Exploration of relationships between safety performance and unsafe behavior in the Chinese oil industry

Safety performance is comprised of two components, safety compliance and safety participation. However, relationships between safety performance and unsafe behavior have not been thoroughly investigated. In this work, scales for safety compliance and safety participation were revised for use in the oil industry, and job burnout scale was developed on the basis of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS). A structural equation model was then employed to investigate the interactions of these factors for 238 front-line oil workers from the PetroChina Huabei Oilfield Company in China. From the results, it was determined that workers' unsafe behavior could not be reduced significantly solely from these two dimensions of safety performance. Compared with safety participation, safety compliance was found to have a greater influence on unsafe behavior. However, job burnout was found to be a significant moderator between these two components and unsafe behavior. Furthermore, it was determined that oil workers' occupational psychological health conditions must be taken into account to improve organizational safety management and reduce workers’ unsafe behavior.     

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the safety management in Italian Seveso industries

The paper discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Italian chemical and process industries, where Directive 2012/18/EU Seveso III, for the control of Major Accident Hazard (MAH), is enforced. The Safety Management System (SMS) for the control of MAH, which has been mandatory for 20 years in Italian Seveso Establishments, has been highly stressed by the external pressure, related in some way to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fairly, most companies, in particular in oil and gas sectors, have demonstrated an adequate capability to reconcile operation continuity and health requirements. This experience is providing the establishment operators and the regulators with valuable suggestions for the improvements of the SMS-MAH. Within this framework, an innovative organisational resilience model is proposed, aiming at the development of a higher capability to face future new crisis. The current SMS-MAH already includes some basic pillars to enhance resilience, which were valuable during the pandemic crisis, but a full and rationale development is still needed. Starting from the first pandemic phase experience, this paper presents a novel tool to assess the degree of “resilience” of a SMS-MAH. It is based on a questionnaire, featuring 25 questions grouped into eight items, according to the typical SMS-MAH structure. A two level AHP model has been developed in order to define the weights to be assigned to each point. The AHP panel included industrial practitioners, regulators, authorities and researchers. The results are based on the COVID-19 experience and consequently the developed model is tailored to face health emergencies, but the approach may be easily transferred to other external crises.     

Assessment and improvement of integrated HSE and macro-ergonomics factors by fuzzy cognitive maps: The case of a large gas refinery

This study analyzes and assesses the integrated health, safety, environment (HSE) and ergonomics (HSEE) factors by fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM) approach. This is achieved through integrating ergonomic and macro-ergonomic as well as occupational health and safety arrangements in an integrated modeling for assessment of their multi-faceted impact on workers' productivity, injury rate and satisfaction. This paper uses FCM to assess the direct and indirect effects of HSEE factors on system performance indicators. The results of FCM are used to develop leading indicators useful for proactive management of productivity, injury rate, and job satisfaction. The result of a comprehensive survey of 37 experts in control rooms and maintenance activities in a large gas refinery is used to show the applicability and usefulness of FCM approach. Moreover, FCM results are used to determine the causal structure of HSEE factors and system performance indicators. It is concluded that macro-ergonomics factors such as instructions and education, familiarity with organization's rules, and proper communications most contribute to improve workers' safety, satisfaction, and productivity.     

Change in frontline supervisors’ safety leadership practices after participating in a leadership training program: Does company size matter?

Introduction: The majority of construction companies are small businesses and small business often lack the resources needed to ensure that their supervisors have the safety leadership skills to build and maintain a strong jobsite safety climate. The Foundations for Safety Leadership (FSL) training program was designed to provide frontline leaders in all sized companies with safety leadership skills. This paper examines the impact of the FSL training by size of business. Methods: Leaders, defined as foremen or other frontline supervisors, from small, medium, and large construction companies were recruited to participate in a study to evaluate the degree to which the FSL changed their understanding and use of the leadership skills, safety practices and crew reporting of safety-related conditions. We used linear mixed modeling methods to analyze pre-post training survey data. Results: Prior to the training, leaders from small and medium sized companies reported using safety leadership skills less frequently than those from large ones. After the training, regardless of business size, we observed that the FSL training improved leaders understanding of safety leadership skills from immediately before to immediately after the training. Additionally, leaders reported greater use of safety leadership skills, safety practices, and crew reporting of safety-related conditions from before to two-weeks after the training. However, those from small and medium sized companies reported the greatest improvement in their use of safety leadership skills. Conclusions: The FSL training improves safety leadership outcomes regardless of the size company for which the leader worked. However, the FSL may be even more effective at improving the safety leadership skills of leaders working for smaller sized construction companies or those with lower baseline levels of safety leadership skills. Practical applications: The majority of construction companies employ a small number of employees and therefore may not have the resources to provide their frontline leaders with the leadership training they need to be effective leaders who can create a strong jobsite safety climate. The Foundations for Safety Leadership (FSL) training can help fill this gap.     

