We’re not fond of taking sides in politics.

But we do like to note when something works.  Especially when that something results in more projects, more PM jobs, and a better outcome for this particular 3rd- rock-from-the-sun.

Today’s Boston Globe newspaper has a short but powerful (excuse the pun) story about how Massachusetts – not exactly the Sunshine State – is tied for second place in the US with Hawaii for the lead in solar projects.  And the reason, at least partially, is subsidies from the government of the Commonwealth.  See the included chart on the left for the top states in the USA, and the chart on the right to see the (cloudy) truth about Massachusetts, in terms of weather.

From the story, here are some extracts.  We strongly encourage you to read the whole thing at the Globe’s site.

Massachusetts is no California when it comes to sun. But that isn’t stopping the solar energy industry from flourishing here.

Massachusetts, better known for long, cold winters, gloomy springs, and gale-driven nor’easters, is undergoing an unlikely solar power boom, attracting solar companies from around the country that are installing systems for homeowners, businesses, and institutions.

Only California has a better solar market than Massachusetts, which tied Hawaii in rankings by Ernst & Young, the Big Four accounting firm that tracks the alternative energy industry. Massachusetts was the only northern state to crack Ernst & Young’s top 10, beating Florida (the Sunshine State), Arizona (home of the Sun Devils), and New Mexico (sun symbol on the state flag).

Here’s an example of one success story:

SolarCity of San Mateo, ­Calif., a six-year-old installation company with 1,800 employees nationwide, entered the Massachusetts market in early 2011. The company installs solar panels at no cost to customers, then sells them power generated by the system, which SolarCity continues to own. The company is then able to take advantage of federal and state subsidies.

Ed Steins, SolarCity’s regional director, said the company already services more than 800 residential and commercial buildings in Massachusetts and has tripled its local staff to 45 from 15 since September.

Among SolarCity’s customers is Tom McDougall, 53, of Whitman. SolarCity installed a 6-kilowatt system on the roof of McDougall’s two-story Colonial. Since the system began operating in February, McDougall said, he has cut his electricity bills in half, paying SolarCity about $60 a month for electricity, compared with the $115 a month, on average, that he paid his utility.

Analysts at Ernst & Young, which does the comparative study of the states, has good insight on the story.

Again, from the story:

“It’s not a matter of how sunny it is,” said Michael Bernier, a senior manager at Ernst & Young. The “thing Massachusetts has been really good at is setting up an environment that helps renewable energy projects get done.”

That environment starts with New England’s traditionally high energy costs that can make photovoltaic systems more competitive here. Meanwhile, the falling solar panel prices, which have plunged more than 50 percent in the past two years, have combined with solar-friendly local policies to make solar installations even more attractive to homeowners and businesses.

So, perhaps the ‘environment’ – in this case, the business/political environment – has a more profound effect on solar projects that previously thought.  If that’s the case, as a project manager, you ought to be at least considering the support of regulations and incentives to bring more solar power to your state or territory.

Mark and his team facilitate solutions using a multi-step decision-making process to create change, as well as overcome technical and adaptive challenges to shape your future sustainable strategy.  He and his team focus on:

Annual board of directors meeting season is coming to an end for companies on a calendar year basis. Some companies took the opportunity to look at how they do business. Many small companies have what is referred to as their OPERATIONAL PLANS. As it definition states, this is how they “operate” their daily business working IN their company as a W-2 employee. Congratulations, that is a good start but it is not a good finish unless you just wanted to create a job for yourself and others? If not then you need to work ON your company. In fact, working ON your business is just as important because you want more than income, you also want profit and equity ["ROE"] which are the results of ownership work – not just employee work.

The biggest mistake you will make this year is equating working IN your company with working ON your company, according to the well-known author Michael Gerber of the book The E-Myth Revisited. He states that P&Ls and tax data are static because they look backwards – not forward. Ownership work gets beyond Income only and into Profit and Equity [ROE] strategy. And isn’t that why you went into business in the first place – to go beyond income? You simply can’t be effective long term until you integrate what you do IN with what you do ON your company. So stepping back and doing some critical decision-making is the key. But that raises the question of who does it and how to do it?

