safety

Gone are the days when missing a few fingers is a badge of honor in the oilpatch. Author, Distinguished Lecturer and Consultant Ken Arnold discusses how far the the industry has come in prioritizing safety, and what more can be done to improve it.

With events such as the BP Macondo blowout in the US Gulf of Mexico (2010) and the Pemex Ayatsil-C platform accident (June), the safety risks inherent in oil and gas projects are evident.

A rigorous SHE&S program on the Barzan Onshore Project tracked 211 deliverables on a monthly basis and led to 131 million man-hours worked without a lost-time incident from July 2012 to March 2014.

OTC recognized three figures who have contributed to facilities engineering: Dendy Sloan, Jim Brill, and Ken Arnold. They were recognized with the Distinguished Achievement Awards for their technical and leadership contributions to the industry.

There is little doubt that the industry is committed to improving its safety performance—and most agree that improving the collective culture around safety is an effective approach to achieving this goal. But the specifics of how to achieve lasting change are more difficult.

SPE has formed a new technical section focusing on human factors engineering, which seeks to bring in knowledge from other industries, thereby ensuring safe operations and fostering a coordinated safety culture from top-level executives to workers on the ground.

Engineering culture is largely a safety culture. We have to assume that people will make a mistake and protect them from themselves through the way we design facilities.

This paper reviews the key areas for facility designers and engineers to include when designing facilities to ensure safe facilities. Use and incorporation of the principles outlined in this paper should enable engineers and designers to build safe facilities that reduce the risk of major incidents.

Recent accidents in the oil and gas industry have renewed interest in whether behavioral sciences can provide insights that can be translated into safety interventions.