by a code of ethics and legislation that can end careers if they are proven to be negligent in carrying out engineering that results in the death, injury or loss of property from our work. As engineers create things that the public use (and the public at large are mostly not Engineers themselves) the quality of the engineers work needs to be scrutinised to ensure that it is of an acceptable standard.
In 2010 an Oil Drilling Rig suffered a catastrophic well blowout, killing 11 people, destroying the rig and leading to the worst maritime oil spill in history. It all happened a few hours after the well was declared safe and ready for handover. We look at the human and financial factors that led to the incident at Macondo.