RE: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Convention Emergency Dive Plan

>I thought that Ray's recommendation that a small group of us get together and draft an set of protocols

>for next summer's convention was an excellent suggestion.

I did too, for sub-owners who want to participate in such things. My only issue is the idea of trying to assign PSUBS ownership of the protocols or responsibility for their execution at this particular time.

>IMHO, when a submersible pilot goes diving on his own, he has the responsibility to himself

>to take sufficient safety precautions to reduce his risk to what he considers to be an acceptable

>level. When one or more pilots go diving at a PSUBS sponsored event, not only must the pilot

>be satisfied with his own level of risk, but the organization must also be satisfied with its level of risk.

Doug, if psubs is not a sponsor of the diving, it's level of risk (my risk) is greatly reduced. We can have a PSUBS convention that includes the normal events of speakers, swap-tables, static sub-displays, etc; without PSUBS endorsing or getting involved in the planning or providing of safety for those dives. In my opinion, any promises for substance or service in the name of "psubs" as we stand today, opens up myself and Ray to personal liability. Ray can determine his own comfort level of risk. I know where mine is.

This proposal is a promise that extends an expectation of a certain level of safety service. We're not talking about someone stubbing their toe on a table in the conference room anymore, we're talking about the real potential for a serious event to occur where someone could potentially die or become disabled in some manner. Now your safety diver is no longer just a good samaritan providing a helping hand as best he can, he will now have a duty to perform his diver safety services in a manner that a jury may later decide "should have been" appropriate rather than what the committee determines "was" appropriate when they wrote the procedure. Now Doug in his Kayak is no longer a nice guy who is keeping an eye out in case something goes wrong, he's an integral part of a safety procedure that better work right the first time.

>PSUBS should probably consult a good lawyer about its liability, and arrange for waiver of liability

>forms for all attendees, not just the pilots of the submersibles.

The first thing a good lawyer is going to say, is don't do it. Rejecting that advise, he will then follow up with advise to purchase some liability insurance, and some errors and omissions insurance. Waivers are a great idea, but they don't prevent someone from filing suit against you. So perhaps part of the convention fee this year should be a surcharge that each participant pays to contribute to a liability insurance policy, assuming we can find an insurance company willing to underwrite such an event.

>All of the high-hazard low-risk safety-intensive enterprises (aviation, petrochemical, nuclear power, etc.)

>attribute their fine safety records to systems safety, safety based on rules, standard operating practices,

>checklists, backups, etc. IMHO, PSUBS is behind the curve on building a safety system for our

>conventions and needs to get to it.

In my opinion, this is not a realistic analogy. Government agencies such as the FAA, DOT, and NRC can adopt and enforce rules/regulations because they are immune from liability. You simply can't compare government regulatory agencies with PSUBS because the government has no risk. A better analogy would be PADI and their rules for securing a PADI approved diving license. Obviously, they have developed a course of study that must be used to secure a diving license through them. It seems this would be a very similar case of potential liability as we are looking at. It would be interesting to understand what they believe their liability is and how they handle it. I don't know how we can find out that information.

>As both Alec and Al have pointed out, we did in fact have a plan for this last convention.

>We never had more than two boats in the water at any one time.

This brings up the issue of enforcement, which I believe makes it difficult for PSUBS (the entity) to take on responsibility for safety services. The best laid rules and procedures have no meaning if they can't be enforced. Our conventions have been, and will likely continue to be held in publicly accessible areas. That means a lot of control for enforcement of procedures is not within our power. What would you have done at the 2006 convention if two other sub-owners got impatient and said, "Screw-it...nobody's telling me when I can dive, I'm launching my sub now". How did your 2006 convention plan handle that situation? What if two or three observers decided to jump in the water and swim with the subs? If that were a violation of your 2006 convention plan, how would you have handled the situation when you told them to leave the area and they said, "Hey, this is a public swimming area. I'll swim where I want". If you're going to propose a plan that promises safety and security, you better have the authority you need to control both sub-divers and observers so you can implement that plan if it becomes necessary to execute. If you don't, your plan has a hole in it that will invite liability. The fact is that even with rules and procedures, PSUBS does not have a method of ensuring that all participants will adhere to them. Absent the convention on private property whereby the land owner would have the right to expel the offending party from the premises, PSUBS has no power or authority to enforce our "rules" on anyone that doesn't follow them. This is why I feel it is best to let sub-owners be responsible for their own safety needs. If that means an ad-hoc group of people get together either at the time, or prior, and hammer out a set of procedures to follow; that's fine. But it can't be done at this time under the guise of PSUBS.

