DP Consultants aren’t God’s Gift to Operators

Or the Dark Shadow of the DP Consultant

Let’s start with another analogy to clarify the issues:

In the wild and lawless frontier of dynamic positioning (DP) classification and operation everyone hired gunslingers (consultants) to look after their interests.?They might be hired as rustlers or protectors but everyone is careful of the man with a gun (“expert”).?The spectre of the gun is a reality of life for the farmers (DPOs) and tradesmen (engineers) of each small village (DP vessel).?They might be hired by town builders (shipyards), surveyors (designers), mayors (owners), district councils (operators), business combines (vessel clients), distant congressmen (industry bodies), or even the overworked and distant marshals (class).?Everyone depends on them to do the local tasks that the wandering marshals aren’t interested in, and the marshals usually depend on their word.?Everyone expects them to enforce the version of the law they were hired for.

This wouldn’t be a problem if they were good men, with a commitment to and experience in justice, as well as a quick iron and good eye.?But men are variable and they usually do the work that they were hired to do, right or wrong.?This makes them not just possible protectors, but part of the overall problem.?Sure, there is a generally accepted the gunslinger code, but adherence to the finer points is variable.?Ideally, the rule of law needs to be established and the best gunslingers hired as sheriffs, but there are competing interests working to prevent this, as they are not sure that the law will always be on their side, and hired guns are.?So, gunslingers face off against gunslingers and everyone pays the price.?Some gunslingers form gangs (consulting companies), and some of those encourage the conflict between the good, bad, & ugly interests, get paid by all sides, and grow rich off the people’s misery.?Some of them aren’t even a good shot.

Things ain’t right.?The law needs to be strengthened and a fairer, less costly balance of interests established.?It is true that the best hired guns spread improved farming & trade skills from town to town and improve contacts between isolated villages, but the cost of the bad ones and the whole structure is high.?Discouraged farmers, tradesmen, and surveyors feel forced to become gunslingers in hopes of a better life.

If you are a DP consultant and offended, don’t be.?I’m one myself.?It is one of the reasons that I can see the problem so clearly.?I have seen large quantities of poor work.?I try to be one of the good guys and try to make things better for the people doing the work, but I know people have misused my presence and work.?I know that managers have cut vital findings out of my reports to please customers, and hidden reports and work from me that they knew I would not pass.?I didn’t always know at the time, but time wounds all heels.?I have not been immune to influence, although I fight it, and I have performed contracted tasks rather than the unwanted badly needed one and given informal additional recommendations that I knew would be ignored.?I have been danced in front of customers, who thought that I would do their work, and then another was assigned.?I have struggled to keep the uninformed promises of others that should not have been made.?These are my and my employers’ sins.?It is understandable why so many consultants are independent – it is one less layer of complications pulling at an honest man.?Working with a group is good, but customers can be a group too.

I imagine that a complete stranger looming over you and judging everything that you have been doing for years can be a very disheartening process.?I try to hide the sharp edges because I mean these people well and want to help, if I can, but I am an outsider sent to judge their work, so it takes a careful balance to improve things.?Objective improvements in training, procedures, and design are not worth much if they undermine the worker’s sense of agency and competency.?This is a big concern in many industries as some methods of improvement can be worse than the problems they were meant to solve.?As the joke goes, “Floggings will continue until morale improves.”?Similarly, operational proficiency and sense of control will be beaten on until performance improves.?The two statements are almost equivalent.?Workers need to be reminded of their value and that the presence of a consultant is a sign of how much their skills and roles are valued.?It is a chance to remind them of how they already know or want to know how to do things better, rather than a chance to prove them wrong or show them up.?It is their house and we are guests.?We should want to be a good ones and for our visits to help make things better.?Such intentions are well and nice, but they have to be maintained when tired, frustrated, and under pressure.

How good are we at this as an industry??We already know that some workers are under negative pressure and that some previous consultants may have been arrogant know-it-alls, and we can’t afford to make things worse.?There is an old Scottish proverb, “Leave things better than you found them”, and that requires more than mechanical thinking or professional pride.?The consultants need to understand and adapt to the position and experiences of the people they are dealing with and encourage their improvement.?Humility, listening, and empathizing are vital.?We are dealing with our fellow men and are partners in the same task.?We play different roles but every good man wants to do good work and, if it is possible, they want to do it better.?Most men aspire to better but we all need help.?Frivolous entertainment industries like to tell us that attitude is everything, in this particular application of the phrase, they are not as far wrong as they intend.?Consultants don’t need to be beautiful, but they do need to be decent, respectful, hardworking, and professional.

With the human side covered, we need to get to the technical side – from attitude to skills and knowledge.?To discuss this inoffensively, let’s go back to our analogy.?As previously mentioned, gunslingers are often former farmers, tradesmen, surveyors, marshals, or mayors.?They were hopefully very good at their old jobs because, if they weren’t, they have no business changing over.?They have probably worked with a number of gunslingers over the years, so they probably know the part of the drill that they have seen, but still need to learn to adjust to the new position and tasks.?Being a good farmer or tradesmen doesn’t necessarily make you a good shot and those skills need developed.?They need to learn where to shoot (analysis, the reasons behind rules), what to shoot (problems in the overall system), why to shoot (disinterested observation -seeing what is there and needed rather than what is wanted), how to shoot (written and verbal communication skills), and how not to shoot (persuasion).?Hopefully, we covered attitude enough that you aren’t wondering who to shoot.?Knowing when to shoot can also be a vital skill.