The digital representation of safety systems at “Seveso” plants and its potential for improving risk management

At Seveso plants, duty holders must have a complex system for assessing and managing risks. The pillars of this system are the safety report and the safety management system, with a number of underlying documents. The strength of the system is the high standardization of these documents. Regulations, standard codes and guidelines define content, structure and formats. The weakness is the high complexity. Managers and workers perceive documents as difficult to understand and far from actual operations. Major threats for the credibility of documents (and therefore for the safety systems) come from the continuous organizational and technical changes, which in a short time can make most documents obsolete; as well as by near misses, which continuously show the holes in safety systems. A big effort is required to follow up the plant changes and the near misses. In order to help safety managers, a new software has been developed. At Seveso plants, it has been possible build an integrated digital representation, because all documents are perfectly structured. This representation may be used both for updating the relevant documents after a change and to improve documents after a near miss or an accident. In this way, safety documents are always up to date and trustworthy and the huge knowledge, which is usually hidden inside safety documents, is clearly revealed and revived. The approach is basically “knowledge based” and the intention is to provide safety managers with an easy and simple tool. IRISonLine is a software that has been developed by ISPESL to provide safety managers of “Seveso” establishments with a tool for improving the management of change and of near misses.     

Does company size matter? Validation of an integrative model of safety behavior across small and large construction companies

Introduction: Previous safety climate studies primarily focused on either large construction companies or the construction industry as a whole, while little is known about whether company size has significant effects on workers' understanding of safety climate measures and relationships between safety climate factors and safety behavior. Thus, this study aims to: (a) test the measurement equivalence (ME) of a safety climate measure across workers from small and large companies; (b) investigate if company size alters the causal structure of the integrative model developed by Guo, Yiu, and González (2016). Method: Data were collected from 253 construction workers in New Zealand using a safety climate measure. This study used multi-group confirmatory factor analyses (MCFA) to test the measurement equivalence of the safety climate measure and structure invariance of the integrative model. Results: Results indicate that workers from small and large companies understood the safety climate measure in a similar manner. In addition, it was suggested that company size does not change the causal structure and mediational processes of the integrative model. Conclusions: Both measurement equivalence of the safety climate measure and structural invariance of the integrative model were supported by this study. Practical applications: Findings of this study provided strong support for a meaningful use of the safety climate measure across construction companies in different sizes. Safety behavior promotion strategies designed based on the integrative model may be well suited for both large and small companies.     

Ageing management and monitoring of critical equipment at Seveso sites: An ontological approach

A safe “ageing” of Seveso establishments is a challenge for both operators and regulators. To this scope, Seveso III Directive required to integrate the equipment integrity issue into the safety management system for the major accident prevention; at the same time, the Italian Authority adopted a short-cut method for a quick ageing evaluation, which awards the application of the best techniques to control integrity and prevent deterioration-related failures. In this paper, the use of the ontology has been proposed to support decision-making about the implementation of technical solutions to control equipment ageing and comply the requirements of the Seveso legislation. To contrast deterioration mechanisms, the rapid development of data intensive smart sensors should be exploited and, in this frame, the automated on-line direct monitoring of equipment conditions, based on innovative low-cost sensors, is a novelty and promising solution. The developed ontology-based system points towards the adoption, when possible, of on-line monitoring. This solution provides much more data than traditional measurements and it is essential for the operators to understand how to merge concurrent information and data and to adequately control equipment deterioration. The ontology-based approach appears a viable solution even for this purpose. To demonstrate its potentiality, a real use-case has been used, where the model has been tested in finding the best technical solutions to improve the ageing management of an atmospheric distillation unit of a refinery in order to comply with safety requirements. A further use-case is given to show how the model can be used to react, after real-time damage signals, to restore safety conditions by means of an adequate decision-making.     

