The oil and gas industry,the Offshore Installation Manager (OIM) and the management of emergencies - Changes necessary to achieve effective competence assessment of OIMs in controlling emergencies

Within the UK offshore oil and gas industry all installations require to be under the charge of a ‘competent’ installation manager in accordance with the Offshore Installations and Pipeline Works (Management and Administration) Regulations (MAR) 1995. The Offshore Installation Manager (OIM) is responsible for the safety of all persons onboard and within 500 m of an installation. Should an incident arise, the OIM performs one of the most critical roles within the offshore industry - management of the response to the emergency to mitigate and make safe the installation to secure a place of safety for persons onboard or organise their safe evacuation. The emergency response also includes limiting the loss of hydrocarbons to the environment.Research at the University of Aberdeen has identified 8 potential barriers to the effective competence assessment of OIMs in controlling emergencies. These underlying barriers are a consequence of current UK legislation and industry practices in the assessment of OIM competence and result from:

• •multiple definitions of competence,
• •competence assessment predominantly by observation,
• •lack of specific and unambiguous competence requirements for trainers and assessors,
• •complexity in UK legislation and complicated interpretation of terms,
• •lack of statutory competence requirements for OIMs in controlling emergencies,
• •lack of ownership of OIM competence and competence assessment,
• •complex interactions across multiple UK Government departments, and
• •lack of regulation and independent audit of the competence assessment process of OIMs in controlling emergencies.

The potential barriers were identified by qualitative analysis of key documentation, including legislation, using a critical hermeneutic approach. Hermeneutics has historically been used to analyse texts within the domains of theology, business and law. It arguably, however, represents a powerful approach to the study of documents within the engineering domain and the offshore oil and gas industry.This paper discusses the identified potential barriers, research conclusions and recommendations and represents the culmination of three years of doctoral research investigating the competence assessment of OIMs in controlling emergencies within the offshore oil and gas industry. The research, in particular, is relevant to Duty Holders within the offshore industry, safety engineers and UK Government departments.     

The oil and gas industry,the competence assessment of Offshore Installation Managers (OIMs) and Control Room Operators (CROs) in emergency response,and the lack of effective assessment of underpinning technical knowledge and understanding

Within the UKCS offshore oil and gas industry there exist key personnel who perform critical roles in an emergency as part of the installation's emergency response team (ERT), two of these personnel are the Offshore Installation Manager (OIM) and the offshore Control Room Operator (CRO). The OIM is responsible for the safety and well-being of all persons onboard and within 500 m of the installation. Should an emergency situation arise, the OIM performs one of the most critical roles in emergency response - management of the response to the emergency to mitigate and make safe the installation to secure a place of safety for persons onboard or organise their safe evacuation. Such emergency response shall also include limiting the loss of hydrocarbons to the environment. The CRO monitors and interprets the output from an installation's Distributed Control System (DCS) and Fire and Gas Panel (FGP), responding to alarms and deviations from steady state. In many instances, an offshore CRO's actions in response to these deviations can determine whether or not the situation deteriorates into a disaster. Should an emergency occur, the CRO will act in accordance with an installation's emergency response procedures and OIM instructions.The persistence of incidents, a number leading to disasters, in the industry highlights the importance of both OIM and CRO competence in controlling emergencies. Both positions require an effective system to assess the competence of job holders. Research at the University of Aberdeen identified potential barriers that can prevent the effective competence assessment of an OIM in emergency response. An extension to this research analyses the two offshore industry standards for competence in emergency response: OPITO 7025 – OIM Controlling Emergencies and OPITO 9004 – Control Room Operator Emergency Response, and associated documentation, applying a critical hermeneutic approach, focusing on the assessment of underpinning knowledge and understanding within the roles. The key findings are that there currently exists no effective means to assess the underpinning technical knowledge and understanding of either OIMs or CROs in emergency response within the offshore industry. Knowledge and, in particular, understanding are poorly defined within the relevant OPITO standards. There exists no validation of evidence collated to support an individual's underpinning knowledge and understanding and no truly independent audit of collated evidence or the process of assessment.The research is important to Duty Holders (see also OSD Installation Operators under UK Offshore Safety Directive Regulations) and employers within the offshore oil and gas industry, organisations associated with the offshore industry, safety engineers and UK Government departments with regard to the effectiveness of competence assessment of appointed OIMs and CROs. It is also significant to risk engineers when considering the probable competence of key emergency response personnel in a given environment at a given point in time. The research is not just applicable to the UKCS offshore industry but also to the global offshore oil and gas industry.     

