Yeah, the petrobras sinking slideshow was at a point when the economists started telling us engineers how to do things cheaper, by imposing less restrictive requirements on contractors. Proved to be (and still is) a monumental series of fuck-ups.
Being less prescriptive was supposed to create innovation, but only created cheap short-cuts.
I always found being prescriptive, but being prepared to allow them to offer innovation kept them thinking, but at least gave us a baseline of quality.