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  1. May 2021
    1. No records were ever located to support The RIBA team member’s conclusion that the Shoe Fly poles would most likely fail due to heavy rain. According to the Manager in Transmission Asset Management, The RIBA team member was an expert on the RIBA process who was assigned to assist “the engineer walk through the process.” Based upon the records the Manager in Transmission Asset Management identified the engineer as the engineer most familiar with the overall project and assigned to do the RIBA scoring for the project. According to an undated PG&E Org Chart, the engineer assigned to score the project was a Senior Engineer assigned to Transmission Asset Development and reported directly to the Manager in Transmission Asset Management. According to the notes on the scoring sheet, as interpreted by the Manager of Transmission Asset Development, “the concern here is the note says that the structures would go down during rainy and wet storm. And what’s not shown here is that the wildfire is not likely, because on the wet ground not likely to have wildfire.” No records in support of Senior Engineer’s conclusion were ever located. On the other hand, the TL Relocate 10 Towers project scored 581. According to the scoring sheet, the Senior Engineer was also the engineer assigned to score this project. Despite the fact that by 2014 the scope of the project was limited to the replacement of insulators so that money spent on the project prior to cancellation could be charged to the Capital Budget, the project scored 18 points out of 10,000 possible points for safety110. Despite the fact that the project involves the same Caribou-Palermo line the Reliability Risk Score is 562. 434 of those points are justified because “WRDI is possible contact with public leading or to other facilities causing potential injuries to few employees” according to the notes on the scoring sheet. The 2014 RIBA scoring is used to highlight the subjective nature of the comparative risk analysis. Because they are subjective the risk scores are easily manipulated. PG&E was highly motivated to complete the TL Relocate 10 Towers project in order to be able to charge the budget overruns, money already spent, to the capital budget. By 2014 the Replace 5 Damaged Towers project was about future spending. The best example of the manipulation is the WRDI justifications. One of the oft-stated justifications for the TL Relocate 10 Towers Project was the fact that the ten towers were located in a remote, inaccessible location. The towers were so inaccessible that PG&E had to use helicopters to fly personnel to the towers. Also, there was no evidence that any of the ten towers was on the verge of collapse according to the 2009 email from the manager who cancelled the project in 2009. On the other hand, the Shoe Fly was built on Camp Creek Road and any, or all of those poles, could reasonably be expected to fall down within a year. Another example of manipulation of facts in the 2014 RIBA was the RIBA team member’sconclusion, apparently based upon the Senior Engineer’s scoring note that “structures would go down only if it is rainy and wet”; and restated several times by the Manager in Transmission Asset Management that the wood Shoe Fly poles would probably only collapse during heavy rain

      Evidence of the subtle way that profit-incentives in a complex environment create risk ...

      Can this be addressed by incentives or only by culture? By culture only i think.