Site managers and safety leadership in the offshore oil and gas industry

Management commitment to safety is recognised as a fundamental component of an organisation's safety culture (Reason, 1997. Managing the Risks of Organisational Accidents. Ashgate, Aldershot, UK). However, the role and experiences of site managers in relation to safety have rarely been examined. A survey questionnaire was conducted of 200 Offshore Installation Managers (OIMs) from 157 offshore oil and gas installations belonging to 36 organisations operating on the United Kingdom Continental Shelf. The questionnaire gathered data relating to OIMs' level of experience and style of leadership as well as their knowledge and experience of safety and leadership within the industry. The aims of the study are twofold. The first aim is to investigate the relationship between managers' level of experience and style of leadership with their safety attitudes and behaviour. The second aim is to investigate managers' perceptions of best practice in safety leadership and their beliefs about the key outstanding safety issues. Findings suggest that experience is not the dominant factor in determining leadership style or attitudes to safety, however, the less experienced OIMs and those with more directive styles of leadership were found to overestimate their ability to influence and motivate the workforce. It seems that although managers are aware of best practice in safety leadership, they do not always act in ways consistent with this. They report having considerable difficulty in motivating and controlling some safety crucial aspects of workforce behaviour such as getting workers to accept ownership of safety and getting workers to report near misses. In terms of outstanding safety issues, it appears that improvements still need to be made in a number of areas such as the standardisation of safety culture; the harmonisation of safety practices and procedures across the industry; improved workforce competency and increased workforce involvement in safety activities and decision making.     

Investigating new risk reduction and mitigation in the oil and gas industry

The complexity of the processes and the nature of volatile petroleum products urged the oil and gas industry to utilize various risk assessment techniques to identify potential failure modes that can interrupt operation processes. Consequently, government agencies and nonprofit professional societies guide the industry with regulatory guidelines, standards, and best recommended practices to oversee the operations management, assure safe working environment, and contain failures within tolerable limits. Yet, accidents due to electro-mechanical failures still occur and result in various consequences. Accordingly, critics have raised concerns about the petroleum industry's safety and risk mitigation credentials and question its ability to prevent future major accidents. Therefore, new risk assessment tools need to be introduced to provide decision makers and novice engineers with a diverse perception of potential risks. The aim of this paper is verify the application of Risk in Early Design (RED), a product risk assessment tool, in identifying potential failures in the oil and gas industry. Approximately thirty major accident underwent the RED analysis to verify the software's application to identify and rank potential failure modes.     

Test case based risk predictions using artificial neural network

INTRODUCTION: The traditional fuzzy-rule-based risk assessment technique has been applied in many industries due to the capability of combining different parameters to obtain an overall risk. However, a drawback occurs as the technique is applied in circumstances where there are multiple parameters to be evaluated that are described by multiple linguistic terms. METHOD: In this study, a risk prediction model incorporating fuzzy set theory and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) capable of resolving the problem encountered is proposed. An algorithm capable of converting the risk-related parameters and the overall risk level from the fuzzy property to the crisp-valued attribute is also developed. Its application is demonstrated by a test case evaluating the navigational safety within port areas. RESULTS: It is concluded that a risk predicting ANN model is capable of generating reliable results as long as the training data takes into account any potential circumstance that may be met. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: This paper provides safety assessment practitioners with a novel and flexible framework of modelling risks using a fuzzy-rule-base technique. It is especially applicable in circumstances where there are multiple parameters to be considered. The proposed framework also enables the port industry to manage navigational safety in a rational manner.     

