What motivates me to provide this service to the energy sector?  Many things and many personality types I have worked with through the years.  I have seen too much go by the boards while those responsible for hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars in damages continue to collect a pay cheque. 

I have seen people suffer, equipment, budgets and profits damaged. 

For over twenty years of my career, I have been maligned and discredited by the con men in the industry I work in as well as by those who believe their lies, including my superiors who accuse me of being a trouble maker.   It is maddening when your superiors demand a supervisor report contraventions of safe procedure and insist on strong action for repeat offenders and consistently do not live up to their commitment to you and the good of all.

Out of the exasperations of all this and a system that is as reliable as the weather I came up with a plan and a method to turn that around.  This is a win for every employer, executive, employee, stock holder as well as the general public.

There are basically three dynamics here:

1.)  The Long Term High Risk Operator {LTHRO} / conman / short cut artist who is entitled, charismatic, charming, influential, always plotting, skilled at manipulating, skilled at building trust, faith and loyalty with others to develop power over others.  They have known, from an early age how to emotionally hijack and impair the executive decision making processes of the people around them to keep the social power dynamic in their favor.  They are small time leaders who are often alphas with habitual "counterproductive" behavior which is why they usually never amount to much { Unless they prefer to be a crime boss. }.  They undermine the integrity of your people and your organization.  It is executive management, middle management and supervisory people that are suppose to be in control and make the judgement calls based on safe, well established procedures for skilled Operators, not counterproductive peons like the Long Term High Risk Operator {LTHRO}.

2.)  The LTHRO's victimizes their peer group, supervisors, plant managers, superintendents, the corporate bottom line and corporate image.

3.)  Few people are willing to challenge the social dynamics in a work group enamored with a conman.  They all just want to get along and it can be at the expense of safety, integrity and honor.  Few are willing to be heroes and no one wants to look like the bad guy, be harassed or get their ass kicked or get fired.  I have risked all of that and rarely has it paid off.

There are those who see it and ignore it because, to report it goes against man code and social convention.  They also know they are typically out matched by the LTHRO's influence, alliances and manipulation skills.  They can be destroyed like I almost was on a number of occasions.  Quite often the LTHRO is the emotionally smartest one in the room.  Often it is every man for himself in these situations.

There are those good people who are intelligent, hard working people and are easily seduced by this personality type.  The reason they are seduced is because the LTHRO has a much higher emotional quotient than most who possess a High intellectual quotient.  People like this are frequently more successful than most and can use their talents to benefit mankind or only for themselves at the expense of all others.

Many people prefer to maintain a comfortable sleepy state called denial. This way they don't have to find their lives in a socially uncomfortable and chaotic state dealing with all the turmoil that a con artist or LTHRO will ultimately cause them.  Their justifications for not getting involved or taking action can be, it's a one of situation or, that happened way back then and will never happen again or, there are systems and practices in place to guard against these things happening or, someone else will pick up on it and deal with it or, or, or...

Then there are guys like me, that see it for what it is, speak out about it and get chewed up and spit out because I "had" faith in a system that doesn't work or never existed in the first place.  Years ago I did not have the luxury of time on my side because I was too busy with base business.  I didn't have the time or technology available to beat the LTHRO at their game.  I want to beat them at their game and I want them dealt with and not by local management because that rarely works as they are part of the problem.  Local management cannot keep a secret and are frequently socially compromised holding bias in favor of the LTHRO or conman .


Here is a taste of just a few things I have experienced during over thirty years in industry.  Similar LTHROs  existed in every plant and with every employer I worked for.

One employee had responsibility for a $4M to $6M { In today's dollars } fire and almost killed a man yet he remained employed at that same plant.  That man was a LTHRO, a conman and a "short cut artist" which is why the incident occurred in the first place and why he got away with it in the second place. 

The same man that had responsibility in the fire also had an incident a year or two prior to that at the same facility.  That incident cost was estimated at $200K in the early 1990's which would put it at about $400K or more today.  Prior to that I had reported this man to the plant manager numerous times and ended up being harassed and threatened with violence by that LTHRO and discredited by the plant manager.  I was the LTHRO's  supervisor!  The LTHRO genuinely felt entitled to take his shortcuts in spite of them being in contravention of procedures and the damage his shortcuts caused.