I suggest the following. For 2007, Doug and/or Alec should spearhead and take on the responsibility of developing rules/procedures for a sub-dive that will be conducted in the same time frame as the 2007 convention. Rather than calling this a PSUBS sponsored committee, Doug and Alec will develop the plans as individuals and/or find other individuals who have a similar interest to help them out. Doug and Alec can distribute these plans to sub-owners prior to the convention. Any sub-diving that occurs will be at the perogative of sub-owners, and will not be a PSUBS sponsored event. Under Doug's CMM model, this would contribute to the maturity of the procedures which could be considered for adoption by PSUBS in time for the 2008 convention. In other words, go ahead and run with it, but do it as individuals this year. Not having PSUBS name on it won't prohibit the plan from forming, developing, or working as you hope it to.

----- Original Message ----
From: "sealordone@aol.com" <sealordone@aol.com>
To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
Sent: Friday, December 8, 2006 3:23:31 PM
Subject: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Convention Emergency Dive Plan

Shipmates,

I thought that Ray's recommendation that a small group of us get together and draft an set of protocols for next summer's convention was an excellent suggestion. I too left the convention with the feeling that "next time, we need a better plan". I would envision a few basic rules of the road to establish shared expectations, a basic plan for who does what when things go wrong, and some sort of wavier of responsibility form to protect PSUBS. Is there an attorney in the house?

As both Alec and Al have pointed out, we did in fact have a plan for this last convention. The fact that we did not inform the entire group of the plan is a lesson learned for next year. It was a simple plan, but then again it was a simple dive situation. We never had more than two boats in the water at any one time. There were lots of divers and observers. Al was on the pontoon boat as the safety diver. He had full gear and lift bags. I was mobile in my kayak, and extra pair of eyes and ears to alert Al of possible problems. Next year we will probably have a lot more psubs and surface vessels operating simultaneously. A more complex dive situation requiring, IMHO, a more complex plan. A plan that all participants know about.

Here at the FAA, as in many other places, we employ a bastardized version of a Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to assess the organizational maturity of some of our safety processes. The CMM began life about 15 years ago as a metric the Air Force could use to determine which software developers were mature enough to take on large development programs. But the general approach is now used in a lot of industries for a number of purposes. The idea is that an organization (say psubs) and the processes for which it is responsible (say safety of its members) and be categorized into one of five levels of maturity:

1. Initial-"We are making this up as we go along."

2. Repeatable-"We can probably pull this off if we do it the same way again."

3. Defined-"If we write all this stuff down, anyone will be able to do it."

4. Managed-"Let's measure this process and improve its efficiency."

5. Optimized-"Let's re-engineer this process and make this puppy sing and dance."

I hope you software engineers will forgive my flip treatment of your model. Over the years, I think our conventions have moved from Initial to Repeatable, and it is now time to move to Defined, as Ray suggested. We began with no conventions. Then we planned a convention but had to cancel it. Then we had a convention, but there were no PSUBS. Then we had a convention with PSUBS, but they were on static display in a parking lot. Only one was operational (Maynard's K-350), while Piere's BIG was under construction and my Undaunted had not been in the water since the 1970's.

Then last year we had a convention with five PSUBS, three of which we launched and two that were on static display. Instead of spending the day inside looking at powerpoints, we spent the day on the water diving PSUBS. Next year I am guessing many more PSUBS and surface vessels, with a need for some minimal central oversight.

IMHO, when a submersible pilot goes diving on his own, he has the responsibility to himself to take sufficient safety precautions to reduce his risk to what he considers to be an acceptable level. When one or more pilots go diving at a PSUBS sponsored event, not only must the pilot be satisfied with his own level of risk, but the organization must also be satisfied with its level of risk. Both personal and organizational risk must be identified and mitigated. The pilot will have his standard operating procedures and checklists for his own submersible, and PSUBS will have its own organizational standard operation procedures and checklists. The pilot will have no liability concerns, because frankly, no one is going to insure him while diving in a home-made submersible. His safety precautions are all the insurance he is going to get! . PSUBS should probably consult a good lawyer about its liability, and arrange for waiver of liability forms for all attendees, not just the pilots of the submersibles.

I read a number of posts from folks who were quite cool to Ray's suggestions. But I did not read anything that made me change my mind. The safety business is, whether we like it or not, a rule-based business. All of the high-hazard low-risk safety-intensive enterprises (aviation, petrochemical, nuclear power, etc.) attribute their fine safety records to systems safety, safety based on rules, standard operating practices, checklists, backups, etc. IMHO, PSUBS is behind the curve on building a safety system for our conventions and needs to get to it.

Ray, I volunteer to support, or even to lead, an ad hoc committee to put together a series of recommended protocols for normal and abnormal operations for new year's convention. We will also address the issue of liability and the viability of waiver of liability forms.

Doug Farrow