From a poster who has requested anonymity (for background about this topic, see the 2 preceding posts):
There has been a lot of hard work done to update Mike and bring him into the modern world. I too have had experiences with “Mike” and at a minimum they are distracting and most cases unsafe. Mike and those like him are bullies, plain and simple. They may have technical skills, however their people skills are lacking. Mike doesn’t only work for Operators. I don’t think there is an appreciation of the complex people relationships that are laid over the technical issues and inevitably there are culture clashes. It appears that regardless of Transocean and the Deepwater Horizon having worked for BP, the relationships between senior BP and TO personnel was extremely disfunctional. As someone with multiple decades of experience, I was amazed that what I believed were top flight organizations appear to have not progressed out of the stone age. I’m not sure what the solution is here. The competance of all individuals expecially those in senior positions is very important, however the skill set must include more than technical competance alone. Significant time and money are spent in well control schools, but when the people involved can’t communicate, all such training doesn’t realize much benefit. It may be trite, but there needs to be a TEAM. I thought the major players had that concept in their management schemes but the recent history, at least for this incident, does not appear to indicate this. It appears there is another big task to add to the long list of items needing attention to prevent another such occurance like Macando … and Montara.
