[BITList] bp cost cutting

[HUGH]

Colin,

Though I can't say if it was the start of the trend towards a lean and expertise-deficient BP, I witnessed evidence of early cost-cutting by them.  When Lithgow / Kincaid built the oil rig support vessel ESV Iolair for BP at the start of the 80s, the place was awash with high fliers.  Academic papers were written about her systems and her planning process, and the authors were among the supervisors.  Finicky wasn't the word for them - there was no room for fudging - every last bit of every circuit of every section of every control system had to be described in detail for commissioning and setting up tests, every lamp, every relay, every switch.  Every system - electrical, electronic, hydraulic, mechanical - was tested on a hierarchy in the same way, separately and interlinked.  I know, for I wrote every bloody procedure and spent 31 days on her first sea trials.

Fast forward a few years, still in the 80s, and the same people were building a tanker, British Spirit, for BP, one of three.  She wasn't the lead ship, but she was finished first.  She wasn't anywhere near as complex a vessel, but they were still as finicky, at least the supers standing by her were.  Indeed, they were more than finicky, they were a pain in the arse at times. They measured the number of threads sticking above a nut and rejected the bolt if they stuck out more than they thought decent.  Then they would bargain, trade this fault for something else.  Bloody minded, but playing by the rules - everything they demanded was a strict interpretation of the spec. The reason for all this emerged eventually - when she was handed over, redundancies would take place, so any means of delaying her were fair game.   They only relaxed on her sea trials, indeed they ran fuel consumption tests in parallel with ours, and got a better specific consumption - the financial penalty for exceeding the contract fuel consumption was hefty.  On deck one afternoon the head super asked me if we were doing inerting tests on the tanks, to show the distribution of the inert gas.  With the Iolair, they would already have clocked the absence of a test procedure in print and sent a gunboat.  I told him no such procedure had been worked out in the time available, since I hadn't a clue how to guarantee it, but certain rudimentary notions had occurred to me.  "OK," he said, "We'll have a go."  So we scrabbled around for a couple of hours, before he agreed with me that it was a difficult problem that would require resources we didn't have.  He signed it off anyway in token of my effort.

Hugh.
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