The saving of the Costa Concordia

In this podcast, Ricardo talks, from the project management perspective, about the impressive salvage operation of the Italian liner Costa Concordia which crashed into rocks and sank on January 13, 2012.

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Episode transcript

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Hello, everyone. Welcome to the five Minutes PM podcast today, or like to talk to you about the recovering of Costa Concordia and just incredible salvage that is, has been described as one of the largest and most complex salvage operations ever attempted. And it's so impressive if you go to YouTube or if you go to the TV and you see the ship turning into vertical, it's a very, very impressive soil excited to study because it's really, really impressive when we think about 612 days after the accident.

So I'm not talking about, well, five days or 10 days or 15 days, I'm talking about more than a near okay. More than a year. And it's very, very important because all this operation was based in the huge planning, in a huge planning and a huge risk management action to avoid the major risk of destroying the ship during the polling. And it's of course, a high probability and a high impact risk. If we think about it, that Giglio Island, he is a natural reserve.

And inside the ship, you can see tons of rotten food. We need to batting passenger belongers. That could be damage and create a huge impact into the whole ecosystem on that region. And this was a constant to risk and I'm not talking about is Marsha. I'm talking about 290 meters ship is a huge second, 115,000 towns, 13 Dax, almost 4,000 passengers, six engines, more than a thousand crew members.

I'm a very, very complex machine, extremely complex that was late on the rocks, close to the Island in what we saw was not the final step, but one very extremely relevant in visual aspect of the salvage. But if we go back, we had a very complex operation that took almost 30 miles. And this was done by is meeting international a Dutch company that remove it 2,308 tons of foil.

Imagine if this fool ghost out the impact on the whole region. So he took to them to 13 months to remove this. And this was the only way off bringing the sheep back to the vertical. So this work started just after the accident. What we saw on that 19 incredible horse was just a very complex engineering process. But right now they're working.

If you look on the website of the two companies that won the joint Ventry to do that, tightened salvage from us and micro peri from Italy, you see that they sad that look, we deed a very important step, but the operations is not done yet. And the operation we will only be done when this ship is ready to be dismantled. So look, they said, okay, we don't take care of the dismantled, but this will be one of the parts of the salvage.

So it's very, very important. So we need to understand that from now up to meet 2014, a lot of things must be in place. So they need to repair all this damage site to place this huge boxes that will be filled with water and Deanne with air. So the, the ship can float and Dan, the ship will be taught until what a dry port that can finish the work. So look how complex imagine how big is this operation and how complex, if something happens, remember that during this process, they thought about cutting into two pieces.

The ship that is, this would be probably the easiest way of removing, but the risk of environmental damage. And now also to raise for the people, working on the process would be so big that they decided to rescue the sheep as a whole. And this was very, very impressive. So look how complex they built a platform underwater to hold the ship. They put pumps and they put all the support to make sure that they can turn and making the ship go to a vertical position.

And this was the not damage part of the ship. So right now they need to do a huge a Ford because they need to do the same input. All of this box is in a completely damaged part because this part was destroyed on the rocks. So look how complex and why I'm sharing you this. Imagine how complex and how important is to plan this before this occlusion we saw last week and 19 hours to months and months to be planted or otherwise the failure could be dramatic.

So I'm very, very happy to see this because not too far away will see the final steps of this incredible, okay. I'm not even counting the tragedy and how does it is impactful. Okay. And not even counting the lives of the people, but just on the engineering piece, we are talking about the sheep that cost 450 million eras to be built. And this rescue operation will cost more than the cost of the ship.

Just the salvage is estimated in above 500 eras. So it's crazy. It's crazy how complex, when things go wrong, like this accident, how complex is to recover this in a good shape. And I'm looking forward to see the end of the first semester or next year to see this final status of this Costa, Concordia salvage and to see how these will finish up. And I'm sure if they plan well, if they do it a great risk management, the end, we'll be a happy story on the engineering side.

Of course the accident would be a tragedy and it will be a tragedy forever, but at least we are looking now that we have nice people and we have good engineers to do at least to clean the mass that was done two years ago. I hope you enjoy this podcast and to see you next week with another five minutes, bam,

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