英国国防工业安全生产法制体系研究及对我国的启示

为建立健全我国国防工业安全生产法制体系,从构建历程、宏观设计和微观建设要点等方面对英国国防工业安全生产法制体系展开系统研究,并分析当前我国国防工业安全生产法制体系存在的主要问题以及英国国防工业安全生产法制体系建设对我国的启示。结果表明:在宏观设计方面,英国构建以国防安全局为监管主体的高度扁平化监管体系;在微观建设方面,其更加注重国防工业安全生产法律体系的层次性、内容完备性,法律的实操性、更新机制,以及监管职责界定的建设。借鉴英国经验,指出将国防工业安全生产法制体系建设提升至国家战略高度,实现国防工业安全生产专门立法、强化法律可操作性、完善法律制修订机制和科学界定监管职责是我国今后努力的重要方向。     

塔式起重机安全评判专家系统的研制

塔式起重机作为建筑施工的主要设备,在建筑等行业发挥着极其重要的作用,因而其安全问题受到各国有关部门的高度重视,但塔式起重机的事故率近年来仍未见下降,其安全问题仍然是建筑施工中的忧患之一。为此,笔者在建造了塔式起重机安全的依赖关系图的基础上,采用基于现代设计方法学的专家系统构造技术,使用ＶＩＳＵＡＬＣ＋ ＋ 开发了塔式起重机安全评判专家系统ＴＱＥＳ。该系统经全部测试通过,可对一般的塔式起重机进行安全评判     

Dynamic-risk-informed safety barrier management: An application to cost-effective barrier optimization based on data from multiple sources

An integrated approach for performance assessment and management of safety barriers in a systemic manner is needed concerning the prevention and mitigation of major accidents in chemical process industries. Particularly, the effects of safety barriers on system risk reduction should be assessed in a dynamic manner to support the decision-making on safety barrier establishments and improvements. A simulation approach, named Simulink-based Safety Barrier Modeling (SSBM), is proposed in this paper to conduct dynamic risk assessment of chemical facilities with the consideration of the degradation of safety barriers. The main functional features of the SSBM include i) the basic model structures of SSBM can be determined based on bow-tie diagrams, ii) multiple data (periodic proof test data, continuous condition-monitoring data, and accident precursor data) may be combined to update barrier failure probabilities and initiating event probabilities, iii) SSBM is able to handle uncertainty propagation in probabilistic risk assessment by using Monte Carlo simulations, and iv) cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) and optimization algorithms are integrated to support the decision-making on safety barrier establishments and improvements. An illustrative case study is demonstrated to show the procedures of applying the SSBM on dynamic risk-informed safety barrier management and validate the feasibility of implementing the SSBM for cost-effective safety barrier optimization.     

Operator competence and capacity - Lessons from the Montara blowout

The blowout of the Montara H1 well in the Timor Sea off the northwest coast of Australia in August 2009 was the first such incident in Australian offshore waters for 25 years. This article seeks to draw lessons for management of complex hazardous activities from these events by analysing critical decisions regarding well control barriers. Concepts such as trial and error learning, sensemaking and the need for multiple barriers are used to demonstrate why the organisation was blind to the developing problems and hence why lack of technical competence alone is not sufficient to explain the events that occurred. Three organisational improvements are proposed - providing active supervision, improved technical integrity assurance and better use of risk assessment. The article concludes with an appeal for changes in regulatory policy regarding safety to include organisational issues in addition to the traditional technical focus.     

Application of dynamic risk analysis in offshore drilling processes

Process safety is the common global language used to communicate the strategies of hazard identification, risk assessment and safety management. Process safety is identified as an integral part of process development and focuses on preventing and mitigating major process accidents such as fires, explosions, and toxic releases in process industries. Accident probability estimation is the most vital step to all quantitative risk assessment methods. Drilling process for oil is a hazardous operation and hence safety is one of the major concerns and is often measured in terms of risk. Dynamic risk assessment method is meant to reassess risk in terms of updating initial failure probabilities of events and safety barriers, as new information are made available during a specific operation. In this study, a Bayesian network model is developed to represent a well kick scenario. The concept of dynamic environment is incorporated by feeding the real-time failure probability values (observed at different time intervals) of safety barriers to the Bayesian network in order to obtain the corresponding time-dependent variations in kick consequences. This study reveals the importance of real-time monitoring of safety barrier performances and quantitatively shows the effect of deterioration of barrier performance on kick consequence probabilities. The Macondo blowout incident is used to demonstrate how early warnings in barrier probability variations could have been observed and adequately managed to prevent escalation to severe consequences.     