Technical note on the contribution of sociotechnical factors to accidents notified to MARS

Not least due to the new `Seveso II Directive', Safety Management Systems (SMS) have become a hot topic in the `safety business'. To reveal in a structured way how organisations manage safety at their plants, classification schemes can be applied to identify plant-specific precautions on different hierarchical levels, e.g. from `top level' equipment reliability to `bottom level' safety climate. In this paper, such a model is used to classify the accidents reported to the European Commission's Major Accident Reporting System (MARS) according to the levels on which failures resulting in actual accidents did occur, and to cross-compare the levels of causation with the overall `severity' of the accidents. It is analytically shown that ∼66% of the accidents are caused by latent SMS failures, and that especially those accidents which are caused by failures in the `deepest layers of latency' have significantly higher `severities' than accidents caused by more `immediate' failures. In other words, it is quite likely that the deeper the underlying causes of an accident, the more `severe' its consequences. Implementing SMS is thus worth the effort.     

Safety management systems under Seveso II: Implementation and assessment

The `Seveso II Directive' (96/82/EC) requires certain establishments holding hazardous substances to implement a Safety Management System (SMS). The first part of the paper discusses the origin of this requirement, the guidance drawn up to help companies fulfil it, and the results of preliminary testing of this guidance. One important element in implementing and inspecting SMS is the identification of SMS weaknesses, the safety culture that effects SMS and finally the evaluation of safety performance. The second part of this paper examines some principles underlying industrial practice in evaluating SMS. Audit-related activities, involving proactive performance indicators for monitoring compliance with standards, are used nowadays to identify weaknesses of the SMS. Preventive actions to control risks and policy updating within the company through strategic plans are found to be sensitive to the number and type of SMS elements taken into account as indicators. The value of quantifying performance using simple rating systems in audits may be limited to the single installation. The guidelines and evaluation methods could thus produce useful results only when safety aspects and system elements are identified and evaluated separately for each installation; the value of quantification is limited to the individual elements after considering their functional relation with the rest of the elements in the SMS environment and the local safety culture into which they are developed.     

计算机辅助海运安全管理系统技术研究

以海运安全管理的基本理论与机制 ,强调保障安全必须通过管理实现对“人 -机 -环境”系统的有效干预 ,指出已实行数年的海运安全管理体系 (SMS) ,因系统庞大不便使用而妨碍了安全管理效能的发挥 ,而现有的管理信息系统技术对此作为甚小。鉴此 ,以语义Web和RDF技术为核心 ,研发了计算机辅助海运安全管理系统 (CASMS) ,包括海运安全文档知识库系统 (RDMS)、海运安全管理体系文档管理系统 (SMDS)、计算机辅助海运安全审核系统 (EES) ,为实现全面高效准确的SMS文件管理与工作表管理 ,提高海运公司和政府的SMS审核质量 ,实现地区级、国家级网络化安全管理提供了新技术。该技术可普遍用于质量管理体系、职业安全与健康管理体系、环境管理体系等系统及其综合系统。     

Implementation of safety management systems in Hong Kong construction industry – A safety practitioner's perspective

IntroductionIn the 1980s, the safety management system (SMS) was introduced in the construction industry to mitigate against workplaces hazards, reduce the risk of injuries, and minimize property damage. Also, the Factories and Industrial Undertakings (Safety Management) Regulation was introduced on 24 November 1999 in Hong Kong to empower the mandatory implementation of a SMS in certain industries including building construction. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate the effectiveness of the SMS in improving construction safety and identify the factors that influence its implementation in Hong Kong.MethodA review of the current state-of-the-practice helped to establish the critical success factors (CSFs), benefits, and difficulties of implementing the SMS in the construction industry, while structured interviews were used to establish the key factors of the SMS implementation.ResultsResults of the state-of-the-practice review and structured interviews indicated that visible senior commitment, in terms of manpower and cost allocation, and competency of safety manager as key drivers for the SMS implementation. More so, reduced accident rates and accident costs, improved organization framework, and increased safety audit ratings were identified as core benefits of implementing the SMS. Meanwhile, factors such as insufficient resources, tight working schedule, and high labor turnover rate were the key challenges to the effective SMS implementation in Hong Kong.Practical applicationsThe findings of the study were consistent and indicative of the future development of safety management practice and the sustainable safety improvement of Hong Kong construction industry in the long run.     

