SOUTHFIELD—The Engineering Society of Detroit will present a complimentary online one-hour educational session, “Can Crisis Be Averted?”, on Thursday, April 9 from 1 to 2 p.m. on the Zoom platform.

Veteran engineer Thomas Doran will discuss how we can prevent rather than merely manage crises, as we are with the current coronavirus pandemic.

Doran will outline how governments, businesses, and institutions can deploy an early-stage “what could go wrong” process that identifies unaddressed threats on projects and activities with the potential to affect public health, safety, and security.

Doran notes that a “what could go wrong” approach may upset people, including top leaders, and disrupt schedules and budget. But the sooner threats are identified and assessed, the less impact from disruption there will be.

Doran will discuss how the Flint water crisis, the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, the Boeing Max airplane groundings, Pacific Gas & Electric’s wildfire-caused banktuptcy, theme park alligator horrors, and, yes, the coronavirus pandemic, might have been prevented, or at least mitigated, by such a process.

The program will offer continuing education credit for professionals.

To register for this complimentary program, visit https://www.esd.org/programs/online-education/. For further information, contact ESD’s Elana Shelef at [email protected].

Doran held executive positions at the Detroit-area engineering firms Hubbell, Roth & Clark Inc. and TetraTech. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from Purdue University, and is a former adjunct professor at Lawrence Technological University. He is also a member of the ESD Board of Directors and former chair of the editorial board of TechCentury.