An Unlucky Break

Critical problems seem to happen over a holiday weekend when there is less coverage. For me, Thanksgiving provided many challenges. Early in my career, I had to come into the ceramic tile factory the day after Thanksgiving to supervise a crew trying to clear a jam in the kiln. Many years later, a water main in St. Helens Oregon broke and shut down the ceiling tile plant. Once again, I was the one covering, and had to respond quickly and deal with a near disaster.

I got a call late on Thanksgiving night. The plant had been running very well, and then water stopped flowing. In ceiling tile manufacturing, water is the main ingredient. Ceiling board starts out as 98% water, then as it passes over vacuum and then through a 400-foot dryer, the water is removed. If too much water is removed prior to the dryer, the crew must dump all materials into a pit located prior to the dryer and hope the water comes back on before the pit fills up. It can be messy and difficult to recover from.

The water didn’t come back on. The pit filled up. The crew shut the plant down and was cleaning up a big mess. Some of the material had entered the dryer and they were using 14-foot-long rakes to clear the jammed material out of the dryer.

I arrived at 10 pm and joined the crew. Nobody knew what caused the water to shut off. The EHS (environmental, health, and safety) manager was out of town. I had to figure out who to contact with the city. There was a Rolodex on her desk (I had no access to her computer). In it, I found the number of the city manager. To my surprise, he answered his phone immediately.

He told me the main water line had burst and water had to be shut off for all residences and businesses. He was trying to use back-up systems to get water on for the residents first. I reminded him we employed almost 200 people at our plant and without water we couldn’t operate. I asked him to keep me updated as they brought their back-up water system on line. He said he would and considered us a priority, as we were the number one employer in the area.

I stayed most of the night and helped the crew clean up the mess. We developed a plan for what to do when the water situation was resolved. It wasn’t just the water that we worried about, but also the pressure with which it was delivered. At too high a pressure, it could damage sensitive equipment in our process. I had several calls with the city manager and he assured me he’d let us know when the water was scheduled to be turned back on.

Except he didn’t. All of the sudden, water pressure went up and we thought we were in business again. We started up and began making ceiling board. And then the water was shut off again with no warning. I placed a call and asked the city manager to give us a warning when the next attempt to start the water system would occur. He assured me he would this time. But again, he didn’t. We devised our own plan. We watched our water meters and sent a crew member to monitor the valves in the basement of the process.

For the next 2 days, we played the “start and stop” game with the water. This kept the damage to the process and product at a minimum. In the middle of the third day, the water stayed on, and we could operate as normal.

We learned a valuable lesson about contingency planning: the more you can control in an “uncontrollable” situation, the better.