The gunslinger’s tasks require a good understanding of the skills and tasks of each player in the system as he can be called on to work with people of different skills at different tasks.?Being a great farmer, tradesmen, surveyor, or town builder is not enough.?A farmer might think that he knows about tools because he uses them all the time but he really doesn’t understand the tradesmen’s role and skills.?Similarly, a tradesmen might think that he understands the farmer’s role because he makes, tests, & maintains those tools, a town builder might be mistaken in thinking that he understands the whole thing because he built the town, and the surveyor might think that he understands the whole thing because he laid it out.?Each of them knows some related skills and some parts of the puzzle, and may know their parts very well, but they may suffer from the illusion that those are the most important parts.?This is sometimes a problem because as the old saying goes, “If your only tool is a hammer than every problem looks like a nail.”?This can create harmful myopia that leads to bad outcomes.?An ex-mayor, ex-marshal, or ex-member of a business combine might think that their higher level view gives them an advantage in holistic understanding but this often comes at the cost of less lower-level detail.

Gunslingers need to recognize their areas of ignorance and work to correct them.?They need to bend themselves to the tasks rather than bend all tasks to themselves.?There are tasks for a specialist gunmen but a well-rounded gunslinger produces better work.?It can be hard for someone who was outstanding in their old field to discover that it was only part of what was needed and adapt to the larger task.?This can cause distortions with farmer gunslinger gangs oppressing tradesmen and tradesmen gunslinger gangs oppressing farmers.?While both attempt to lobby distant congressmen to their side.?The myopia of different groups could be further discussed but we have seen enough to illustrate the point – consultants have to get out of their comfortable silos and address their ignorance if they are to do a truly good job.

So, we have covered the attitude, the need for a good skill set, and the need for a wider and deeper overall system understanding.?What’s next??Consultants need to be choosy of their clients.?There are tasks they do not want to do and clients they do not want to work for.?What good man wants to make things worse??But there are guns for hire that will take money for anything.?There are consultants and consulting companies that have been destroyed by this.?Managers do not always understand the financial and reputational risks that they are taking.?Sometimes they are short-sighted, sometimes they are unable to listen to subordinates, sometimes they lack the skill to understand, sometimes they are unlucky with their bets, and sometimes the underlings are too polite to complain.?Not all money is good money.

What is a bad client??Someone who wants bad work or can’t tell the difference between good and bad work and wants it done for a sum or in a time that will not allow good work.?Walk away.?Sure, you can try to educate them, but don’t risk the house if you can’t.?We have all seen a race to the bottom in different markets.?Don’t take part.?Cultivate good customers – good work pays off and many people need it.?Good consultants never need to compete at the bottom of the market.?If your company goes there and won’t listen, walk away.?Sometimes quality requires a willingness to say “No” and walk away from people you like.?People that found your honest service valuable will still use you.

What about consultants with the wrong attitude, a poor skill set, myopic vision, and questionable clients??They can survive and even prosper for a while and will be replaced by similar companies or consultants when they fail.?There is always a bottom of the market but gravity is real.?In the short term, markets are a voting mechanism, but in the long term, they are a weighing mechanism.?Who has the time to wait until then when there are vessels having accidents??Short term, short sighted providers are a major industry problem, and unless standards are maintained, their market share will have a major industry effect.?If you can get a useless but $2000 FMEA, trials, and Ops manual that will pass class then many shipyards will take their chance compared to $50,000 for just the FMEA.?The good clients don’t want that junk and good consultants should not attempt to slum in that market, as their reputation, skills, and standards will suffer.

Of course, better consultant training, standards, and tools can’t change this structural problem.?It might be a good way for the provider to increase money and influence, but there will always be skilled or unskilled and certified or uncertified people willing to do bad work for money, so long as the short term consequences are zero and the long term consequences are distant.?Lack of accountability and consequences are the main problem, not training or skill.?The gatekeepers need to catch the resulting problems at approval but currently don’t.?Victims in the USA & Canada do not appear to be aware of national engineering requirements and recourse, and do not seem to use them.?Operators and vessel clients need to specify vessel work be performed to acceptable standards and align consultants with safe and redundant DP operation by selecting good providers to work to protect them.?The bad providers need to become visible somehow.?For example, some oil companies felt forced to apply a blanket ban on vessels with work from certain consultants because the quality was so poor.?There are economic reasons for the bottom of the market and if vessel clients and owners don’t want it affecting them then there needs to be market changes.

While the ugly DP consulting industry can grow fat fighting the problems created by bad consultants, an overall system improvement would be more efficient.?Almost all honest players would benefit from the designated system guardians doing their job but, as discussed in the article on class, that requires system changes.?It would reduce the need for and burden of consultants, but the best ones would survive or change roles.?I don’t really want to wish my job away, but we all need the system to work better.?The industry could run much more efficiently.?In the meantime, the gunslingers will continue to live off of the flaws in the system, and clients that cannot tell the difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly gunslingers will pay the price.