Teamwork and the Bulletproof Bridge

Build a bulletproof bridge, a completely enclosed bridge, in your shop . . . and it better be perfect . . . because $50,000/day rented cranes will swing it over the top and gently lower it around a 3’ live jet fuel transport pipeline, completely enclosing the pipeline, where before, the pipeline ran naked to the world across a pristine creek valley, which by the way, spanned one of the most environmentally sensitive areas around. 

Would you like to be King of this project?  Does that thought give your ego a thrill? 

Remember, you have one chance for success.  Fail and all hell will break loose.  Oh, and did I mention the Media on the hill tops, Activists on the shore, and enough sheriffs patrolling to take on Jesse James.

Unique, one of a kind projects require a special kind of team.  We call it the “Wear Well” team.  It’s a team that can’t be built quickly. 

There are often two approaches taken to this type of project.  The most common, because we have become quite a short sighted, crisis to crisis economy, is to quickly bring in experts, throw them together in a series of weekly meetings, and hope their collective brilliance creates success.  If there is no other option then, ok, have a go.  But oddly enough too often we end up discovering our geniuses are really expert at blaming each other.  An underlying reason is that brilliance tends to be over-arching, grand and panoramic, while success and failure on this type of project reside almost completely in the “relationship” between tiny, inconspicuous details.

Big Bill, the larger than life oil man running the project made it clear from the beginning that, “Specs be damned, there will be no excuses, it better fit.  Don’t whine to me about incomplete design drawing, full of conflicts and unbuildable structures, just getter done.”  Sound scary?  Maybe, but here’s a secret: we really like working for “getter done” people, rough tough, yes, but they often possess large quantities of common sense.  So I asked Big Bill which approach he though would work best for this project: experts or a “Wear Well” team.  Big Bill looked at me like he couldn’t decide if I’d been born this stupid or it was a learned trait . . . "Mister, get your “Wear Well” team all over it, and getter done!!" 

So the “Wear Well” team took it on.  As I was the only team member who had the taint of college smell on me, the team was unsure if they even wanting me around, but decided I could stay as a good source of kicks and giggles, as they say.  Doc, whose idea of retirement was to some morning just tip over in his eggs, and who was a Harley running Gypsy Joker, and one of the toughest, kindest, craziest, smartest, meanest, most caring people I’ve known.  But in his brain Doc was a brilliant metallurgist with a vast practical knowledge of how metals behaved in real world conditions.  Then there Wes, aka, Ben Franklin.  Wes will invent you out of any problem . . . and occasionally invent you into a few.  He’s the designer/builder of a three time world champion pumpkin throwing medieval war machine called a Trebuchet, which slings the hapless pumpkin, at speeds surpassing several hundred miles per hour, distances that are quite unbelievable until you witness the event. Wes has enough industry certifications and practical experience to fill up a whole section of Wikipedia.  He is the only person I’ve ever known who had a full suite of Knights Armor, hand crafted by himself, standing guard at his desk.  One day Wes showed up for a meeting in my office clad in full body medieval chain mail . . . Ah, O.K Wes, gee, golly, where’s your tie?

       

I’m out of time this week, so you’ll meet the rest of the “Wear Well” team next time . . .

What We See, Isn't Always What's There

Here’s a quick test.  Read what you see on the next line:

Ca   y u   rea    t is?

Pretty easy, eh?  You read: Can you read this?

But look again, that is not what you really see, is it?  What you are reading is what your experience tells you, you should be reading.  Your brain beautifully fills in the gaps, making sense of nonsense information.  That’s wonderful, isn’t it?  Or is it? 

One of the most common stories in steel fabrication goes something like this.

“Henry, where is the handrail you fabricated last week?”

“No worries boss, it’s at the galvanizer.”

“You’re sure it was to be galvanized, Henry?”

“Absolutely, galvanized per drawings, it’s going to that park on the ocean, remember?  Salt water and steel don’t get along, it had to be galvanized to keep from rusting.”

A week later the call comes in from the onsite installation crew:

“Hey, what happened to our powder coated handrail, we can’t find it in any of the material you shipped?  And what are we supposed to do with this galvanized handrail . . .

A quick review of the shop drawings reveals no mention of galvanizing, yet Henry still maintains he read it.  But what Henry read on the drawings was what his 30 years of experience told him to read.  Like the test above, Henry’s brain filled-in what he thought the drawings should say.

 

As management, what is my response to Henry? 

The first response is often for a manager to get mad at Henry, and give him a good scolding in front of others so he is embarrassed and won’t forget again.  Or, as a manager I could write Henry up with a warning, telling him two more warnings and he can be fired? 

But fired for what?  For making a mistake?  OK, but being a fair and honest (hopefully) supervisor I’ll need to fire everyone in the shop in the next 60 days, as mistakes are part of the human condition. 

But what if I, as Henry’s supervisor, am the one who really made the mistake? 

How? By not realizing that by punishing Henry I am, in effect, punishing the race horse for running.  Henry’s brain was simply doing what it naturally does, and in many situations this ability to fill-in incomplete information from past experience is an amazing blessing.       

So, at our shop we tried something different. 

First, acceptance: mistakes happen.  We took time to educate the crew on how their brain processes information, and why that can be good and bad. 

Second, compensation: Henry’s sole responsibility became shared with two other people in a process flow with Henry actually being the last person in the process. 

Third, by putting into action 1 & 2 this, to a significant degree, replaces fear of personal failure with trust in a team. 

Since instituting this process we have fabricated (2) bridges and (1) commercial fishing dock, in each project the field erector has remarked on how beautifully everything fit together.