So let’s answer the first question of who is responsible for governance? In a corporation the board of directors sole job is to “govern” the company. So HOW does a board “govern”? The answer lies first in defining the difference between management and governance. Most people have a good idea of what management is so I will restrict my remarks to governance issues. Some top 10 good governance director practices are the following:

1. Strategic Planning addressing sustainability, competitive advantage, etc.

2. Corporate performance and valuation planning

3. Risk and Crisis Oversight [e.g. data security]

4. Oversight of company core principles, ethics and culture

5. Oversight of human resources [e.g. management] and recruitment of directors

6. Financial Oversight [e.g. review of P&L, Balance Sheet and Budgets]

7. Oversight of sustainability matters and stakeholder relations

8. Create/approve company-wide policies and procedures.

9. Manage Board of Directors education, meeting processes, committees, etc.

10. Oversight of corporate social responsibility

I recommend that these key governance issues be addressed by your directors. (See also NACD Directorship Board Intelligence, survey report dtd 1/2011, p. 40). Managers manage the company. Directors govern [direct] managers. They are both important but very different. The Massachusetts Business Corporation Act [“MBCA”], Section 8.30(a) defines the standard a director must comply with. It states, in pertinent part, that a director must, generally speaking, act (i) in good faith, (ii) with the care that a person in a like position would reasonably believe appropriate under similar circumstances; and (iii) in a manner the director reasonably believes to be in the best interest of the corporation.

So how does a director comply with this legal standard? The comment section to Section 8.3 provides advice by stating: “The process by which a director informs himself will vary but the duty of care requires every director to take steps to become informed about the background facts and circumstances before taking action on the matter at hand. [However], a director may rely on information, opinions, reports, and statements prepared or presented by others as set forth in Section 8.30(b).”

So who are these “others” referred to? Section 8.30(b) lists the individuals and groups (the “others”) that a director may rely on. Generally speaking, they are as follows:

(i) corporate officers or employees whom the director reasonably believes to be reliable and competent with respect to the information, opinions, reports or statements presented,

(ii) professional advisors as to matters within their professional competence, and

(iii) a committee of the board, where the director is not a member, if the director reasonably believes the committee merits confidence.

But there are two major caveats. The first is that “a director so relying must be without knowledge concerning the matter in question that would cause his reliance to be unwarranted”. The second is that “. . . in order to rely on a report, statement, opinion, or other matter, the director must have read the report or statement in question, or have taken other steps to become familiar with its contents.”

In summation, directors must become actively engaged in the governance of the company or else they should resign. So take a look at the recommendations above and ask yourself “is your board living up to the legal standards of the laws in your state”? If not, your company is at increased risk. Haven’t started yet to address the governance issues of your company? I suggest you do so before a third party discovers you are running a high risk business – and that high risk is your decision-making – or lack thereof!

We just discovered an interesting article called “The Wisdom of Invertebrates“.  It features an interview with Rafe Sagarin (of the University of Arizona’s Institute of the Environment) about emulation of various species of animals as a way to improve project performance on everything from disease prevention to the war on terror.  One example is the octopus and its amazing ability to camouflage (shown on the left).

We discuss biomimicry as one of the new ‘green’ technologies in our book, Green Project Management.

Below, just as a teaser, there’s a video and a chunk of the interview.  We think you’ll find this interesting, whether you have vertebrae or not…

Below is a snippet of the interview with Rafe Sagarin, credit the Boston Globe article referenced with this link.

IDEAS: In your book (Learning from the Octopus), your central metaphor is the octopus, a creature very different from us.

SAGARIN: The octopus has this wonderful central nervous system and brain controller that is quite effective and cognitive in a way that’s not entirely dissimilar to ours. And so there’s this sort of deliberate adaptability, where they’ll grab coconut shells and make suits of armor out of them, but they also present these automatic adaptations or responses to change in the environment, like the skin cells that respond individually and then give the whole octopus a sense of camouflage.

IDEAS: Do you have other favorite natural-world lessons?

SAGARIN: [A] good example is the ground squirrel—how it communicates to its enemies in their own language—so it makes shrill calls to hawks and coyotes. This tells the predator, “I know you are there and you can’t surprise me.” It shows the predator that the predator no longer controls the uncertainty in the situation. But if the predator is a snake, the squirrel doesn’t make a call, because a snake doesn’t hear. Rather, it puffs its tail up and shakes it…. And if, and only if, that snake is a rattler, the squirrel also heats its tail up, because rattlesnakes see in infrared.