That same 1990's incident also put us at risk of sending contaminated jet fuel in a refuel-er to refuel passenger aircraft with no QC at the airport {from what I understand}.  I can't provide all the details on that from a publicly accessible website for obvious reasons.  Just imagine the potential fallout from contaminated jet fuel in a passenger aircraft.  That type of contamination would have allowed the aircraft to take off and gain altitude.  But once at cruising altitude, the fuel lines would have probably jelled off because the fuel's "freeze point" is now degraded.  The jets would have flamed out and you would have a catastrophe.  Lives lost.  Law suites in the millions.  Reputational damage.  Financial losses big time.  That information was quashed.  Possibilities of it ever happening were denied.  Any followup or mitigative actions on that detail, never happened.  The things people cover up for others always astounds me.

This is classic con-artistry and classic denial of what happens under their noses and in their faces.   This has gone on since man has walked the earth and shall continue until man walks no more.  I am here to but a serious dent in the LTHROs exploits.

Its scenarios like this that have potential to create another billion dollar incident that stagnates in the courts and appears on the 6 o'clock news for decades.

It's not like the plant manager didn't have any prior warning about this guy from me.  And ya, I got accused of being "the only one" that had an issue with that.  A technique to make a guy shut up.  This plant manager also got slapped in the face with the obvious evidence to support my reporting and claims.  The plant manager had total faith in this LTHRO and conman so found himself in denial of the obvious.  A very successful job of emotionally hijacking and impairment of executive decision making of local management by the LTHRO.  { This can and does happen to anybody, no matter how smart they are.  They are no match for a conman. } I coined the term, "Long Term High Risk Operator" for this reason.  I also realized not everybody can figure things out at the operations team member level or management level, even when it should be obvious.  Many people/managers are not emotionally equipped to deal with this type of extremely skilled individual.

After repeated failures to get this guy punted, I realized I was committing myself to a system that doesn't work.  Even when I would reveal to a plant manger how I knew this guy wasn't doing his lab tests and other duties, and taking shortcuts with procedure I would see cover up the next day.  The plant manager didn't have enough common sense or good discretion to NOT reveal how I knew or he knew or keep his yap shut about who reported the LTHRO wasn't doing his job.  Managers will tell the accused how they are being tracked so immediately after that, they start to stage their work area to make it appear as though regular duties have all been completed.  Other LTHROs would immediately trash their work area out of rage { Because of their entitlement attitude factors. }.  When I reported them trashing their work areas, the next step is to threaten me and tell enormous stories about how I wasn't doing my job or how I was harassing them or I was outrageously demanding, or had unrealistic expectations or, or, or,...  All part of their game, straight out of the conman play book and if they have management Buffaloed then, the reporting supervisor is done.

For every truth I speak, the LTHRO can produce ten lies to counter my account.  If the manager goes to others to hear their read on the situation, the others stick up for the LTHRO as they are socially compromised through his charisma and ability to manipulation.  Therefore, doing the right thing, doing one's job as a supervisor and reporting yields negative results.  Politics.  Give your supervisors and plant managers/foremen a break.  Send in an Undercover Operator to clean up on the LTHRO to make everyone's home life and work life more productive and limit stress.

Do you want politics dictating decision making and burning up millions of dollars, putting the corporations reputation and reliability factors at risk and putting peoples lives in danger?  OR do you want to be a fact driven organization with greater profitability?

At the end of it all, it just looks like a supervisor has personal issues with some personalities and doesn't know how to get along with people.  When you have a manager who believes the LTHRO over the reporting supervisor,... things can only get worse from there.  Clearly a mess that rarely gets appropriately resolved.

The a fore mentioned LTHRO spent time rubbing elbows with the plant manager and district superintendent blowing sunshine up their butts and so he had developed a trust and rapport with both of them.  He was an excellent conman and a really bad operator.  He should have been doing his job.

He could also persuade others to lie for him.  Very talented and manipulative.

But wait.  There is more!

As my career progressed I kept seeing this type of behavior and resulting damage over and over again with different LTHROs at different facilities, different palnt managers as well as the same lack of ability to deal appropriately with it.

The most impressive forms of LTHRO influence, coupled with an inability of numerous management persons to appropriately deal with it was in the last almost two decades of my career.

