One of the speakers at PGCS 2023 is Alex Walsh, his presentation Managing wicked program delivery looks at the UK nuclear program to decommission the Sellafield complex, one of the most complex high hazard nuclear facilities in the world that was operating from the 1940s through to 2022. For more on this presentation and the PGCS program see: https://www.pgcsymposium.org.au/.

As part of my work on preparing the PGCS program, I had a virtual look at this project and came across this fascinating risk mitigation story where the courage of two managers probably saved hundreds of lives in the North of England.

The site

Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, in NW England. As of August 2022, primary activities are nuclear waste processing and storage and nuclear decommissioning. Former activities included plutonium production for nuclear weapons, nuclear power generation from 1956 to 2003, and nuclear fuel reprocessing from 1952 to 2022.

After the war ended, the Special Relationship between Britain and the United States “became very much less special”. The British government saw this as a resurgence of United States isolationism which raised the possibility that Britain might have to fight an aggressor alone. It also feared that Britain might lose its great power status, and therefore its influence in world affairs, so in July 1946, the Chiefs of Staff Committee recommended that Britain acquire nuclear weapons.

Two reactors (called ‘piles’ at the time) were constructed to enrich uranium to create plutonium and other isotopes. The designers of these reactors desired a passively safe cooling system. In place of water, they used air cooling driven by convection through a 400-foot (120 m) tall chimney, which could create enough airflow to cool the reactor under normal operating conditions. The chimney was arranged so it pulled air through the channels in the reactor core, and huge fans were positioned in front of the core, to greatly increase the airflow rate.

The risk

During construction, physicist Terence Price considered the possibility of a fuel cartridge splitting open, causing the hot uranium to catch fire, resulting in fine uranium oxide dust being blown up the chimney and escaping into the environment.

Raising the issue at a meeting, he suggested filters be added to the chimneys, but his concerns were dismissed as too difficult and too expensive to deal with. However, Sir John Cockcroft, leading the project team, was sufficiently alarmed to order the filters.

They could not be installed at the base as construction of the chimneys had already begun, and were constructed on the ground then winched into position at the top once the chimneys were complete. They became known as Cockcroft’s Folly as many regarded the delay they caused and their great expense to be a needless waste.

This all changed after the Windscale fire of 10^th October 1957. This fire was the worst nuclear accident in the United Kingdom’s history, and one of the worst in the world. The fire was in Unit 1 of the two-pile Windscale site and burned for three days releasing radioactive fallout which spread across the UK and the rest of Europe[1].

But, the filters trapped about 95% of the radioactive dust and arguably saved much of northern England from becoming a nuclear wasteland. With typical British understatement, Terence Price said “the word folly did not seem appropriate after the accident“.

The UK government under Harold Macmillan ordered original reports into the fire to be heavily censored and information about the incident to be kept largely secret. It later came to light that small but significant amounts of the highly dangerous radioactive isotope polonium-210 were released during the fire. But the presence of the chimney scrubbers at Windscale was credited with minimising the radioactive content of the smoke.

Both the ‘piles’ were shut down after the fire, but a large quantity of radioactive materials are still inside the sealed #1 pile; this is one of the challenges for the decommissioning program Alex will be speaking about at PGCS in a couple of weeks’ time.

More relevant to this post though is the moral courage exhibited by Sir John Cockcroft in doing the right thing rather than the easy thing to guard against an accident that ‘could not happen’, but did! Thinking through this dilemma puts a whole new perspective on risk assessment and mitigation – in the right circumstances ‘black swans’ can kill.

For more on risk management see: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-PBK-045.php

[1] For more on the fire see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been updating the estimating pages on our website, partly in response to the #NoEstimating idiocy.

There is no way an organization that intends to survive will undertake future work without an idea of the required resources, time, and cost needed to achieve the objective and an understanding of the anticipated benefits – this is an elementary aspect of governance. This requires estimating! BUT there are two distinctly different approaches to estimating software development and maintenance:

1.  Where the objective is to maintain and enhance an existing capability the estimate is part of the forward budgeting cycle and focuses on the size of the team needed to keep the system functioning appropriately.  Management’s objective is to create a stable team that ‘owns’ the application. Methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban work well, and the validity of the estimate is measured by metrics such as trends in the size of the backlog.  For more on this download De-Projectizing IT Maintenance from: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-ITC-040.php#Process1

2.  Where the objective is to create a new capability, project management cuts in.  Projects need an approved scope and budget which requires an estimate! The degree of detail in the estimate needs to be based on the level of detail in the scope documents. If the scope, or objectives, are only defined at the overall level, there’s no point in trying to second guess future developments and create an artificially detailed estimate. But, with appropriate data high level estimates can be remarkably useful. Then, once the project is approved, normal PM processes cut in and work well. Some of the sources of useful benchmarking data are included in our update estimating software list at: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-SCH-030.php#Cost

The #NoEstimating fallacies include:

The fantasy that software is ‘different’ – its not! All projects have a degree of uncertainty which creates risk. Some classes of project may be less certain than others, but using reliable benchmarking data will tell you what the risks and the range of outcomes are likely to be.

Estimates should be accurate – this is simply WRONG (but is a widely held myth in the wider management and general community)! Every estimate of a future outcome will be incorrect to some degree.  The purpose of the estimate is to document what you thought should occur which provides a baseline for comparing with what is actually occurring. This comparison highlights the difference (variance) between the planned and actual to create management information. This information is invaluable for directing attention towards understanding why the variance is occurring and adjusting future management actions (or budget allowances) to optimize outcomes.

