• Question: Have you ever had any failures in creating a project? If so, how did you overcome it?

    Asked by mitch to Becky, Carrie, Kelly, Robin, Usaid on 15 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Robin Stafford Allen

      Robin Stafford Allen answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      There are small failures all the way along in most projects. You have to dust yourself down, pick yourself up and start all over again….sounds like a song! Mostly you have to look at how and why the thing failed and come up with a way of improving it. Regards Robin

    • Photo: Becky Selwyn

      Becky Selwyn answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      A lot of research is about coming up with new ideas and some of them just don’t work. The fun bit is working out why it didn’t work the way you hoped it would and deciding what to change so that the next time it does work!

    • Photo: Usaid Rauf

      Usaid Rauf answered on 23 Mar 2012:

      The nuclear power industry has had a few high-profile failures. We overcome them by a thorough understanding of what it is we are doing, so that when things do go wrong we are ready.

      The nuclear industry also shares operating experience worldwide, so that operators in different countries can learn from the good and bad practices all over the world.

      I work with safety systems, which are there to protect staff and the public – me and my team have to think really hard about all the possible ways systems can go wrong and fail to protect people.

      Engineers must understand that to prevent failures in projects, you must have the right people and the right processes in place to deliver the technology.

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