I reported another LTHROs to management over and over again.  History repeated itself.  The LTHRO told them a conflicting and very convincing story.  It's always a story management  preferred to hear so they wouldn't have to take action on a popular and charismatic personality.  Again the typical LTHRO play book strategy and people keep falling for it.  A classic human failing.  Easily exploited.  Its a popularity contest that has nothing to do with job performance or safety.  It almost got me fired after 8 years of reporting this guy so I became demoralized, lost all faith in management and backed off, self preservation kicked in.  I had a pension and medical benefits that came with it that were at risk.

I need to interject once again.  This is another point where the deniers will say, "We couldn't possibly have any con-artists being hire these days as our hiring process has become so much more refined.  We filter out people like that."  All you might be doing is to make sure only best of the best con-artists make their way through the defnecive filtering process.  The same con-artist's playbook is still in play and so are the same human failings.  Don't kid yourself.

Back to the last LTHRO.  During this time I had reported to a different plant manager.  I explained the techniques I used to determine that the LTHRO was not performing his duties.  The same thing happened here too.  Again the plant manager blabbed about how I detected the LTHROs behavior and work avoidance.  Consequently the LTHRO staged his work area and left uncharacteristic messes to make it look like he was doing his job.  That only lasted so long, as that took him away from his regular social activities.  Few people have the ability to appropriately deal with a LTHRO.
 
That LTHRO was sophisticated, fraudulent, sociopathic, a conman and a popular man in the community where most employees lived.  He knew how to rapidly build rapport, confidence and trust with his plant managers and coworkers.  He spent most of his days socializing rather than working.  He did not do his readings, perform equipment checks, water tests, or petroleum tests so he was negligent.  Reading sheets, electronic spread sheets and documents were all fudged 98% of the time so, he was also a fraud.  Due to his lack of diligence there were numerous incidents, equipment outages, product contamination's, steam cutbacks and production losses and yet he stayed with that employer until he qualified for his employer funded full pension with medical benefits.  I estimate the damage he caused during his employment to be between $2 to $3M not to mention he got a pay cheque every two weeks like everyone else and he got that fully funded company pension at the end of it all that had an approximate $2M annuity value.  He was there to make money for the corporation, not to burn it.

There were times he would convince other operators on shift to cover for him, lie about his absence as he took off the last six hours of the day to go home for Christmas, Thanksgiving dinners, weekend get togethers and other occasions.  I didn't find out for years afterwards about this.  He knew how to manipulate his peer group.  It's amazing.  No one else in the group did that kind of thing and they all actually supported his behavior.

In my opinion, that LTHRO managed to swindle over FOUR MILLION DOLLARS from his employer over the course of a 30 year career.  Based on that, documenting only three of these personalities per year, I estimate saving an employer over 8M career dollars every year.  Depending on the individual and the behavior the returns over a 12 month period would be $133,000 per LTHRO identified and terminated.  But terminating only three a year would not be my minimum goal.  In a target rich environment I would want to double that if possible.  The objective here is to avoid that multi-million dollar incident.

A well defined pattern of the conman scenario and those they target to perpetuate their entitlement, behavior and lifestyle?  They are very talented at what they do and who they victimize as well as those they influence for control purposes.  They are not talented at providing service to your corporation.  They are a threat to be appropriately dealt with.

There were supervisors and other operators on all four crews that had worked with these people that chose to do and say nothing.  There were others that didn't have a clue as to what was going on, while others were in total denial.   If I am the only one to speak out about behavior like this, it was just one more reason to doubt my word and an excuse to do nothing from a management perspective.  My foreman's excuse was, "You are the only one to make these accusations."

Would you hand off the responsibility of investigating, jury duty and judgment to the friends and family of the accused to find justice?  I think not. Bias fear, emotions and relationship loyalties would prevail, not justice.  You would pass responsibilities off to skilled and qualified person(s) with the time, training and tools to do the job like a trained police force, lawfully selected unbiased jury as well as an educated experienced and fully qualified, impartial judge.  We don't have to get that deep but, you get my point.

There will be many times when it is an easy and fair process for a plant manager to fire some one.  Its not fair to saddle a plant manager with filtering out the biases, politics and rumors from the reality when it comes to dealing with a highly skilled LTHRO.  They are too pressed for time and are not equipped with the necessary resources to yield a quality decision when dealing with the LTHRO.

Do you want me to be polygraphed on everything?  Consider it done.

Do you need me to sign an affidavit to attest to the legitimacy of the evidence I present?  Consider it done.