The Auger facility was designed, built and installed by Shell, with first oil production on April 15, 1994. It was the first Tension Leg Platform in the Gulf of Mexico, first to support drilling rig, complete production facilities, and world record setting water depth at the time. Auger has continued its strategic role in Shell's Gulf of Mexico portfolio since then with 7 subsea satellite tie-back fields, the most of any in the Shell deep water Gulf of Mexico portfolio. In 2010 and 2011 Auger had 5 recordable injuries per year (TRIF of 6 per million man hours worked).In this same timeframe, Shell also made a major discovery, Deep Cardamom, 6 miles from Auger. The Cardamom field will increase oil and gas production on Auger back to nearly peak facility production rates and give the facility a new lease on life.In order to add one more subsea tieback and onboard Cardamom production, many upgrades and facility changes were required. This scope called for simultaneous production, drilling and brown field construction on the asset for 2 ½ years. From a personnel perspective, this required a 20% increase in personnel capacity at Auger with a full-time construction team of 80 to 100 people, in addition to the normal production crew of 100. Shell recognized that the increase in activity level would increase exposure to individuals at Auger. This fact, coupled with the recent safety performance track record, required a step change in safety culture simultaneous with the increase in personnel capacity and hazard exposure.The Auger/Cardamom team focused on re-invigorating the safety culture offshore; driving visible, vigilant and felt safety leadership; hazard recognition training of the front line work force; improvements in PPE; and improvements in the quality of life and working conditions. The re-invigorated safety program moved beyond compliance to a culture of individual accountability and personal commitment to caring for each other with strong leadership behaviors.This paper describes the efforts to re-invigorate the safety culture on the facility. The team moved safety culture and performance to one of the best in Shell worldwide, including a Goal Zero year in 2013 with no recordable injuries.
Major accident safety management in the E&P Industry has experienced several challenges (e.g. cost over-runs, loss of life) throughout our history. A typical strategy for risk management is goal setting: achieving tolerable risks and reducing risks to As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP). However, several projects have demonstrated that in their efforts to optimize safety design features, some systems have been under-specified early in the project. The process to identify these areas of potential weakness, select appropriate increased requirements and implement design changes often results in a sub-optimal solution for effort, cost, schedule or safety performance.The strategy proposed can be applied to any type of E&P installation to manage major accident hazards. It can also be applied to other goal setting design dimensions, such as environmental performance. The approach prescribes a set of specific performance standards at the concept selection stage and ensures that these requirements are implemented.The safety measures implemented to manage major accident hazards are very seldom required to function in the facility lifetime. As such project teams may not fully understand the significant role of each major accident control measure. Input from experienced Safety Engineers was refined into a minimum specification that is sufficiently clear to be used by design engineering teams, such that these few critical systems are implemented effectively. First applications of this approach have demonstrated significantly improved levels of safety, cost, schedule and effort relative to the reliance on the optimization approach during detailed design.The design safety strategy recommended by the authors has demonstrated the opportunity to:• Speed up execution • Limit safety scope changes late in the project • Reduce project engineering efforts • Minimize safety "gold-plating" • Deliver a robust design for major accident hazards • Significantly reduce and manage the major accident risks
In 2013-2014 the projects organization set a goal to look at personal safety through a process safety lens (inherent safety principles) to reduce hot spots in personal safety risks through improved construction planning (both pre and during construction). This paper presents a suite of innovative techniques that were developed to identify opportunities for construction risk reduction. The techniques focus on the identification of construction hazards and development of design alternatives, fabrication sequence and yard layout changes to eliminate the source of the hazard. The paper presents the approach and techniques developed; case studies where the approach was applied; and where significant risk reduction and fabrication efficiency improvements were achieved. The techniques developed have been applied at three primary project phases: Construction Engineering – High-level review to identify and eliminate hazards through (construction / design) engineering changes or construction related changes.30-60-90 Day Planning Reviews – Mid level reviews using a modified HAZID type approach to eliminate hazards through detailed work scope identification, work activity sequence, engineering controls, construction assembly sequence, and coordination of simultaneous task.Construction Execution Reviews – Simplified Bowties and Audits to review the number and quality of barriers to each threat line to verify that sufficient controls are in place and effective for the key top events. The techniques have been primarily applied to the higher risk hazards, based on work activities from previous fabrication experiences that occurred at similar facilities. In particular, the work has focused on: –Eliminating working at height: by moving work to ground level (engineering and fabrication sequence changes)–Reducing the amount of working in confined spaces: changing the work sequence to complete as much activity as possible prior to confining the work face area, and providing additional access and ventilation–Reducing dropped object exposure: moving work to ground level, and reducing the simultaneous working at multiple levels of a structure–Eliminating and reducing the number and complexity of lifts: changes to the fabrication sequence and construction engineering–Reducing traffic and transportation risks: elimination of people – heavy vehicle interactions through yard layout The quantifiable benefits of the approach have been: Reduction in the exposure of personnel to HSSE hazards by eliminating and reducing exposures during construction activities, through inherent safety thinkingImprovements and optimization of construction efficiency and sequence by reducing exposures associated with higher risk activities.
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