Predicting workers' compensation claims and disciplinary actions using SecureFit®: Further support for integrative models of workplace safety

IntroductionA growing body of applied research has identified certain psychological traits that are predictive of worker safety. However, most of these studies suffer from an overreliance on common method bias caused by self-report measures of both: (a) personal factors such as personality traits; and (b) outcomes such as safety behaviors and injuries.MethodThis study utilized archival data from 796 employees at a large U.S. automobile manufacturer. Data were gathered on a pre-employment assessment, SecureFit®, that measured key personality characteristics such as conscientiousness, locus of control, and risk taking. In addition, objective measures of workers' compensation claims and disciplinary actions were also gathered.ResultsThe results indicated that disciplinary actions and workers' compensation claims were strongly correlated. It also demonstrated that the pre-employment assessment was able to predict both disciplinary actions and workers' compensation claims up to 12 months in the future. Screening out just 8% of the applicant sample using the assessment would have resulted in a 35% reduction in disciplinary actions and 46% in workers' compensation claims, respectively.ConclusionsThe study found a very strong relationship between counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs), such as not following rules, and workers' compensation claims. It also found a strong relationship between a combination of personality traits that have been shown to be associated with both variables, although the current study was able to demonstrate that relationship with objective measure of both variables.Practical applicationsIndividuals who receive disciplinary actions for things such as not following rules, not coming to work on time, etc. are significantly more likely to also be involved in serious safety incidents, and vice versa. Identifying those individuals early on in the hiring process and screening them out can significantly reduce the number of CWBs as well as workers' compensation claims.     

Safety climate at agricultural cooperatives

Introduction: This study identifies determinants of safety climate at agricultural cooperatives. Methods: An extensive survey was designed to build upon past research done in collaboration with DuPont (Risch et al., 2014). In 2014 and 2015, the survey was administered to 1930 employees at 14 different agricultural cooperatives with 154 locations. Injury incidence data were also collected from each location to better understand the overall health and safety environment in this sector. An ordered probit model is used to identify variables that are associated with better safety climates. Results: Safety system components such as discipline programs, inspection programs, modified duty programs, off-the-job safety training programs, and recognition programs are positively related to individual safety climate for both managerial employees and nonmanagerial employees. Variables representing an employee’s agricultural background, distance between their workplace and childhood home, and formal education are not associated with managerial safety climate. However, agricultural background and childhood home distance are associated with nonmanagerial safety climate. Conclusions: Improving occupational health and safety is a priority for many agricultural cooperatives. Lower safety climate emerges as nonmanagerial employees have more experience with production agriculture and work nearer to their home community. Practical applications: Employees of agricultural cooperatives face a host of health and safety challenges that are likely to persist into the future. The safety system components associated with safety climate indicate that continuous feedback is important for improving occupational health and safety. Occupational health and safety programming should also acknowledge that many employees have experiences that influence their attitudes and behaviors.     

Assessing safety management systems

Traditionally, both academe and practitioners have tended to address fire safety by focusing on technical aspects and looking for the immediate causes of fire incidents or accidents after they have taken place. More recently, organisations have focused on assessing the consequences of the fire risk inherent in their operations pro-actively. However, fire safety still tends to be addressed in isolation, though fire loss is an emergent property. An organisation's emergent property results from the interrelated activities of people who design it, manage it and operate it. There is still a need for a systemic approach to understand the systemic nature of fire safety. This paper describes a fire safety management system (FSMS) model that aims to maintain fire risk within an acceptable range in an organisation's operations in a coherent way. This systemic approach can be used as a diagnostic tool to assess the effectiveness of existing safety management systems (SMS). It is hoped that this approach will lead not only to more effective management of fire safety, but also to more effective management of safety, health and the environment for any organisation.     

Assessment of the effect of technical and management characteristics on the frequency of release from piping: An application to a gas storage facility

The assessment of the frequencies of release from piping due to losses of containment is an essential step in the preparing Safety Reports, drawn up as required by the so-called “Seveso” Directive. These are usually calculated starting from the frequencies of random rupture included in international databases and are not plant-specific, furthermore, the quantification of the effect of the safety management system of the facility is not easy. A simple and flexible approach quantifying technical and management characteristics of the plant has been proposed by Milazzo and co-workers in 2010; it is based on the modification of the frequency taken from literature, through the use of the percentages of failure causes actually possible in that plant, and the judgment about their management. The data about the failure causes are taken from the literature and modified by using corrective factors to adapt them to the industrial context. To make possible the application of the method to a large number of major-hazard industry types, some aspects of the approach needed to be improved; these have been identified during a development project coordinated by RINA Consulting, on behalf of Saipem, with the collaboration of the University of Messina. The improvement of the approach focused on two main points, the development of a method to calculate the corrective factors for the failure causes associated with corrosion and erosion phenomena and the strengthening of the methodology for the formulation of the judgment about the safety management. This paper illustrates the fully improved method, as well as an application to a typical gas storage plant.     

