Mini Case Study $4-$ The Swimming Pool: Was Mr Angelo qualified for the position of maintenance engineer? Evaluate the training that Mr$.$ Angelo received. Assess the long$-$ and short$-$term costs that might be associated with the incident. What systems or procedures could you institute to make sure this type of oversight does not happen at your property? The private Farmingwood Swim and Tennis Club is a midsized club with a membership of $500$ families and a full$-$time staff of $20$ people. The club has a variety of facilities, including two pools, ten tennis courts, an exercise room, a full$-$service dining room, and $7$ acres of landscaped property. The General Manager of the club is ultimately responsible for the routine maintenance and repair of the facilities, and she assigns daily tasks to a single maintenance engineer. The maintenance engineer is required to have a working knowledge of electrical repair, basic plumbing, painting, light construction, and pool maintenance. In December, the manager of the club fired the maintenance engineer, who had been with the property for more than five years. After a three$-$week recruitment period, the manager hired a new maintenance engineer by the name of Mr$.$ Angelo. He was the most qualified applicant for the position, as he had spent the past $20$ years as a licensed contractor in the region. Mr$.$ Angelo was proficient in all of the required areas, but he had a limited knowledge of pool repair and maintenance. The General Manager believed that Mr$.$ Angelo's experience as a licensed contractor would compensate for his limited knowledge about pools, and that his participation in a four$-$day "pool school" training program would provide him with the additional knowledge he would need for the position. After a three$-$day orientation at the club, Mr$.$ Angelo began regular duties as the maintenance engineer. The Assistant Manager of the club provided Mr$.$ Angelo with the technical support he needed until he was proficient with the assigned tasks and capable of working independently. The Assistant Manager told the General Manager that although Mr$.$ Angelo was skillfully performing all of the assigned duties, enrollment in the four$-$day pool school was still necessary. During the next three weeks, Mr$.$ Angelo impressed the General Manager with his reliability and task performance. At this point, activity at the club was steadily increasing, and the General Manager believed that she could not afford to send Mr$.$ Angelo to the pool school program. At this time she believed that the maintenance and repair of the pool simply required the application of basic electrical and plumbing skills and that he could handle any problems associated with the pool. Further, she$26$ M TRAINANG ANO DEvelopment believed that if a major problem did occur, she could easily hire a professional pool contractor to solve it$.$ On March $18,$ disaster struck at the club. Mr$.$ Angelo arrived at the club at $9$:$00$ A$.$M$.$ He walked through the clubhouse, then went downstairs to check the pool and the grounds. Upon arriving at the pool, Mr$.$ Angelo was met by three club members with red, swollen eyes and severely damaged bathing suits. The members angrily interrogated Mr$.$ Angelo about the chemical balance of the water in the pool, claiming that something was terribly wrong. Mr$.$ Angelo apologized to the members and promised that he would check the chemical balance and immediately report back to them. Upon reaching the pool pump house, Mr$.$ Angelo discovered that the chlorine pump was delivering chlorine to the pool at an abnormally high rate. He further noticed that the level in the chlorine tank, which was filled to the $250-$gallon mark the previous day, was far below the $150-$gallon mark. To understand the magnitude of the problem, some technical information may be useful. The optimum level of chlorine in a public swimming pool is $\backslash (1\mathrm{.}5\backslash )$ parts of chlorine per $1$ million parts of water. It takes approximately $10$ gallons of chlorine to raise a $218,000-$gallon pool by $1$ part per million. The $\backslash (100+\backslash )$ gallons of chlorine that had entered the pool raised the chlorine$-$to$-$water ratio to almost ten times the optimum amount. Chlorine, a compound similar to household bleach, is a virulent chemical that is dangerous to humans in high concentrations. Like household bleach, chlorine irritates mucous membranes and damages the synthetic fibers found in clothing. Those members who had spent time in the pool during the overchlorination experienced irritation of their eyes, noses, throats, and lungs. In addition, the high concentration of chlorine had removed color from bathing suits in some cases and completely destroyed the material in others. After discovering the dangerous chemical imbalance in the pool, Mr$.$ Angelo immediately approached the members who had initially complained. He explained that some type of computer failure had occurred during the night, allowing the chlorine pump to deliver chlorine to the pool without any automatic monitoring. He offered a sincere apology for the problem and assured members that the pool would be returned to the proper chemical balance by evening. Although the members understood Mr$.$ Angelo's explanation of the cause of the incident, they were still upset about their bathing suits and their physical health. Faced with both a technical and guest service$-$related problem neither of which he knew how to resolve, Mr$.$ Angelo became quite defensive in the conversation that ensued with the injured guests. His attitude infuriated theTHE SWImMing Pool $\backslash$mu e $27$ members and prompted them to approach the General Manager about her ability to manage the club. After the General Manager was informed of the problem that had occurred, she immediately called a professional pool contractor to determine the cause of the incident. The contractor examined the pool pump house and determined that the cause of the overchlorination was that a valve had accidentally been left in the open position. In fact, Mr$.$ Angelo had refilled the chlorine tank on Thursday morning and had performed the task based on his memory of once being shown the procedure, without fully understanding what he was doing. Pool operations were restored to normal within a period of three hours, and club members were allowed to safely enter the pool at this time. Mr$.$ Angelo was very troubled as a result of the incident. First, he felt a deep sense of compassion for the members who had stood before him with irritated eyes, noses, throats, and lungs. His response had been to offer sincere apologies and to assure members that the problem would be resolved as soon as possible. Unfortunately, Mr$.$ Angelo felt unable to promise that the problem would never occur again because of his lack of understanding of pool maintenance and repair. Second, he felt anxious about his continued employment at the club. Considering that he was still a relatively new employee, he feared that such a major disaster might cause him to be fired. To protect himself, Mr$.$ Angelo had made it extremely clear to the members that the overchlorination had occurred as a result of a computer failure and not a human error. He had felt compelled to make this claim even though he was not sure about the true cause of the incident. Third, Mr$.$ Angelo felt anger toward the General Manager for placing him in these difficult circumstances. $1.$ Was Mr$.$ Angelo qualified for the position of maintenance engineer? $2.$ Evaluate the training that Mr$.$ Angelo received. $3.$ Assess the long$-$ and short$-$term costs that might be associated with this incident.