IDEAS: One of the more provocative analogies you give is between salmon and suicide bombers.

SAGARIN: What you see when you look across the sweep of life—salmon are a good example, but you see it everywhere—is that there are very strong systems of self/nonself recognition…for the salmon it’s a chemical system that identifies where your natal stream is, and they’ll do almost anything to get back to that….With humans, we form our self/nonself identity extremely strongly in groups, and sometimes that identity is so strong that we’ll kill ourselves to protect that group identity.

We suggest you read the entire interview and of course, feel free to refer to our book on biomimcry and other ideas around project management’s role in sustainability – and vice-versa.

Here’s a short post with a short and upbeat message.

We saw a great movie this weekend: The Best Exotic Magnolia Hotel.  Check out the trailer here.  It’s as if someone combined the idea of the Big Chill, advanced the characters in age as if it was The Boynton Beach Club, and populated with some of the best wit and actors from Downton Abbey, and set the whole thing in India.

I want to draw your attention to one great quote, which you will see in the movie trailer.

The quote is:

“Everything will be alright in the end. And if it is not alright, it’s not yet the end!”

What an optimistic outlook!  Not a particularly good viewpoint for a project manager… it implies that we have no constraint on time, we can just keep applying resources until we get it right – and we know we don’t have that freedom.  Still, we think there is a message – a sustainability in projects message – here.  And that is, at least THINK about the end – the steady-state and even disposal – of the product of your project.  But that’s probably pushing things too much.  Just go see the movie, you’ll be glad you did.

Enjoy!

We were recent guests of The Sustainability Learning Centre - a partner of the prestigious Network for Business Sustainability.

We gave a 45-minute presentation and took some questions.  And they captured the whole thing on WebEx, for you to view for absolutely free – here.

Click here to watch and listen to EarthPM in action!

The saying applies to today’s post in that it geographically (at least on a global scale) is in the US Northeast, as is something called the Atlantic Wind Connection.  We think of it (of course) as a project – which it is.  We also want you to think of it as an enabler.  It’s an enabler of many other projects.

This is newsworthy because the project cleared a major hurdle today.  According to the AWC website and the Boston Globe:

WASHINGTON – A 380-mile underwater power line to serve wind farms planned off the East Coast cleared a regulatory hurdle Monday, though construction is years away.

The Atlantic Wind Connection would enable up to 7,000 megawatts of electricity to be produced at offshore wind farms from Virginia to New Jersey. Google Inc. and other investors have pledged up to $5 billion for a network of transmission lines for offshore wind farms.

The Interior Department said no competitor had proposed a similar project, allowing Atlantic Wind to move forward knowing it is likely to secure a federal right of way. Construction could begin as soon as 2014.

Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes called Atlantic Wind a first-of-its-kind project that shows industry interest in developing offshore wind power. No commercial wind power is produced offshore in the United States, though the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts could begin producing electricity as soon as 2014.

The idea is this (taken from the AWC website):

America needs an offshore wind energy industry off the Mid-Atlantic states. This emerging industry will create thousands of jobs and improve consumer access to clean energy sources.  The Atlantic Wind Connection (AWC) backbone transmission project is an essential foundation to this new industry. Designed to accelerate offshore wind development, the project is led by well-established independent transmission company Trans-Elect and sponsored by Good Energies, Google and Marubeni Corporation.

So you can see that this is about enabling any future offshore wind farms to transport their power to population centers.   Without this connection, you can’t get the electricity from they-ah to hee-yah.   Here’s a little more technical detail about the AWC project:

The Mid-Atlantic region offers more than 60,000 MW of offshore wind potential in the relatively shallow waters of the outer continental shelf. These shallow waters, which extend miles out to sea, allow for the development of large, distant wind farms, mitigating visibility issues and allowing for greater energy capture from stronger winds. With few other renewable energy options ideally suited for the Atlantic coast, this transmission project will help states meet their renewable energy goals and standards by enabling the local offshore wind industry to deploy thousands of megawatts of clean, cost-effective energy.

Without a transmission backbone, offshore wind developers would be forced to bring energy to land via radial lines that can make balancing the region’s existing grid more difficult. In addition, a single offshore backbone with a limited number of landfall points will minimize the environmental impacts of building multiple individual radial lines to shore. The AWC project not only reduces the need to build many lower-capacity transmission lines, but relieves grid congestion in one of two National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors which were deemed to have significant transmission network congestion and need speedy creation of transmission capacity.

