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Jill is a project manager at a mining company working on an open pit mine project

Management

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Jill is a project manager at a mining company working on an open pit mine project. Currently, she is working on a major deliverable—building a 3-mile road to the new mine site. The first phase of the road (1.3 miles) has just been finished, which the company considers a major accomplishment. The company has decided to hold an event to recognize the completion of this first major deliverable and to symbolically initiate phase two of the road. The company has invited members of the senior leadership team, local, state, and federal elected officials and members from key regulatory agencies and the local media to participate in this event. The organizers have decided that instead of a traditional ribbon cutting for initiating the next phase, they will have their Cat D11T dozer drive through the ribbon, breaking ground for phase 2.

Jill couldn't be happier with completing Phase 1 of the road. The most difficult phase is behind her, and the celebratory event has gone very well. All the 'bigwigs' gave their congratulatory speeches and everyone is watching the dozer drive through the ribbon. She turns to speak with the project sponsor for a couple minutes, when she hears a member of the project team screaming, "The dozer is sinking! The dozer is sinking!" Uncertain she has correctly understood her teammate, she turns and watches in frozen horror, as the dozer steadily continues sinking into the ground. The driver is desperately trying to free the dozer, but only seems to be quickening the decline. Within six minutes, the dozer has completely disappeared from sight.

After the initial shock has passed, Jill begins trying to answer a few specific questions:

1. What just happened to the dozer, and how do we retrieve it?
2. How did this happen?
3. How could this have been avoided?
4. How can we mitigate the impact to the project?

 

After some initial work, Jill discovers the following answers to some of her questions:

1. What happened to the dozer, and how do we retrieve it? It drove onto an unidentified / unmarked muskeg pocket (bog / quicksand). The crust covering the pocket cracked under the weight of the dozer, and the dozer sank into the pocket completely out of sight. A few different methods were attempted to retrieve the dozer, which was 50% self-insured by the company:
2. Sonar was attempted, but could not pinpoint the location of the dozer given all the other solid objects in the muskeg pocket
3. Drag lines using a concrete pylon was attempted, but did not locate the dozer
4. Sought permission to drain the pocket, but the environmental agency denied permission
5. How did this happen? Jill knew that this was addressed as a risk in the risk management plan and that the quality plan addressed this, as well. After questioning the lead geological engineer, Jill learned that soil samples had in fact been taken every 1/10 of a mile per the project plan, but that the lead geological engineer had not actually performed the core test on the samples, as he had completed a flyover of the landscape at the initiation of the project in the company helicopter and believed the terrain to be stable.

 

Questions

1. What should Jill do now?
2. Did Jill do what was reasonable to manage this risk? What else could she have done?
3. What might be the short term and long term impact to the project, and how can it be mitigated?
4. How could Jill have better integrated risk and quality components in this project?