Lessons for BP from More Considered Reviews

Abstract

There is little doubt now that there was not one single engineering, equipment, or human failure that led to the Macondo disaster. The oil industry now well knows that complex systems create the possibility of complex failures. The Challenger space shuttle disaster has taught engineers that risk management must expand in proportion to the complexity of engineered systems. What is less understood, even today, is the role of management systems that can rival in sophistication the engineering systems designed to mitigate risk. After all, as BP’s own engineering analysis shows, even multiple engineering safeguards and sophisticated data acquisition may fail if humans cannot properly manage an enterprise growing in complexity.