When complete, the AWC backbone will be able to connect up to 7,000 MW of offshore wind, enough power to serve approximately 1.9 million households. The system is also scalable and can be expanded to accommodate additional offshore wind energy as the industry further develops. The use of High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) technology allows for easier integration and control of multiple wind farms while avoiding the electrical losses associated with more typical High Voltage Alternating Current (HVAC) lines. With this strong backbone in place, larger and more energy efficient wind farms can connect to offshore power hubs further out to sea. These power hubs will in turn be connected via sub-sea cables to the strongest, highest capacity parts of the land-based transmission system.

In addition to enabling the production of thousands of megawatts of clean power, the AWC backbone will help spur the creation of local jobs. Development of wind energy off the Atlantic coast could create between 133,000 and 212,000 U.S. jobs according to Oceana, an ocean-conservation group. The U.S. Department of Energy also estimates that more than 43,000 permanent operations and maintenance jobs would be created if 54,000 MW of offshore wind turbines were installed by 2030. For comparison, the offshore wind industry in Europe is expected to create 215,000 new jobs by 2030.

There’s a lot to this.  From a PM point of view, you can see that it’s  a situation in which a portfolio of projects is enabled by some long-term (very long-term) thinking.  And as we’ve been saying, employing that long-term thinking even in your own single project is going to reap rewards.

So…with apologies to our friends in Maine – maybe you can get they-ah from hee-yah!.

The report (588 pages, full report link here) details ways in which the trend could be reversed.

The key word in reversing the trend?

Projects.

Lots, and lots, and lots of projects.

Many of these projects are triggered by something called the CDM, or “Clean Development Mechanism”.

What’s the CDM?

From their own site:

The CDM allows emission-reduction projects in developing countries to earn certified emission reduction (CER) credits, each equivalent to one tonne of CO2. These CERs can be traded and sold, and used by industrialized countries to a meet a part of their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.

The mechanism stimulates sustainable development and emission reductions, while giving industrialized countries some flexibility in how they meet their emission reduction limitation targets.

The CDM is the main source of income for the UNFCCC (United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change) Adaptation Fund, which was established to finance adaptation projects and programmes in developing country Parties to the Kyoto Protocol that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. The Adaptation Fund is financed by a 2% levy on CERs issued by the CDM.

Below is a graphic from the CDM website that shows the pipeline of projects for approval.  Note the trend (the red line) and remember – this is not a cumulative chart!  This is a snapshot of the number of projects entering the process to be validated for execution worldwide.

From the World Bank report:
Over the last few years, China has built the largest and most dynamic CDM program in the world.  Overall, Chinese CDM projects are expected to generate total carbon finance resources in excess of US$9 billion through 2012 (Nygard et al. 2011). As of April 2010, China had more registered CDM projects (751 projects, or 36 percent of the world’s total), and more registered CERs (205 million tonnes of carbon dioxide [CO2] equivalents, or 60 percent of the world’s total), than any other country. The breakdown of the projects is 49 percent hydro, 22 percent wind, and 10 percent energy efficiency projects. The leading provinces in terms of the number of registered projects are Yunnan (93 projects, mainly hydro), Sichuan (73 projects, mainly hydro), and Inner Mongolia (56 projects, mainly wind).  The types of CDM projects that support low-carbon investments in
and around urban areas include energy efficiency, landfill gas, and potentially such renewable energy sources as solar, biomass, and wind, if located in proximity to cities. As can be seen in figure 24.1, these categories of
CDM projects account for slightly less than 10 percent of all CDM projects in China. It is important to note that investment in low-carbon technologies in industries located in and around cities is also likely to have strong socioeconomic benefits, in terms of employment and reduced local air pollution.
For projects to be registered with the CDM, a set of specific conditions has to be fulfilled. In China, a project first has to be approved by the Designated National Authority (DNA). As of April 2010, there were 2,400 DNA-approved projects, far more than the 751 projects registered under the CDM. This means that 1,649 projects were still in the CDM registration process. CDM rules specifically require a project to demonstrate that it (i) reduces GHG emissions when compared to a baseline and (ii) is additional to activities in the baseline.

