When it's a management failure.
They've spent the last two weeks replacing the doors to our refurbished offices. I must admit that they look like any other doors to me, and the new one nearest my desk creaks as much as the old one. But it still opens and closes, like doors are supposed to. Apparently the original new doors were too light, or too small, or the wrong kind of wood, or something. So we have improved new doors, which I guess is a good thing.
It turns out that the project was were badly managed and the firm responsible 'lacked local knowledge' (I don't know, I just eavesdrop in corridors) which is why we ended up with sub-standard doors — not that those of us who use them on a daily basis had actually noticed. Ultimately someone has had to pay for the reworking of the doors, whether it's the department (I sincerely hope not) or the firm that was so poorly managed in the first place.
This reminds me of an incident in my previous employment, where the British taxpayer ended up paying for a similar management balls-up. Unfortunately in this case we could not blame a private company, but it was our very own Health and Safety department that failed to display any 'local knowledge', or indeed two brain cells to call a synapse.
Imagine, if you will, a typical lab. Busy, people in and out and along the corridor, often carrying things — fragile, expensive or otherwise precious things. Now let's say that we need a fire alarm system. So fire alarms are installed (fair enough) that are tested every single Monday morning (eh, what?). Today we will gloss over the fact that these alarms are set too bloody loud by half because they have to be heard in the cold room (look, just let's not go there right now, OK?). And apart from thirty seconds every Monday at 10 in the morning this is . . . bearable. Until some bright spark in H&S decides that all corridor/lab doors must be closed because of the fire risk.
Quick aside: how many fires do you think we had in that building in the last, oh, twenty years? Answer below.
"No!" we cried, "for we are carrying fragile, expensive or otherwise precious things in and out of the lab all day, and it's a right royal pain in the arse, not to mention dead noisy because that door closes not, it SLAMs."
"Fear not," quoth H&S, "for we shall install a sonic sensor door-holding-open device-thingy that will prop open the door, but also detect the fire alarm and automatically close it."
"Righto," we said out loud, but "you must think we were born yesterday," we muttered to ourselves.
So in the fullness of time did the workshop operatives (at an hourly rate) come round and attach little sonic sensor door-holding-open device-thingies to any number of lab doors that had previously been propped open by low-tech lumps of wood costing about 120 quid less. And they did not work, for lab floors are slippery and polished on a regular basis. Which meant there was not enough friction between the device and the floor, so after about five minutes (long enough to believe that the door was successfully propped open) it SLAMmed in the usual way.
Which was a tad inconvenient if you were at that moment walking through the doorway carrying fragile, expensive or otherwise precious things.
H&S decided to fix this problem by sending around the workshop boys again, this time equipped with little bits of rubber and impact adhesive. Of course, now that we had a successively propped door, another flaw became apparent. Permit me to quote from an email my boss sent to H&S:
The problem with the door closing because of poor friction has now been fixed. However [. . .] the device is activated by comparatively low sound levels, such as those that arise from running centrifuges. This is resulting in the door closing unpredictably and represents a genuine hazard to the people working in my group.
Oh ho, what fun we had. I actually demonstrated that a centrifuge would activate the de-propper. Every time. It gets better;
My risk assessment is that the dangers of not wedging the door open far outweigh those associated with its being able to close in the unlikely event of a fire during the day; moreoever, if there were a fire in the lab itself, the closed door would impede the exit of the people working in the lab. We are therefore reverting to using a wedge to jam the door open during the day.
And the killer?
This option is efficient and costs almost nothing whereas the "high tech" solution, as well as not functioning properly, has cost hundreds of pounds [ . . .] the constant problems with this device have significantly increased the stress level in my lab and, significantly, I have observed obvious signs of frustration in normally placid and well-adjusted people.
You can't make this stuff up. There's actually a more sinister side to this sorry tale than just wasted public money. It's hinted at in that last paragraph, but I shall save it for another time, perhaps. But rest assured, dear reader (both of you), that if I become aware of similar silliness at USyd, you will read about it here.
Answer to the number of fires question: Precisely none. The nearest we got was when a centrifuge suddenly started billowing smoke. I was standing by it at the time and discharged a CO2 extinguisher into it. No fire, but a stupid amount of paperwork because I was stupid enough to let off a fire extinguisher — at a potential fire! —, rather than letting the lab be burned down.
