G4
Business inspections from G1
ton maritime lawyer at the firm Gordon, Elias & Seely. Its clients include eight surviving members of the Deepwater Horizon crew. “It’s almost like the fox watching the henhouse,” said Lee Kincaid, a former shipping captain who has represented a labor union for marine engineers at the International Maritime Organization, an agency of the United Nations. The arrangement puts inspection
firms in a difficult spot, Kincaid said: If they are too strict in their inspections, ship owners may switch inspection firms.
Such “class hopping” became a cause of concern in the 1990s with ship owners “trying to avoid doing repairs,” said Co- lin Wright, an officer at the International Association of Classification Societies. The group addressed the problem through a two-pronged policy. When owners switch inspection firms for ships less than 15 years old, the firm losing the assignment must notify the firm gaining the assignment of any needed repairs. For older ships, the new firm cannot ap- prove the vessel until the old firm certi- fies that all overdue maintenance has been completed. But the IACS includes only 11 of the world’s many inspection firms. “Certain owners, of course, will put pressure on surveyors because the own- er is the customer,” Wright said. “But the surveyors . . . have to stand up to such pressure and not succumb to it.”
Differing assessments
The Deepwater Horizon was inspect- ed by the Houston-based American Bu- reau of Shipping, or ABS, one of the big- gest inspection firms. ABS certified in a Feb. 22 report focus-
ing exclusively on the four cranes that they “were thoroughly examined by a competent person and that no defects af- fecting . . . their safe working condition were found.” Less than two months later, a different assessment commissioned for internal use by Transocean concluded that some of the cranes “were in bad condition.” The April assessment by a firm called
ModuSpec USA said various parts of the port-side deck crane were “in bad condi- tion and severely corroded . . . severely corroded . . . cracked due to age . . . in bad condition . . . worn severely .... worn and in need of being replaced.” The starboard-side deck crane was found to be in similar condition and “has had major issues for some time now,” the ModuSpec report said, citing interviews with crew members. Transocean commissioned the Mo- duSpec report as a routine part of its maintenance program, Transocean spokesman Brian J. Kennedy said. Using ModuSpec’s work, Transocean compiled an April 12 rig assessment that listed 10 features of the cranes as being both “critical items that may lead to loss of life, a serious injury or environmental damage” and in “Level 1” condition — the worst of four categories. The Level 1 rating indicated that the item “is not working or should be removed from service until deficiencies are rectified,” according to Transocean’s definition and the company spokesman. The ModuSpec report “is designed
specifically to identify as much as pos- sible,” Transocean’s Kennedy said. “Very clearly, the rig-condition assessment that was done by ModuSpec gets much more granular.” An attorney for Transocean, Edward F.
Kohnke IV, said that rig inspections are subjective, and that what one person de- scribes as minor rusting, another might consider severe corrosion. Stewart H. Wade, ABS’s vice president
for external affairs, declined to comment on the April Deepwater Horizon assess- ments. “Without access to those docu- ments, it’s very difficult to come up with any valid explanation of any alleged dis- crepancies,” he said. “The fact that more than 130 govern- ments around the world rely on the ser- vices provided by ABS . . . is an in- dication of the value of the services that we provide and the professionalism that we bring to the responsibilities with which we’re entrusted,” Wade said. The Coast Guard delegated authority to ABS under a 1995 agreement. The Coast Guard commandant who signed the agreement, Adm. Robert E. Kramek,
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES “It’s almost like the fox watching the henhouse,” Lee Kincaid, a former shipping captain who has represented a labor union for marine engineers, said of inspections.
KLMNO
SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2010 Oil rigs pay for own inspections; critics cite possible conflicts
LEE CELANO/REUTERS The top drive of a drill sits idle on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana.
went on to become a top executive at ABS. That agreement led to the Coast Guard’s “Alternate Compliance Pro- gram” under which primary inspections can be outsourced. The program was “one of the most sig-
nificant regulatory reinvention pro- grams of the 1990s,” a Coast Guard Web site says. The purpose, the site says, was “to reduce the regulatory burden on the maritime industry while maintaining existing levels of safety.” The performance of ABS and other in-
spectors has been challenged in lawsuits over past maritime disasters. The gov- ernment of Spain sued ABS for more than $1 billion after the Prestige, a tank- er certified by ABS, sank in 2002 and re- leased millions of gallons of oil off the Spanish coast. In a sworn statement, a former captain of the Prestige said he re- signed because the ship was in such dis- repair “that it was doomed to fail in a catastrophic manner.” ABS denied responsibility. A federal
judge in New York dismissed the suit on Aug. 3, saying that, even if classification societies employed by ship owners certi- fy ships recklessly, they cannot be held liable for coastal damage. The Transocean spokesman rejected the notion that the Deepwater Horizon was poorly maintained, saying it was “a jewel of the fleet.”
