Project Management Tools for Cooper River Bridge Video

Project Managers Must utilize….

• Root cause analysis• Feeder buffers• Quality at the source• Appropriate parallel or redundant processes

to advance safety and reliability

Let’s say that you have a 100 year old house. A small electrical fire starts in the bedroom. Always prepared, you have a fire extinguisher

handy and put out the fire. Have you taken care of the problem??

As a manager is fire fighting good or bad? Will the problem resurface?

What is a root cause?

The most basic causal factor, or factors, which if corrected or removed will prevent the recurrence of a situation……

Problem Statement: You are on your way home from work and your car stops in the middle of the road.1. Why did your car stop? - Because it ran out of gas.2. Why did it run out of gas? - Because I didn't buy any gas on my way to work.3. Why didn't you buy any gas this morning? - Because I didn't have any money.4. Why didn't you have any money? - Because I lost it all last night in a poker game.5. Why did you lose your money in last night's poker game? - Because I'm not very good at "bluffing" when I don't have a good hand.

Root Cause Analysis“The 5 Whys”

Can you utilize a feeder buffer in a project to prevent future problems without knowing the root cause of the original

problem?

Adding Feeder Buffers to Critical Chains• The theory of constraints, the basis for critical chains, focuses on keeping

bottlenecks busy.• Time buffers can be put between bottlenecks in the critical path• These feeder buffers protect the critical path from delays in non-critical

paths

What feeder buffers could have been used in the Cooper River Bridge construction to prevent delays?

Total Quality Management• Build quality into all processes• Focus on continuous improvement - Kaizen• Quality at the source- sequential inspection• Jidoka (authority to stop line)• Poka-yoke (fail-safe all processes)• Preventive maintenance- scheduled• Work environment- everything in its place, a place

for everything

Did the Cooper River Bridge crew utilize Total Quality Management?

Designing Process Reliability/Safety

• Probability between 0 and 1 that a process will perform its function or will be performed safely/reliably for a given period of time under specified operating conditions

• From a project management perspective how can you eliminate problems or unsafe situations?

Reliability Management

• Series product/service components

• Parallel product/service components

)).......()()(( 321 ns ppppR

)1)........(31)(21)(11(1 nppppsR

© 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall

Rs

R3

.99

R2

.80

Series Reliability Example

R1

.90

Reliability/safety of the process is

Rs = R1 x R2 x R3 = .90 x .80 x .99 = .713 or 71.3%

© 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall

Processes in Parallel UtilizingRedundancy

A redundant process is installed to support the earlier example where Rs = .713

R1

0.90

0.90

R2

0.80

0.80

R3

0.99

= [1-(1-.9)(1-.9)] x [1-(1-.8)(1-.8)] x .99= [1-.01] x [1-.04] x .99= .99 x .96 x .99 = .94

Reliability/Safety has increased from .713

to .94

What safety issue on the Cooper River Bridge project could have been improved with a redundant process? Utilize root cause

analysis.

Q & A1. What feeder buffers could have been used to solve problems: Concrete drying too fast: They can solve this by setting up concrete plant close by on shore

Steel workers having to wait all day to work and then having to work all night: Having cranes on both sides of the bridge can avoid this problem

Bridge panels installed in the wrong order: They can be staged in order on the ground to avoid it.

Q & A2. How quality at the source could have prevented the wrong bridge panel from being installed.

This was caused by workers just focusing on speed and productivity. If the employees had had more training, and were empowered to improve the quality of the process, it would have helped.

3. What parallel process could have been used to insure workers’ safety when up on the bridge.

By “buddying” up on safety lines. The pair can remind each other to ensure the safety as a team. If either one gets caught up top working without a safety line, the buddy AND partner get fired.

Q & A4. What is Root cause analysis? How to apply it?

Root cause analysis is discovering a course of action that if followed will cause the problem to never occur again.

From the story in the slides, a fire extinguisher was used to put out the house fire. Get a new fire extinguisher and problem is solved for the future….right? Not so fast! Could the problem happen again…..yes. So, use the five “Whys” to seek out a root cause for the fire:

Why did the house catch on fire? ……because a hot wire touched wallpaper or wall board. Why did it touch the wallpaper or wall board? ….the wall sagged a little. Why did the wall sag? …..it was wet from a roof leak. Why did the roof leak? ……because it’s in a state of disrepair. Why is it in a state of disrepair?......aged inhabitants are living on a fixed income. How to help aged people get $$ to fix roof? ……ask volunteer groups for help to fix the roof. Will fixing the roof keep the problem from ever happening again? Maybe not…..house could need new wiring, etc. Fighting fires as a manager is always attacking the symptoms and really never solving the problem.