Conclusion

The fundamental flaw in #NoEstimating is its idiotic assumption that an organization that commits funding and resources to doing something without any concept of how long its is going to take, or what it will cost will survive.  Good governance requires the organizational leadership to manage the organization’s assets for the benefit of the organization’s stakeholders. This does not preclude risk taking (in many industries risk taking is essential). But effective risk taking requires a framework to determine when a current objective is no longer viable so the work can be closed down, and the resources redeployed to more beneficial objectives. For more on portfolio management and governance see: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-ORG.php  

In summary #NoEstimating is stupid, but trying to produce a fully detailed estimate based on limited information is nearly as bad.  Prudent estimating requires a balance between what is known about the project at the time, a proper assessment of risk, and the effective use of historical benchmarking data to produce a usable estimate which can be improved and updated as better information becomes available.  For more on cost estimating see: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-PBK-025.php#Process1

Mosaic’s risk management pages have been reorganized and updated. All of the papers are available for downloading and use free of charge.  There are also free samples of a couple of useful spreadsheets for assessing risk and planning the management of important risks. 

The risk section of our website is now in two parts:

Risk Management covers the processes involved in the identification and management of risk within a project or program to achieve and maintain a risk profile acceptable to the key stakeholders: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-PBK-045.php 

Risk Assessment covers the techniques and tools used to calculate and assess the risk exposure of a project or program: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-PBK-046.php

Balancing the factors shown in this diagram helps make the right decision. As the risk environment increases, the project controls need to be more rigorous. The risk environment is influenced by the size or significance of the identified risks, and the overall degree of uncertainty associated with the work. As either (or both) of these factors increase, the controls systems need to be more rigorous.

The two factors that influence the degree of rigour in the controls system are the amount of detail included (granularity) and the frequency of the monitoring, reviewing and updating of the plans. But, as suggested above, too much detail will increase costs and reduce efficiency and effectiveness.

There’s no right answer to this paradox, our latest article The Planning Paradox – How much detail is too much? offers some useful guidelines to consider (download the article).

For more on Schedule Strategy, Planning, & Design, see: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-SCH-011.php  

The various arrangement of activities and links shown in CPM Scheduling – the logical way to error #1 (with the addition of a few more non-controlling links) follow all of the scheduling rules tested by DCMA and other assessments. The problem is when you change the duration of a critical activity, there is either no effect or the reverse effect on the overall schedule duration.

In this example, the change in the overall project duration is the exact opposite of the change in the duration of Activity B (read the previous post for a more detailed explanation).  For this discussion, it is sufficient to know that an increase of 2 weeks in the duration of ‘B’ results in a reduction of the overall project duration of 2 weeks (and vice-versa).

The effect these anomalies on the voracity of a Monte Carlo analysis is significant. The essence of Monte Carlo is to analyze a schedule 100s of times using different activity durations selected from a pre-determined range that represents the uncertainty associated with each of the identified risks in a schedule. If the risk event occurs, or is more serious, the affected activity duration in increased appropriately (see more on Monte Carlo). 

In addition to calculating the probability of completing by any particular date, most Monte Carlo tools also generate tornado charts showing the comparative significance of each risk included in the analysis and its effect on the overall calculation.  For example, listing the risks that have the strongest correlation between the event occurring and the project being delayed.  

Tornado charts help the project’s management to focus on mitigating the most significant risks.

When a risk is associated with an activity that causes on of the anomalies outlined in CPM Scheduling – the logical way to error #1 the consequence is a reduction in the accuracy of the overall probability assessments, and more importantly to reduce the significance of the risk in tornado charts. The outcome of the anomalous modelling is to challenge the fundamental basis of Monte Carlo. There are more examples of similar logical inconsistencies, that will devalue Monte Carlo analysis, included in Section 3.5 of Easy CPM.

Easy CPM is designed for schedulers that know how to operate the tools efficiently, and are looking to lift their skills to the next level. The book is available for preview, purchase (price $35), and immediate download, from: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/shop-easy-cpm.php

The first in a series of five papers by Dr. Lynda Bourne, commissioned by PM World Journal, has been uploaded to the Mosaic website.

Uncertainty – Is it time to rethink? considers what uncertainty might mean post-pandemic. Through a discussion of the concept of a Zone of Uncertainty, the paper considers how the current heightened awareness of uncertainty and unknown unknowns can contribute to more effective risk management practice, and how the introduction of the concepts of resilience, persistence, and adaptability may assist individuals, groups, and organizations to recover, review and reform their practices.

Download the paper from:  https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-ORG-060.php#COVID  

PM World Journal is a free monthly project management journal, see more at: https://pmworldjournal.com/  

To apply Murphy’s Law proactively, you need to think through everything before you start work and ask yourself if this part fails, does the system still work?  This article looks at the historical origins of Murphy’s Law and how to use the concept to avoid problems.

Download the article: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/Mag_Articles/AA014_Murphys_Law.pdf

For more on risk management see: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-PBK-045.php#General

A new book suggests a paradigm shift in the way project controls a used, is needed on major projects combining the discipline required for major engineering works with the flexibility to deal with an uncertain future – getting the balance right could be very profitable. This article outlines the challenges and shortcomings of existing control processes: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/Mag_Articles/AA009_Radical_Uncertainty.pdf

For more papers on risk and uncertainty see: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-SCH-045.php

For more papers on complexity see: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-ORG-040.php

Knowing what a project is really likely to cost is important from every perspective: personal, professional, and organizational. But developing a realistic and achievable cost estimate has two components: first you develop an accurate baseline estimate, then you need to develop a realistic contingency.  Most people do step one, very few people even think of step two.

This article focuses on the importance of adequate contingencies and reserves in delivering a successful project: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/Mag_Articles/AA006_Contingencies_are_not_a_soft_option.pdf

To quote Coleman Cox: I am a great believer in Luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.

Click to download the PDF.

For more papers on risk and probability see: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-SCH-045.php#Process1