And in NOLA government they call this "doing more with less"

More from Bob Bea today at the BP trial.

BP had a safety system known as the operating management system (OMS) that executives described as the "cornerstone" of their safety practices, but that was not applied in the Gulf, the court heard.

Cunningham asked what share of blame BP management should take responsibility for the accident. "When you are talking about the system you are not just talking about the rig, you are talking about the system all the way onshore and all the way to London," said Cunningham. "Yes," said Bea.

The court was shown documents signed by Tony Hayward, BP's former chief executive, describing OMS as "the cornerstone for safety at BP". Hayward will appear in video testimony later this week.

Bea was asked why he believed the company had not implemented that system on the Deepwater Horizon. Bea said the main factor was cost-cutting.

Earlier the court had been told of Bea's work on other disasters including the Exxon Valdez, the Petrobas P36 oil rig disaster in 2001 and Nasa's disastrous Columbia launch in 2003. Nasa's management mantra had been: "Better, faster, cheaper," said Bea.

"This is the equivalent to Nasa's mantra that got them into so much trouble. 'better, faster, cheaper'; in this case it's a mantra of 'every dollar counts'," he said.

And it always works so perfectly until the space shuttles and drilling rigs start exploding.  That's when the lawyers are called in to do the dollar disaster mitigation.  Speaking of which, here's a fun fact for today. BP attorney Mike Brock was an All-American offensive lineman at Alabama.





Recall at various points BP has claimed that reported incidences of oil spoiling beaches or harming marine life could be attributed instead to Crimson Tide algae events. Which puts Mr. Brock in an even more difficult position.