Roane County was once home to a famous systems engineer, the late Bill McCumber, Fellow of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). What would the good professor say about the situation were he here today? (Scroll down past the photo to get the rest of the post.)

William McCumber
 

In case you are curious, systems engineering is the field of engineering that among other things deals with the making and execution of plans. In addition, systems engineers, who are tasked with coordinating the efforts of other types of engineers, are required to have knowledge of many engineering disciplines and scientific fields. Although one role of a systems engineer is project management, systems engineering comes into play long before the project managers start their work.

Again: What would the good professor say about the situation were he here today? Here's an educated guess from his long-time co-author and co-faculty teaching partner in graduate systems engineering courses:

We will need environmental, civil, and especially systems engineers to make sure the best engineering decisions are made. "Some knowledge of the problem domain may be useful, but is not essential. Profound knowledge of underlying technology will help and is essential."

We should start by creating an Operational Need Document (OND). An OND says "why" we need the plan, not "what" the plan should be nor "how" it should be implemented. However, an OND should include the boundaries imposed on the plan by legacy conditions (such as the ash mess, location of water intakes, as so forth) since these are an integral part of the need. (See (link...) for a short introduction to operational need.)

Before we make a plan, we really should agree on what needs or goals our future plan should fulfill. Not agreeing on an OND first is putting the cart before the horse.

Does Roane County have one or more competent professional systems engineers on this? On a project of any size--and this qualifies--systems engineering is needed. Systems engineering can help all the plan participants proceed with efficiency and reliability to fulfill the operational need.

Any plan that necessarily involves lots of engineering in an environment of regulation and competing interests needs to include experts in these areas.

Lacking the above, I suggest that according to systems engineering best practice, we start by trying to agree on a short operational need statement or document. It doesn't have to be complicated. It would be from a few sentences long to several pages. It would state clearly what needs this plan would be fulfilling.

It sounds as if it would be obvious--we need the mess fixed, clean air, safe water, compensation for all affected, minimized risk, etc.--but it can be harder than it sounds to agree on an OND. Try writing a sample one here on RoaneViews if you want to see what I mean.

A good way to start on one is to get representatives of all the stakeholders--citizens, land owners, business, county and city governments, emergency management, Swan Pond residents, water users, environmentalists, etc.--together with a systems engineer to work on a statement of need they can all live with.

One person whom the stakeholders trust to act on our behalf should "own" the Operational Need Document, so that there is order in its maintenance.

If we don't hammer out a need statement beforehand, competing visions of our various needs will seriously hamper later plans and their execution at every turn.

If the county has already made an Operational Need Document for this, I would really like to see it. If they don't have one we need to ask them why not and to get one now.

At least we can say we have been warned. Comments?

-- OneTahiti