After reading this column for a while I notice one thing. all these cock ups happen in regular industry where the worst thing can happen is a little bit of data loss. maybe important data or a few people dont get emails for a few hours, but lets face it, nobody is getting killed....
I cut my teeth in IT support in a large laboratory complex that is a little south of Oxford, that up to a few years ago did not appear on maps. These days its almost entirely to how it was. No armed police on the gate, no fire station, no on-site hospital. Buildings didn't have names, just numbers. One or two had been concrete filled after someone made a boo boo..... The sort of place that if something went wrong then it could be contained on site and that includes anything details of what happened.
It was one of those places that you just did not make mistakes. The paperwork alone to get access to the server room meant you could not just pretend it was not you, and even inside the server room were servers in even more secure cages that anyone doing any work on had to be accompanied by 2 members of staff.
one building, you could only get into if someone in the building "sponsors" you. They had to accompany you everywhere you went in the building. You even made sure you did not have to visit the bathroom while in the building, because of the health monitoring system meant more than the usual paperwork when going for a number two. It was bagged and sent for analyses...
The particular company I worked for was also responsible for a few other sites across the UK, One site on the cost in the north west had an alarm system where it would beep every 15 seconds to let you know it was working. If it stopped beeping then you were in trouble an alarm would sound and depending which colour light was flashing depended which emergency route to take. They were marked out on the floor in different colour lines. One particular alarm, it it sounded it guided you to a cabinet with respirators. Depending on what colour light was flashing you took a blue or a white tablet. If one particular alarm was to sound, the instructions were to follow the white line as fast as you possibly can move yourself and if someone you were with fell over, leave them....
So, after working in places think this for a year or so, where a little mistake could cost lives, you just did not make mistakes. to this day, I still do the same things I learned back then like putting labels on each end of a power lead
I would advise anyone to take a contract in a place like that to learn how not to screw up....
AC for obvious reasons like OSA.....
Biting the hand that feeds IT