 2,400 projects!  That’s a lot of project teams and a boatload of project managers.

Here’s an example of one of the projects:

Tianjin Shuangkou Landfill Gas Project
Located 137 kilometers southeast of Beijing, the project is Tianjin’s first modern sanitary landfill, including impermeable liners and a collection and treatment system for liquid runoff. The state-of-the-art landfill gas collection system captures methane and other gases, such as carbon dioxide and non-methane organic compounds. By 2017, the project is expected to reduce GHG emissions by an average of 155,822 tCO2e per year and produce a total of 218,509 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity.

So – what’s the moral of the story?

A few:

• Project Managers stand to gain significant opportunities thanks to this vast number of projects
• PMs are best suited for these projects by understanding the issues of sustainability and the surrounding technologies – and certainly at a minimum, the vocabulary
• PMs can make a significant contribution in the area of sustainable development

If you’d like to learn more about the report or the CDM program in general, visit the links and explore.  It’s fascinating.

To read the little article which got us started on this whole schtick in the first place, click here.  You can see how cities like New York, Toronto, and Barcelona stack up against Tianjin, Shanghai, and Beijing.

Front Page Story, Boston Globe, Friday, 4-May, 2012: “Commercial food waste to be banned“.

The story says that starting in 2014, hotels, large restaurants, as well as big businesses and institutions will not be legally allowed to put food waste in the trash, starting in 2014.  In coming years, this could be extended to homes.

For me, this is nothing new.  Not by a long-shot.

You see, my family lived in The Netherlands for 2 years – about 10 years ago.  Already, back then, we placed food waste in a separate container which was hauled off each week by a service that took care of removing and composting food waste (rather than just dumping it in landfills).  Landfill capacity in Massachusetts is estimated to drop from 2.1 million tons in 2012 to only 0.6 million tons in 2020.

How much of this food waste goes into landfills currently? 1.4 million tons, yes that would be nearly 3 billion pounds.  THREE BILLION POUNDS.  A year.  A YEAR!

Initially this program is planned to divert a third of this (a measly 1 billion pounds) from landfills to composting sites and plants that can convert waste into energy, heat, and/or fertilizer.
Why is this showing up on a Project Management blog?

Shouldn’t take too much to connect the dots here.  A program like this is going to ambitiously require an entirely parallel waste system, including collection, transportation, processing, tracking, and so on.   On top of this, of course, is the creation of the plants to do the conversions to energy, heat, and fertilizer.  I can easily imagine hundreds, maybe thousands of projects being launched based on this effort.

So it behooves us as PMs to learn the vocabulary, the rationale, the logistics behind this.  Agree or disagree with the reasons for doing it – or whether we do it at all – knowing more about this may (ironically) feed your family.

Learn more about the food we throw away on this link.

Oh – one more thing… enjoy this wonderful video – an oldie but a goodie – about food waste -  by Shel Silverstein.

First, let’s orient everyone.

This story (taken mainly from this article in The Economist) is about Gujarat. 

Gujarat is a state in western India. It has an area of 75,686 sq mi (196,030 km²) with a coastline of 1,600 km, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula, and a population in excess of 60 million. The state is bordered by Rajasthan to the north, Maharashtra to the south, Madhya Pradesh to the east and the Arabian Sea as well as the Pakistani province of Sindh on the west. Its capital is Gandhinagar, while its largest city is Ahmedabad. Gujarat is home to the Gujarati-speaking people of India.  Ghandi was a Gujarati.  Gujarati is a very intricate written language, very distinct from Hindi.

Here is the phrase “Thinking in the long-term is an important consideration for project managers” in Gujarati: લાંબા ગાળાના વિચારતી પ્રોજેક્ટ મેનેજર્સ માટે ખૂબ જ મહત્વનું છે.

Gujarat is bordered by Pakistan and Rajasthan in the north east, Madhya Pradesh in the east, and Maharashtra and the Union territories of Diu, Daman, Dadra and Nagar Haveli in the south. The Arabian Sea borders the state both to the west and the south west.

The State took it’s name from the Gujjars, who ruled the area during the 700’s and 800’s. Dutch, French, English, and Portuguese all established bases on Gujarat’s coastlines by the 1600s.

So now, you are a little more familiar with the area and the background.

