Posts Tagged ‘safety culture’
Vancouver Presentations are Posted!
Posted in conferences, tagged IRF, offshore oil, safety, safety culture, vancouver on October 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Mark Fleming on Safety Culture
Posted in conferences, tagged accidents, Mark Fleming, safety, safety culture, vancouver on October 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Peoples attitudes and opinions have been formed over decades of life and cannot be changed by having a few meetings or giving a few lectures. Mao Tse Tung (from Mark Fleming’s presentation linked below)
Sometimes presentations don’t fulfill the lofty expectations of the audience, particularly when the titles are catchy. That definitely was not the case with Dr. Mark Fleming’s outstanding presentation at the Vancouver conference. Mark’s presentation entitled Know where you are going rather than where you have been! A Leaders’ guide to continuous safety performance measurement effectively drove home the safety culture message. I strongly suggest that you take a close look at the presentation (not yet posted, but I’ll provide a link as soon as it is).
In the meantime, you can look at this excellent paper that Mark prepared for Petroleum Research Atlantic Canada and a presentation he made at the Centre for Occupational Health/Safety. Good, thought provoking stuff for you safety gurus!
from Dr. Fleming's presentation linked above
You have to love “New ideas present problems” from the Bureaucratic column. So true. It’s not that new ideas are not welcome, it’s that bureaucracies (public and private) are incapable of dealing with them and are built with insurmountable barriers that prevent their consideration.
Vancouver Visionaries Plot Cultural Revolution
Posted in conferences, tagged HSE, IRF, Jane Cutler, Magne Ognedal, Mark Fleming, NOPSA, PSA, safety culture, Steve Walker, vancouver on October 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Firstly, major kudos to the Canadians for organizing a great conference in Vancouver, a wonderful city. The Newfoundland-Labrador and Nova Scotia Petroleum Boards, and the National Energy Board were outstanding hosts, and Max, Howard, Stuart, Sean, Bharat, and the folks at Venue West did a great job with the arrangements. The International Regulators’ Offshore Safety Conference was a huge success thanks to their efforts.
The international leaders in Vancouver were in full agreement that the key to long term safety achievement is the strength and vitality of the safety culture in the operating companies, contractors, and regulatory organizations. How is such a culture encouraged and achieved? As NOPSA CEO Jane Cutler has said “safety culture is what you do when no one is watching.” Inspections are a necessary regulatory tool, but if they are too frequent they send the message that the government is responsible for safety, and that operators and workers can relax their guard. As Magne Ognedal (PSA-Norway) has frequently said, safety must be managed by the “owner” of the facility and the risk, with the government holding the owner accountable and insisting on excellence.
Steve Walker, UK HSE chief, said that regulators must encourage a “beyond compliance” culture and serve as catalysts for learning and achievement. Regulators can never be satisfied; they should be negative thinkers searching for the operations, processes, and behaviors that might trigger the next major accident. Dr. Mark Fleming from St. Mary’s University in Halifax believes that safety culture can in fact be regulated, not in the traditional sense, but by requiring companies to have systems in place for promoting and measuring the organizational culture.
Regulators must also look at their own safety culture. Are they focused solely on compliance and “command and control,” or are they investigating risks, assessing management programs, and evaluating performance? Are regulatory employees free to investigate and inquire, or are they mere implementers of management directives? Are employees rewarded for sustaining the hierarchy or challenging the status quo? Are they expected to explain why accidents can’t happen again or figure out how they can?
Much more on these and other Vancouver topics in the near future.
Several interesting items!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged accidents, Australia, blowouts, Canada, macondo, Newfoundland, NOPSA, offshore oil, safety, safety culture, well control on September 30, 2010| Leave a Comment »
- The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board unveiled their new website. Very impressive!
- Jane Cutler, CEO of NOPSA (Australia), made an outstanding (must-view) presentation on Safety Priorities for 2010. My favorite quote:
Safety culture is how the organization behaves when no one is watching.
Also, NOPSA’s September Newsletter has some interesting updates including information on the jackup failure offshore China.
- Joel Achenbach, a very good reporter, wrote an excellent Washington Post article on that addresses some of Macondo’s human and organizational factors. I do disagree with the deepwater emphasis, particularly his BOP comments. As we have noted on several occasions, subsea BOPs have a far better performance record than surface BOPs. Also, having the stack right at the surface is a hindrance, not a benefit, if the rig is on fire.
And how does a reporter question the humility of engineers? 🙂
Engineers do amazing things, but they aren’t always as smart as they think, nor their systems as robust as they seem on paper.
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 