Re: procedures for procedures? -Reply

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

At 10:20 AM 6/24/98 -0500, you wrote:
>From what I read into Bob's story, the
>gone bad part of the process probably had more to do with its
>management and/or implementation by all involved than the process itself. 

True, true, true.

>For instance, applying the process (and I mean the full-blown,
>documented out the you know what process) to ALL procedures rather
>than those affecting quality/safety may have been a bit much and
>definitely results in the kind of problems that Bill Lipton talked about.

There was also a certain amount of empire-building that affected the
procedure system I described yesterday. A Procedures Staff was created and
given extraordinary authority over the development/revision of every
procedure in the nuclear program, but no responsibility for the finished
product. There was incredible emphasis on the "look and feel" of the
procedures, including a push to describe processes in so much detail that
someone who could read but had never seen a nuclear plant could execute the
procedure correctly. With enough wailing anf gnashing of teeth (i.e., an
uprising), the Procedures Staff gradually fell from favor and sanity
prevailed.

>On the other side of the coin though, spending the time analyzing, designing,
>and developing the procedures (or anything) on the front end will save
>you BIG TIME when it comes time to implement them, or even, recover
>from them.

I couldn't agree more. How many of us are guilty of the "we don't have time
to do it right, but we'll have time to fix it" process of procedure
development?

---------
Bob Flood
Dosimetry Group Leader
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(650) 926-3793
bflood@slac.stanford.edu