A near-miss with a buried pipeline in Mobile Bay made me rethink our survey process

We were working a channel deepening project and our cutter head was about 12 feet from hitting an uncharted gas line. The old charts were wrong, and our side-scan sonar had a blind spot. Now I push for a full multi-beam sweep before ANY cut, but the office says it adds 48 hours of non-billable time. Do you eat the cost for the extra safety scan, or trust the provided charts?

2 comments

2 Comments

hall.ruby4d ago

That 48 hours of non-billable time is cheaper than the bill for a major incident, right?

dylan234d ago

Exactly. I read a case study where a company skipped routine maintenance to save money. When their system failed, the recovery cost was ten times what the preventive work would have been, not counting lost business. It's a classic example of being penny wise and pound foolish. Investing a little time upfront almost always saves a huge headache later.