Gordon, the Houston lawyer, said two of the Deepwater Horizon crew mem- bers he represents told him that people on the rig knew when inspectors were coming. Gordon said the clients recalled being instructed by a Transocean super- visor to clean up hydraulic leaks on two cranes and not use the cranes until the inspection was over, all to make it ap- pear that the leaks were fixed. Transocean spokesman Kennedy said the company “would be surprised if the employees . . . engaged in such question- able conduct.”
‘Well maintained’
ABS’s last annual inspection report on the Deepwater Horizon, dated Dec. 17, commented favorably on aspects of the rig that the ModuSpec report later crit- icized.
Where the inspection form asked for
observations about the drinking water, ABS noted only: “Drinking water cooler on all decks.” ModuSpec reported that the freshwater piping “was in bad condi- tion” and “corroded . . . throughout the rig.” The watermakers that converted saltwater to freshwater were meeting only about half of the rig’s needs, Mo- duSpec reported.
ABS said the sanitary facilities were
“Clean and well maintained.” ModuSpec said the sewage treatment plant was “in
LEE CELANO/REUTERS
Crew members talk on an idle oil rig in the gulf. Several staffed rigs have sat awaiting drill permits since a moratorium was placed on new drilling.
poor condition,” mainly because of a cor- roded tank. An April 12 Transocean as- sessment said the sewage treatment plant, like aspects of the cranes, was a “Level 1” problem.
Based on the ABS report, the Marshall
Islands declared on Dec. 22 that the Deepwater Horizon completed its an- nual inspection with no deficiencies.
hilzenrath@washpost.com
Question? Companies will send you an answer via text message. texting from G1
utive Scott Jones said it makes sense that young people have been the service’s ear- liest and most loyal adopters. “Teens and young adults, that’s where
they live,” said Jones, referring to the textosphere. Jones, an entrepreneur, hatched the idea for ChaCha more than four years ago when he was slated to give a speech about the future of the Web. He began to use Google and other search engines to do his research but wasn’t having much success. So he began calling friends at venture capital firms and other compa- nies to pick their brains. “I thought, ‘Gee, why couldn’t Google tell me this? My friend was able to,’ ” Jones recalled. For this and other que- ries, Jones said he wondered, “What if I could call some smart friend in real time?”
Soon, he and co-founder Brad Bostic
were building out the technology to sup- port the Carmel, Ind.-based company and establishing their network of part- time contractors. The privately held firm, which has received $52 million to date in venture capital money, launched in Janu- ary 2008. Most of its revenue is generated from advertising, and the company ex- pects to break even for the first time in mid-2011. KGB launched in January 2009 as a sister brand of a British directory assis- tance company called the Number 118 118, which provides services similar to those received by dialing 411 in the Unit- ed States. When the company set up shop stateside, they decided to branch out from providing addresses and phone numbers to answer virtually any ques- tion. Known as “guides” at ChaCha and
“agents” at KGB, the people who generate answers make their own hours, work from home and are paid according to the
number of questions they answer. At KGB, they make anywhere from 5 to 10 cents per question answered, depending on the how much work was required to answer the question. ChaCha’s pay also works on a sliding scale, with workers earning 2 to 25 cents per answer. “They’re working from dorm rooms,
work-at-home moms and dads, retired people,” Jones said.
At both companies, potential workers
must go through a training process and pass a test to qualify. They are not re- quired to specialize in one topic area, but many informally stick to answering ques- tions about subjects that interest them. Many of the questions sent to ChaCha
and KGB have straightforward answers, with users seeking practical information about public transportation schedules and store closing hours, or obscure trivia on sports statistics or historical events. Both companies maintain databases of answers to commonly asked questions,
enabling them to provide responses in seconds.
But other queries can be tricky. Some call for subjective responses (such as “What is Chris Farley’s best ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch?” or the cliched yet ex- istential “What is the meaning of life?”), while others are complex or obscure enough that they demand in-depth re- search. These answers can take a few minutes to churn out. One of the biggest challenges for Cha-
Cha and KGB’s business model is break- ing news. Details of fast-moving stories often trickle out slowly and are revised and clarified over time, so it can be hard for the companies’ databases and work- ers to keep up. “The day Michael Jackson died was a
big event for us,” Stewart said. Questions poured in to KGB as conflicting reports began to surface, with some outlets say- ing Jackson was dead and others saying he had been hospitalized.
“We had to be a breaking-news source,”
Stewart said. His workers had to keep checking and rechecking answers to give the most accurate, up-to-date informa- tion on a quickly evolving story. No matter the type of question, both companies monitor their answers for ac- curacy and relevance and flag workers who aren’t making the grade. With more people snapping up smart- phones, ChaCha and KGB have launched applications for iPhones, Droids and oth- er devices to keep up with advances in the mobile market. Still, Jones and Stew- art emphasize that text will remain core to their strategies because it’s a lowest common denominator on cellphones; virtually every device is equipped with it. And, Jones said, the ubiquity and con- venience of a text message are hard to ri- val. “It’s hard to interrupt it because it’s so bite-sized,” he said of texting, “but yet text interrupts everything else.”
halzacks@washpost.com
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