Refugio Beach Oil Spill from Line 901 (Plains All American Pipeline, LP) -  Rose Coughlin was contracted as the consulting expert  for the legal and technical teams performing tasks (compliance, strategic planning, litigation support, research & data management) resulting from the May-2015 Refugio Beach Oil Spill (RBOS) in Santa Barbara County, California, along Line 901 with Plains All American Pipeline, LP [(Plains); owner/operator] as named Responsible Party.  We also selected the excellent California Registered Geologist for our technical team and the extensive field and sampling activities. This RBOS emergency response, clean up, and restoration, which included our client's property, was directed initially under a Unified Command structure. The ongoing  mitigation, leak-prevention review, and Natural Resource Damage Assessment activities (under two federal orders and State and local permits) are  also being directed,  and/or reviewed, by fifteen federal, state and local agencies. The impacts, to our client's property (Release Site and Section 1), of the estimated 144,000 gallon "oil" spill measured approximately 24 feet deep (rupture area) and extended laterally 100 feet to the west and 450 feet to the east of Line 901 "rupture" site. The results, protective of our client and any future land use,  have included soil clean up to "residential environmental site levels". Additionally,  Mobilization and Demobilization 'Exit Sampling' was conducted throughout the property, including the access road to the Release Site/Section 1, used by Plains' and the agencies' personnel, agents, contractors and subcontractors.
 

For more photographs please see PORTFOLIO section.

Former Indian Refining refinery/natural gas/pipeline facilities - Lawrenceville, IL - Confidential Clients - Focused Resources worked in a data management and Lead Researcher position for  multiple legal, technical and real estate teams over 16 years on this site involving 100+ years of data (hard-copy and electronic). In 1998, we were first asked to locate, compile and manage information necessary for the Remedial Investigation/ Feasibility Study (RI/FS) workplan phase of this Superfund site. This facility complex had gone through five owner/operator changes, only one of which included our client(s). In addition to the environmental assessment, remediation and restoration activities, there were numerous legal actions involving the State of Illinois, the US government over World War II claims, four successor owners/operators (several claiming bankruptcy status), property owners (including right-of-way agreements),  and a Class Action lawsuit involving local residents.

Focused Resources' team captured 125, 000 hand-selected documents (1.32M pages) from ten different sources (archives for predecessor & successor owners/operators, consultants, law firms and agencies) located nationally. We designed a process flow by which the responsive, hard-copy data, representing 75 years of operations, were scanned or digitized into an electronic format, bibliographically indexed and uploaded into one database in FYI Concordance. We also located 14 other databases and had that data migrated into our comprehensive database. This resulted in 71  gigbytes (GBs) of project data. Throughout the litigations (involving twelve different law firms), Focused Resources continued to serve as our client's Lead Researcher, for the technical and real estate teams,  producing the information necessary to appropriately respond to all aspects of their efforts from assessment through restoration.

Reliability Engineering/Root Cause Analysis/Leak Prevention - Retail Gasoline Outlets - Compliance Program Manager - Ms. Coughlin led the national team for a major oil company's nine regions involving thousands of service stations/retail gasoline outlets. This hand-selected Dream Team developed nationwide procedures and programs (now used across the oil industry as standards of operation). The comprehensive program includes equipment (design, installation, operation, monitoring, maintenance, removal), media (product, water, waste, air) management, monitoring & reporting, leak detection, training, owner/operation agreements, permits, regulations and legislation.  Due to Ms. Coughlin's expertise she has also been a member of numerous local, state and federal task forces and industry committees who developed the Certified Operator Training protocols,  leak detection equipment design standards, enhanced/site-specific HAZCOM elements, and creative California Underground Storage Tank (UST) fund cost recovery criteria (when the CA UST Fund threatened to go bankrupt).

 

Ms. Coughlin, and her team, are renown for challenging the historic, narrowly-focused approaches to Leak/Spill prevention and Retail Outlet operations. They introduced the 'Human Factor' (90%) versus 'Equipment Factor' (10%) approach to the root-cause analyses of leaks/spills and applied Reliability Engineering  to the decision processes involving equipment choices at service stations. These practical Leak Prevention programs have never been more important, now that most service stations, nation-wide, are operated by independent operators/marketers.

Functional Illiteracy Component for Incident Reduction/Safety Programs -  We began as a small team of conceptual designers, within an oil company Headquarters (HQs) group, creating  Incident Reduction program elements.  Early on in our research (audits and inspections of operations), originally due to the incidents/accidents, it became apparent that a large percentage (estimated 60%) of manual tradesmen/operators were "functionally illiterate" with respect to reading and writing English. Simply put they could not read signs, maps, plans, equipment manuals, training materials, etc. within the operations and corporate safety called it "the dirty little secret". Once discovered this small group of HQs staff formed a cross-functional team to have process-savvy behavioral scientists meet with refinery/terminal/pipeline personnel and safety experts to create a beta-test version of a safety program not wholly reliant on written materials. The results of these specialized reviews of the operations led to the industry standard known as Behavior Based Safety/Loss Prevention System.  

 

Due to wide-range success, we continue to use this process thinking to break down complicated issues into manageable, relatable 'pieces'. Our regulatory compliance expertise, paired with this process thinking, is best used for root-cause evaluations, creation of practical health, environmental and safety programs, development & implementation of training programs, and tenant audits. We also find, due to our broad operational experience, we are excellent for litigation support as Consulting Experts, expert witnesses, and Jury Exhibits creators (capturing complicated processes in images).