安全评价方法在危险废物处置环境风险评价中的应用探讨

对安全评价方法在危险废物处置建设项目环境风险评价中的运用进行初步探索。主要用"工艺过程风险因素分析表"对工艺过程潜在风险性识别;用蒙德法进行源项分析;用池火灾模型、蒸气云爆炸伤害模型对易燃、易爆物质的火灾、爆炸等重大事故后果进行计算,得出人员的伤亡半径和财产损失半径等参数,以便于判断风险的可接受水平。分析结果表明:采用安全评价方法对危险废物处置建设项目进行环境风险评价是适用的、可行的。     

人的不安全行为对高危行业从业人员安全评价的影响研究

从危险源、事故隐患的理念出发,定义安全工程中"不安全人"的概念;提出了某些从业人员由于生理心理上的影响,因而有其不可控制性;存在着不可控制的隐患,需要进行基于定量方法的测量、辨识和评估。在现代安全工程需要安全评价的基础上,建立一套全新的针对高危行业从业人员的安全评价方法,是对目前的安全评价的有益补充。     

Work-related road safety: A case study of Roche Australia

Fleet, work-related or occupational road safety has the potential to make a major contribution to reducing both human harm and asset damage. To date, however, there would appear to be a dearth of well researched and evaluated case studies in the public domain in this area.This paper provides an on-going, documented, real-world case study of work-related road safety within an Australian company that has sought to manage, monitor and improve its road safety performance over the last 5 years through a range of proactive, fleet manager, insurance and risk-led initiatives.Roche Australia has successfully implemented a Company Motor Vehicle Safety Program with support from its fleet insurers and risk management advisors. Four key initiatives are set out covering: (1) Driver risk assessment, monitoring and improvement. (2) Policy development and communications. (3) Process and outcomes evaluation. (4) Continuous review and refinement of policies, processes, programs and future developments.The program has led to a range of process and performance-based outcomes. Typical barriers to success in work-related road safety have been identified and overcome. Almost 100% risk assessment and improvement process compliance by drivers has been achieved. A predictive relationship between risk assessment outcomes and collision history has been identified. Reductions in insurance claims, collision costs and claims ratio have been sustained. A detailed project plan is in place to continue the program for the next 3 years.The paper concludes that with effective management, a well developed work-related road safety program can result in performance improvements within the initiating organisation. Several limitations in the case study methodology, as well as areas for further work and lessons for policy makers, researchers and practitioners are also identified.     

Risk assessment in the offshore industry

This paper describes the implementation and use of risk assessment in the offshore industry in relation to safety aspects — safety to people's life and health, as well as environment and property. Although risk assessments may be based on both qualitative and quantitative methods, the main focus here will be on quantitative risk assessments (QRA). The development of offshore QRA has been lead by a mutual influence and interaction between the regulatory authorities for the UK and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea as well as the oil companies operating here. The experience from this area has been the main basis during the writing of this paper.     

安全评价中危险辨识的地位、存在问题和对策

生产企业、系统、工程或设备的安全性程度 ,需按有关规定或技术要求 ,进行各种形式的安全评价。安全评价是危险评价 ,其中辨识危险在安全评价中具有重要意义。笔者论述了危险辨识在安全评价中的地位 ;指出了危险辨识存在的问题 ;从资料准备、企业调研、危险辨识方法、行业专家作用和人员素质等 7个方面提出了解决现存问题的对策及措施。安全评价是落实“安全第一 ,预防为主”方针 ,消除隐患 ,预防和预测事故 ,确保安全生产的重要手段     

A structural approach to the HAZOP – Hazard and operability technique in the biopharmaceutical industry