Flash forward (literally) to today.  From the article:

ON A salt plain near the border with Pakistan lies half a billion dollars’ worth of solar-energy kit paid for by firms from all over the world. A million panels stretch as far as the eye can see. Past a dishevelled brass band is a tent crammed with 5,000 people who cheer when Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, declares the solar park open: “I pray, sun god, that today Gujarat will show the way to the rest of the world for solar energy.”

There are reasons to be optimistic and there are some challenges to overcome as well.  We direct you to the article to learn more about the challenges.

But there are two main drivers for solar projects in India:

1.  Conventional power generation, which in India means burning cheap but dirty local coal, is in a tough situation. Power stations charge  3-4 rupees ($0.06-0.08) per kilowatt hour. The state, which has a local monopoly, cannot mine coal fast enough, and this causes power firms to buy more expensive coal from other countries.

2. The cost of solar power equipment has dropped 34% since 2010.  This combination of reduced pricing for solar and the premium for conventional power are making solar more competitive, even without subsidies.  2016 has been identified as the year in which solar will clearly overtake conventional power for India.

Again, from the article:

That should mean a building boom. Sunil Gupta of Standard Chartered, a bank, reckons India’s share of new global solar installations will rise from 1% this year to 5% by 2015. India’s central government has set a target for 20,000MW of installed solar generation by 2022, from under 1,000MW today. That would still represent a miserly 5% or less of total power-generation capacity in India, and cost perhaps $30 billion-40 billion to build—a fraction of the investment in new coal-fired plants. So plenty of folk think the official target will be smashed. D.J. Pandian, a civil servant in charge of energy policy in Gujarat, believes his state alone will easily reach 10,000MW of capacity in a decade.

This makes a lot of room for job opportunities for project managers who learn what they need to learn about solar power and who care to take on the challenge of leading Gujarat and India into a successful era of renewable energy projects.

Click on the picture below (from the article) to go directly to the Economist article.

Not really, as you can read in this recent news story from NOLA.com, where you will find this extract:

A NOAA-commissioned study of 32 dolphins living in Barataria Bay, an area of the Gulf known to be heavily oiled, found that many of them were underweight, anemic and showing signs of lung and liver disease. Nearly half were also found to have adrenal insufficiency, a condition that interferes with basic life functions such as metabolism and the immune system.

While most of the dolphins were still alive at the end of the study, researchers have indicated that survival prospects for the sick dolphins are grim. Their prognosis is troubling because the Gulf dolphin population has been facing what scientists call an unusual mortality event over the last two years. Since February 2010, more than 675 dolphins have stranded in the northern Gulf of Mexico – compared to the usual average of 74 dolphins per year – and the majority of those stranded have been found dead.

But dolphins aren’t the only Gulf animals in trouble. Researchers looking at deep ocean corals seven miles from the spill source found dead and dying corals coated in a brown substance that was later chemically linked to oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill.

Well, aside from the environmental damage, the damage for the involved project teams continues, now for the first time on the criminal front.  And the lesson learned for project teams is that lessons learned should be – must legally be – preserved.  When they’re not, you put yourself and your company at criminal risk.  And indeed as reported widely today, this has led to the arrest of a BP Engineer.

Quoting now from a Christian Science Monitor report, “The U.S. Justice Department made it clear that the investigation is still going on and suggested that more people could be arrested. In a statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said prosecutors “will hold accountable those who violated the law in connection with the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.”

“Federal investigators have been looking into the causes of the blowout and the actions of managers, engineers and rig workers at BP and its subcontractors Halliburton and Transocean in the days and hours before the April 20, 2010, explosion.

But the case against Mix focuses only on the aftermath of the blast, when BP scrambled for weeks to plug the leak. Even then, the charges are not really about the disaster itself, but about an alleged attempt to thwart the investigation into it.”

We’ve blogged repeatedly about the Macondo Well – aka Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  We have implored project managers to learn from the event – and the steps leading up to it, including NOT including environmental and safety risks in the project’s risk register.  And now, even the lessons learned themselves are at risk.

Learn from this project and its errors, which have led to 11 deaths, still-being-tallied environmental damage, $40-50B in costs to BP and the other principals, and intangible damage to BP, a company which had to its credit taken some impressive steps into alternative energy and was trying to re-brand itself as “Beyond Petroleum”.

Learn.

Don’t burn.