我国通用航空安全管理体系建设研究

安全管理体系是一种新的航空安全管理理念,通用航空安全管理体系的建立是落实民航安全方针的基本保障。根据通用航空运行环境复杂、保障设施薄弱和航空器品种繁杂等特点,基于安全目标管理、PDCA、系统原理和风险管理理论,参考《ICAO SMS手册》,结合我国通用航空安全管理模式,从通用航空安全管理体系基础模块、运行模块、监督模块和改进模块构建了适合我国通用航空安全管理体系,并详细探讨了通用航空安全管理体系实施和评估步骤。建立适合我国国情的通用航空安全管理体系,旨在提高我国通用航空安全管理的水平,为航空安全管理部门提供了科学的安全管理模式,实现安全管理的科学化、系统化和标准化。     

Analysis of train derailments and collisions to identify leading causes of loss incidents in rail transport of dangerous goods in Canada

The Canadian railway industry has improved safety performance in the last decade as measured by freight loss incidents per billion gross ton-miles. Further improvements in safety performance require a deeper analysis of the leading causes to identify weaknesses in implementing safety systems. In this paper, we classify the causes of railway loss incidents using a Safety Management System (SMS) framework to identify system weaknesses. The role of human factors is further analyzed through the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) approach. For this, we utilized data from 42 main track derailments and collisions involving the transport of dangerous goods in Canada between 2007 and 2018, which have been investigated by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada in detail. Associations between adjacent sub-categories of the HFACS framework are analyzed to identify any interdependency that exists between active and latent errors using a Chi-square test and Kruskal's lambda analysis. Furthermore, we implement the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method and the Analytical Network Process (ANP) to identify causal relationships between different sub-categories of the HFACS framework and calculate the weighted influence of each sub-category on main track derailments and collisions. Finally, a comparison is made between this work and others', which have analyzed human factors in the railway industry. There is good agreement between the results of these studies that highlight the importance of supervisory and organizational factors in the prevention of railway loss incidents. Based on these findings, we make recommendations to reduce railway loss incidents.     

Modeling the major accident prevention legislation change process within Europe

The factors giving impulse to changing major accident prevention legislation within Europe, the so-called Seveso Directive, have not been thoroughly studied and molded into an understandable model thus far. For example the exact relationship between major industrial accidents and an ever changing legislation is still unexplored. This paper thoroughly investigates the parameters having influenced the change of the 1996 Seveso II Directive into the 2003 Seveso Directive Amendment 2003/105/EC and develops the accompanying legislation change process. The official major accident reports of Baia Mare, Enschede and Toulouse are studied in-depth, as well as many other official EU documents. Furthermore, experts from academia, government and industry who witnessed and/or participated into the legislation change process were interviewed in-depth. More profound insights into the societal debate following a major accident may help private companies to adapt their safety management system and their prevention policies, and may aid the legislator to develop more efficient and effective regulations. This way, the societal demand to change legislation in an ad hoc manner may be unpressurized.     

Developing an external domino accident prevention framework: Hazwim

Empirical research on major accident safety in the second largest chemical cluster worldwide, the Antwerp port area, supports the design of a meta-technical framework for optimizing external domino prevention. First, the majority of Seveso top tier companies have expressed a willingness to cooperate more intensively to protect themselves against potential off-site major accidents. Second, Hazop, What–If analysis and the Risk Matrix, interesting building blocks for such a framework, are frequently used risk analysis techniques at Seveso lower tier and Seveso top tier companies. The developed framework, called Hazwim, integrates these three complementary techniques into an effective standardized risk analysis framework for the prevention of external xdomino accidents in an industrial area. The main strengths of Hazwim are its completeness and its cost-effectiveness. The combination of techniques on the one hand and qualitative and quantitative data on the other, offers a comprehensive up-to-date list of cross-company domino hazards and recommended actions in the area under consideration. The Hazwim framework offers support to prevention managers and safety policy makers concerning external domino prevention.     

The natural selection of organizational and safety culture within a small to medium sized enterprise (SME)

INTRODUCTION: Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) form the majority of Australian businesses. METHOD: This study uses ethnographic research methods to describe the organizational culture of a small furniture-manufacturing business in southern Australia. RESULTS: Results show a range of cultural assumptions variously 'embedded' within the enterprise. In line with memetics - Richard Dawkin's cultural application of Charles Darwin's theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, the author suggests that these assumptions compete to be replicated and retained within the organization. The author suggests that dominant assumptions are naturally selected, and that the selection can be better understood by considering the cultural assumptions in reference to Darwin's original principles and Frederik Barth's anthropological framework of knowledge. The results are discussed with reference to safety systems, negative cultural elements called Cultural Safety Viruses, and how our understanding of this particular organizational culture might be used to build resistance to these viruses.