Columbia Gas of Massachusetts Case – Project Issue Analysis Report (Total 12 Points)
CLICK BELOW FOR THE CASE
ColumbiaGasOfMass-case-6-AUG-2020r.pdf
How this will be graded:
Structure, Organization, Ease of reading, Grammar: 2.5 Points
- This Assignment had a very, very specific structure. Identify 2-4 issues. Come up with solutions for those issues and summarize them briefly. Provide a table with Pros and Cons for each, and wrap it all up with an overall (but brief) recommendation – what could have been done to help prevent this disaster from a PM perspective. DID YOU FOLLOW THIS STRUCTURE?
- Did you follow the advice given in the lectures and From Your Instructor about the format?
- Did you follow rules of English grammar, spelling, and syntax? Did you fix errors pointed out via Word’s editing capabilities (e.g. squiggly blue or red underlined text)?
Content: 8 Points
- Is it clear from reading your assignment that you read the case and understood what happened that led up to the mistakes that were made and that yielded the fires and explosions?
- Did you ‘dig deeper’? Some people identify very technical issues – did you find the underlying reasoning – the project-level thinking that may have driven decisions to go a certain way technically?
- Did you keep your writing concise and to the point? Part of the intent of this assignment is an exercise in expressing important ideas in as efficient a way as possible.
- Was there a logical flow from your Issue Identification to your Proposed Solutions, to your Pros and Cons and to your conclusion?
- If you did have ‘extra’ information to exhibit, did you put it in an Appendix rather than in the body of the text? Again, the focus is on a concise, crisp presentation of your arguments.
References and resources: 1.5 Points
- Did you provide several relevant references that helped make your points? Of course you can use the main Case as a reference, but did you reach out and find out more about the Columbia Gas incident from other sources? You really should at least investigate the references pointed to at the bottom of this Case at a minimum.
Other things to consider:
- Did you add value from your own professional and/or personal experience?
- Did you make appropriate use of figures and tables in an appendix? Don’t substitute quantity for quality here – one good, relevant, and meaningful small table is worth 100 randomly inserted graphs and charts.
- Did you really take on the viewpoint of a project leader here, and consider the way the team was motivated, the way the different stakeholders communicated (or didn’t), the culture of the different companies?
- Did you consider the different stakeholder interests?
Solution
Executive Summary
In September 2018, excess pressure in the natural gas lines operated by the Columbia Gas of Massachusetts resulted in a series of fires and explosions that happened in tens of homes. There were more than 80 individual fires within Merrimack Valley in Massachusetts, and the towns of Andover, North Andover, and Lawrence. The tragedy caused the death of one person, injury of 22 of them and damages to 131 buildings…
Background
According to the National Transportation Safety Board, customers in the affected areas received natural gas from pressure distribution networks (0.5 psi) which was in turn fed from high pressure (75 psi) main pipeline (Willey, 2020). The low-pressure pipeline was fed from the main one through regulators controlled by sensors, assessing pressure in low-pressure pipes. During the…
Issue identification
Issue one
Among the leading factors that contributed to the materialization of the tragedy was CMA’s violation of basic safety standards in its piping system. The company recklessly disregarded known safety risks associated with the regulator control lines – sections of pipes connected to regulator stations that assisted in the monitoring and controlling of downstream gas pressure (Wade, 2020). By as early as the year 2015, in line with an internal company notice, it was in CMA’s knowledge that failure to account for control lines in the construction projects could potentially result in catastrophic events. The manifestation was in the form of fires and explosions that happened in………………….please follow the link below to purchase the solution at $15