Recently, the use of analytical techniques to identify, assess and address risks within the pharmaceutical industry is increasing from the initial and operating phases until the final use of products aiming to eliminate or reduce the severity of deviations. The hazard and operability studies – HAZOP establish that accidents are the result of failure modes in process variables out of operational parameters. In this paper, the HAZOP methodology was used to assess risks in the system for recombinant protein production where a multidisciplinary group used the brainstorming strategy to identify the risk level and deviations in nodes defined by functionality in the system. Nineteen critical nodes were identified, deviations were established in based on knowledge, and experience by the group, thus precluded the need of deviation's records to estimate frequency and impacts of events. It was also shown that in the pharmaceutical industry the most-critical risks are those that have adverse impacts on production like partial and total losses and when noncompliance of regulations are involved. The HAZOP risk assessment tool can be easily followed by people who are interested in starting to use this technique to improve the security environment within the institution and when required by regulatory agencies.     

交通建设工程安全评价技术现状及趋势研究

综述我国交通建设工程安全生产现状,详细描述常用安全评价技术在我国交通建设工程中的实用状况,对专家论证、安全检查表、作业条件危险性评价等常用安全评价方法的适用范围及优缺点加以分析。系统研讨安监系统及建设部门制定涉及安全评价的相关规定及其应用情况。对国内外工程建设安全评价方法的定量化、软件化等研发进展进行讨论,同时对我国交通建设工程安全评价技术发展趋势给以展望。     

基于突发事件机理分析的风险评估方法研究及应用

近年来,我国部分城市开展了城市安全风险评估工作。为了能够得到科学的风险评估方法和有效的结果,本文基于突发事件机理分析及单一事件链,对城市安全风险评估方法进行了研究及应用。通过引入控制因子,构建基于突发事件机理分析的单一事件链模型,并将该模型转化为风险评估工作的指标体系,并将该指标体系在某区城市安全风险评估工作中进行了应用,对该区17种单位或场所,涉及到的18类风险,共计201家企业进行风险级别评估。最终得出该区17种单位或场所中每种单位或场所的整体风险等级,以及重大风险数量的占比情况,为该区提出有针对性的风险管控意见奠定了一定基础,并对本文的局限性和下一步研究方向提出一些看法和意见。     

Inherent risk assessment—A new concept to evaluate risk in preliminary design stage

Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) has been a very popular and useful methodology which is widely accepted by the industry over the past few decades. QRA is typically carried out at a stage where complete plant has been designed and sited. At that time, the opportunity to include inherent safety design features is limited and may incur higher cost. This paper proposes a new concept to evaluate risk inherent to a process owing to the chemical it uses and the process conditions. The risk assessment tool is integrated with process design simulator (HYSYS) to provide necessary process data as early as the initial design stages, where modifications based on inherent safety principles can still be incorporated to enhance the process safety of the plant. The risk assessment tool consists of two components which calculate the probability and the consequences relating to possible risk due to major accidents. A case study on the potential explosion due to the release of flammable material demonstrates that the tool is capable to identify potential high risk of process streams. Further improvement of the process design is possible by applying inherent safety principles to make the process under consideration inherently safer. Since this tool is fully integrated with HYSYS, re-evaluation of the inherent risk takes very little time and effort. The new tool addresses the lack of systematic methodology and technology, which is one of the barriers to designing inherently safer plants.     

基于孕灾环境的沿海城市安全生产风险评价指标体系研究

针对沿海城市安全生产事故孕灾环境体系的构建问题,将孕灾环境理论拓展到安全生产事故,全面分析沿海城市的安全生产事故孕灾环境因素,建立沿海城市安全生产风险评价指标体系。通过相关性分析,剔除信息重复指标,保留包括自然因素、技术因素、人类因素在内的27个指标,并以某沿海县为例进行实例探讨。结果表明:该县各区域安全生产风险等级总体处于中等到中下段,风险分布从中心城区向外呈辐射递减趋势,并且沿海区高于内陆,这是由于沿海地区大力发展港口工业的结果,该评价对于沿海城市安全生产事故风险评价具有一定的参考价值。