Avoiding The Grand Canyon

Recently, I posted an entry about how my wife signed me up to hike down the Grand Canyon with her, and included this picture indicating my desire to make this trip:

Today, she tells me the trip is off.  I am relieved, but only temporarily.

Here’s the story, with some bonus insight offered as to how it relates back to our control engineer friends…

Last week, as I was getting ready to leave the comforts of home in Phoenix for the joys of apartment life in Houston (all part of my 100,000 mile commute), I smashed my little toe right on the storage chest.

I’m sure that the chest moved ever so slightly since last time… and now, as I spun about to leave the room – BLAM!  SMASH!  CRASH!!

Ouch!

After having issues getting my foot into a shoe all week (maybe the toe is broken?), my wife decided I wouldn’t be ready for the 5,000-foot descent into the canyon planned for next week.

Grimacing on the outside, I agreed and smiled on the inside (sort of).

But like all things of this type, the problem didn’t go away – it just got delayed.  We’ll go down the canyon just as soon as I’m better she says…

I smile and agree.  After all, what else is a husband to do?

Now I have a sore toe and later still need to make the hike.

>> As a side note, the one bright spot in this is that my non-hiking friend Jim tells me he’s glad that I bashed my toe – it saves him from having to smash his hand with a hammer to avoid the hike… 

So how does this relate to the control engineer?

First – my documentation was not up to date.  The chest in my bedroom may have moved an inch but I didn’t know. 

This is like the engineer without up-to-date documentation and is unaware of changes made to the database/system/application by others – and then when he makes his next update – BLAM! – he suddenly finds that what he assumed was there is not, possibly crippling a key application, triggering a safety system shutdown or instigates who knows what kind of disaster?

Second – the commitment to hike the canyon with my wife didn’t go away – it just got delayed – possibly to a much more inconvenient date that is hotter or colder or wetter or generally worse than the original plan.

Similarly, the engineer’s dislike for backing up the control systems or real-time applications and his preference for other tasks doesn’t help anything.  Backups can be avoided and dismissed as unimportant – until they are needed.

And just as my reprieve from hiking the canyon is temporary, our engineer friend will also one day face the consequences of not taking care of the details.  Hopefully, lack of documentation or backup won’t lead to disaster by disconnection or deletion of that one critical signal that he thought was no longer used...

You might think that this won’t happen at your plant – but then that might be because those to whom it does happen don’t talk about it (for obvious reasons of self-preservation).

The conclusion – certain tasks may be nasty, but they still need doing.

For me there is no alternative.  I will hike the canyon (or find a new wife).

For the engineer, there’s Integrity.  Automatic, up-to-date documentation and backup for control systems and the rest of the real-time infrastructure.

Better not to operate your plant without it.

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