Nevertheless, there are 26 recommendations.
To recap, the company that Transpower hires to maintain the pylons hired a couple of clowns and didn’t train them. They undid a lot of bolts, and the pylon fell over.
The report suggests that ultimately is Transpower's fault.
I don’t see how.
If you hire a painter and he paints your house the wrong colour, your wife tells you you’re are an idiot for hiring that painter.
As long as Transpower had checked that Omexom was a proper company, what is it they are supposed to be doing?
Are they supposed to vet the company every time they do any work? Do they run through the CV of everyone who touches a bolt? Or is that the contractor's job, the way it’s the contractor's job for everyone you hire in life to do anything for you?
Certainly the issue raised in 2021, when an engineer for Transpower told them maintenance issues were a thing, is on Transpower?
They were alerted and yet they did nothing. That, I suspect, goes in some way to the fact Transpower are a monopoly and monopolies tend to be a bit lax.
The report recommends Transpower improve processes for maintenance work on base plates. What does that mean?
Do you need to hire a rocket scientist to unscrew some bolts and have a laminated sign on every tower saying "only undo one bolt at a time"? Surely this is getting all a bit forensic and smacks of a report author making stuff up for the sake of it?
The simple truth, the beginning, the middle and the end of it, is Omexom are at fault. They are the ones that didn’t do their job. The original report told us this.
None of this is complicated. They weren't building the Hadron Collider. They were cleaning a tower.
Omexom hired fools, didn’t train them and untrained fools made mistakes.
Omexom should be sacked. They should be sued or made to pay for the damage. The report says anywhere between $37-80 million, and that should be that.
Transpower are not devoid of responsibility, given pylons are on them. But the reason a CEO doesn’t clean the building, do the correspondence and make all the boxes is it's not possible and not reasonable and that’s why you hire people to do the stuff you can't.
At some point in the hiring process the level of responsibility transfers from the hirer to the hiree?
End of report.
The report suggests that ultimately is Transpower's fault.
I don’t see how.
If you hire a painter and he paints your house the wrong colour, your wife tells you you’re are an idiot for hiring that painter.
As long as Transpower had checked that Omexom was a proper company, what is it they are supposed to be doing?
Are they supposed to vet the company every time they do any work? Do they run through the CV of everyone who touches a bolt? Or is that the contractor's job, the way it’s the contractor's job for everyone you hire in life to do anything for you?
Certainly the issue raised in 2021, when an engineer for Transpower told them maintenance issues were a thing, is on Transpower?
They were alerted and yet they did nothing. That, I suspect, goes in some way to the fact Transpower are a monopoly and monopolies tend to be a bit lax.
The report recommends Transpower improve processes for maintenance work on base plates. What does that mean?
Do you need to hire a rocket scientist to unscrew some bolts and have a laminated sign on every tower saying "only undo one bolt at a time"? Surely this is getting all a bit forensic and smacks of a report author making stuff up for the sake of it?
The simple truth, the beginning, the middle and the end of it, is Omexom are at fault. They are the ones that didn’t do their job. The original report told us this.
None of this is complicated. They weren't building the Hadron Collider. They were cleaning a tower.
Omexom hired fools, didn’t train them and untrained fools made mistakes.
Omexom should be sacked. They should be sued or made to pay for the damage. The report says anywhere between $37-80 million, and that should be that.
Transpower are not devoid of responsibility, given pylons are on them. But the reason a CEO doesn’t clean the building, do the correspondence and make all the boxes is it's not possible and not reasonable and that’s why you hire people to do the stuff you can't.
At some point in the hiring process the level of responsibility transfers from the hirer to the hiree?
End of report.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
2 comments:
I suspect Omexon will eventually be sued, after Transpower. But one wonders at what degree of stupidity insurers pick up the tab. Surely Worksafe should be fining someone. I am not allowed a tradesman to merely walk on my roof for risk. In enlightened countries the crew would have all instantly lost their jobs. And in some probably sent to an internment camp. It would be interesting to know more of the maintainers. Did any make secondary school? Any school qualifications? Can they read? Do they understand English? Most 10 year olds can figure that if you take the wheels off a car it will fall to the ground. What did they consider the purpose of the bolts? To stop the birds lifting? Did any workers ever have a practical male school teacher? Was it a strike against colonisation? Far too much maintenance is now by contract. The bare letter of any task is met but no lateral thinking or initiative is applied. A lesson which shoud be learned is the gross vulnerbiity of the whole sytem. An anti colonist with a battery grinder and/or gas torch could fell a line in no time. by selecting scorner or valley pylons would need only a spanner.And many are very exposed to 50 tonne 100 kph trucks.
The fault lies with the contractor. Irrespective of which individual undid the last bolt or bolts that resulted in the tower falling over, the employer (the contractor) is responsible for the work and work crew and would normally provide supervision with experience with the type of work to supervise the on site team.
If for example, the work team were given a list of towers to work on, tools and a vehicle and told to complete x number of towers by knock off, then sent on their way without a site supervisor, a disaster waiting to happen.
It's unlikely the contractor used highly qualified line mechanics to do ground level tower maintenance.
Sorry, but the fault lies at the door of the contractor.
Without knowing the finite detail of Transpowers and the contractors investigations and having an insight into HV
contracting, I would assume the on site crew were, or will be dismissed. With issues and events like this one, the problems are usually due to lack of good contract management and poor supervision.
There will be a ripple effect from this that will effect all the
contractors working on Transpower assets.
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