Although engineering and writing blogs don’t have much in common, I will do my best to express my ideas and thoughts throughout blog posts.
The first thing I would like to share with you is a short story I heard on a shipyard.
The ship’s hull unit was ready for the final inspection. The structural inspector calls the foreman to ask some questions.
– Hey, can you see me?
– Hi, yes.
– Are you sure?
– Yes. I can see you.
– Are you absolutely sure?
– Of course. I’m damn sure. Why?
– Well…because you shouldn’t have been able to see me! There should have been a bulkhead between us!
If you have qualified people on your team (ship fitters, welders, foremen, engineers) you can reflect on it as a joke. Something like this is quite unlikely to happen with big bulkheads in the section building process.
However, if you’re working with a new and inexperienced team, be careful about how you chose your team leaders. Junior team members can perform incredibly well when guided by the right leadership. But with the wrong leadership, you may find yourself in a situation similar to the one described above and faced with major cost overruns and project delays.