Aren't government agencies great?
I have been trying to finalise the specification of a fuel tank for our new test cells at work over the last few weeks, and it has been a complete nightmare. The factory site is over a river, and the company we share the site with has had to do (quite rightly) everything it should to ensure that the environment around it is affected as little as possible by the continuation of business. This is obviously expensive and surrounded by regulations from hell.Because there are so many regulations for the storage and dispensing of fuel, We had eventually managed to nail down the standards that the tank was subject to, but there was some ambiguity as to the regulations of the pump to dispense the fuel. So what does one do in these circumstances? Ask the relevant authority, of course! But what is it about Government agencies that they have the power to close you down if you do something that they don't like, but they also prevaricate perpetually when you ask them what exact regulations they wish you to comply with? It's amazing. They would not, no matter how much information we provided, tell us the regulations we needed to comply to, never mind putting them into writing. Even after site visits!
Involving such conversations such as: Government Agency: "You must ensure that the pump is suitable for purpose" Me: "Certainly, what regulations do I need to comply with?" G.A. : "All the appropriate ones for your application." Me: "Can I have, in writing, the regulations that you, the governing body, deem applicable to our application, please?" G.A. : (silence) "We can't comment on individual cases".
Me: "Ok, I will get a pump that complies with (lists regs) these regulations. Is that ok? Or do I need to comply with these (another number) as well."
G.A. "If it is appropriate to how you intend to site and use the pump".
AAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH! It was a bloody merry go round! They didn't want to tell me what I had to do, so they had a rod to hit me with if they didn't like how I did it. So bloody frustrating. No wonder they get a bad name.
posted by Brock @ Friday, February 25, 2005
1 Comments:
It's not that they don't want to tell you, it's that they don't know, but don't want to admit it so they use smoke and mirrors to hide their incompetence.
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