By Gavin Tully
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that when Pioneer Consulting hears the acronym “QA” we think “Quality Assurance.” It is, after all, one of our primary lines of business. Whether it’s acting as an owner’s shipboard representative or overseeing product manufacturing, we are accustomed to a “trust but verify” approach when it comes to the submarine cable industry. However, I sometimes wonder how many cable developers think QA stands for “Quiescent Acquiescence?”
Okay, before I continue, let me say that I spent more time than I’d like to admit searching for a fancy but clever phrase that began with the letters Q and A. I could have just gone with “Quiet Acceptance,” but where’s the fun in that? Plus, I enjoy knowing you probably looked up what one or both of those words meant.
Anyway, as the submarine cable industry matures, I see a troubling trend towards “trust” while forgetting the “but verify” part. Building a submarine cable system often costs tens to hundreds of millions of US dollars; verifying you’re getting what you’ve paid for, at every step of the multi-year development, should seem obvious. However, some cable developers erroneously correlate using a well-known brand with requiring only a laid-back approach to quality assurance.
As we have seen recently, brand recognition and legacy mean little when it comes to avoiding QA shortfalls – even for ultra-high reliability engineering companies. Just look at Boeing’s string of ongoing quality concerns. Interestingly, almost five years to the date, The Seattle Times (right in Boeing’s backyard) released two diametrically opposed articles about Boeing.
The first article, from January 2019, is titled, “Boeing overhauls quality controls: more high-tech tracking but fewer inspectors.” The second article, from January 2024, is titled “Boeing to add more inspectors and let airlines oversee factory work.” I think the two titles give you the gist. Ultimately, Boeing is reported to have let go of some 900 quality inspectors between 2019 and 2021, touting “smart” tools and automation to replace redundant secondary quality checks. By 2021, Boeing had rehired at least some of those inspectors amid quality problems, and by 2024, Boeing seems to find itself at the center of a different quality problem every week.
In fact, just a few months ago, The New York Times issued an article that reported that “[Boeing’s] issues date back years . . . and were compounded when it lost thousands of experienced workers.” So, what does this have to do with the submarine cable industry? Well, although my colleague Bertrand Clesca reminded us in his most recent blog that it is easy to create a spurious correlation between variables, it does seem to me that there are potential warnings that the submarine cable industry can heed from this. While it may be difficult to make direct, explicit correlations between the QA changes Boeing made a few years ago and the problems they’re facing today, one would be remiss to assume there is no correlation at all.
Further, The New York Times article I cited above correlates a compounding effect due to the loss of experienced workers. If you have had your pulse on the submarine cable industry, you would know that the major suppliers and marine installers are shedding their best and most experienced people left and right. Many are being poached by the content providers; others are retiring; others are being forced into retirement so the supplier can cut costs. This could certainly lead to quality issues as in the case of Boeing. So, I wonder how many in this industry are asking, “Will the suppliers and installers find themselves in the same situation as Boeing? Are they already there?”
Let’s also consider the compound effects of suppliers and installers working non-stop to build more systems, expand manufacturing facilities, build new ships (at a snail’s pace, of course), install more fiber pairs, install more high-power laser diodes, and power systems at higher voltages, all while competing for business and trying to generate a profit. What about when a company is owned by a private equity firm that cares not about the product, but only its return on investment?
Despite the obvious reasons to deploy a robust quality assurance program, some (not all) cable developers seem blind to this reality. Spending $50M on a cable system is a justifiable capital expenditure. But spending $50k on quality assurance activities to oversee that $50M project is often described as a hardship. Maybe it has something to do with capital vs. operational budgets, or supply vs. non-supply costs, or perhaps blind faith in the supplier. Or maybe some people just don’t like hiring QA consultants.
Fortunately, most subsea suppliers and installers still deliver high-quality products and services. So, QA services are often a kind of insurance. It’s easy to scrutinize a line item on a budget when everything goes according to plan. However, heads roll when quality “escapes” occur, and even more so when QA was forgone, and no one was even watching to begin with. Although not a regular occurrence, quality escapes do sometimes make it into the water with quite significant impacts on the supplier and project developer.
I’ll wrap up by recounting a recent experience with a supplier who took an approach to QA oversight which I had never seen before. Cable developers should remain vigilant to prevent this experience from becoming a wider trend in the subsea industry (or any industry for that matter). Although the supplier claimed to have a robust internal QA program, the supplier forced the client to pay for each and every aspect of QA oversight – meaning each time the client wanted to inspect, oversee, or assure the supplier’s QA program, it would have to pay for each occurrence. Although Pioneer Consulting was not involved in this contract-forming effort, it’s obvious that forcing a client to pay for the right to oversee quality assurance creates a real internal conflict for a client. It forces the client to choose how much it is willing to pay, or how often it wants to inspect the supplier. This is the opposite of the type of wide-ranging QA oversight rights that Pioneer Consulting recommends its clients have in contracts.
I really hope this recent experience does not become a wider trend. But if it does, cable developers must resist the urge to save a tiny bit of money by waiving QA oversight rights. Pioneer Consulting will always recommend that a client considers such costs for said rights as part of the contract price, and not at all optional.
Naturally, this recent experience resulted in significant quality problems which were not discovered until it was too late. Both the client and the supplier faced significant cost overruns and delays because of quality escapes. Of note, this supplier has outstanding name recognition; people generally think “quality and efficiency” when they hear this company’s name. So, it’s a lesson that a well-known brand does not necessarily correlate with a laid-back approach to QA.
When it comes to QA, you get exactly what you pay for (or don’t pay for)!
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