The accident triangle, developed by H.W. Heinrich in the 1930s, is a fundamental cornerstone of safety philosophy which postulates that there is a numerical relationship between unsafe acts, minor injuries, and major (fatal) injuries. This principle has driven the approach and techniques used by all companies actively engaged in reducing injuries in the workforce for over 70 years.All companies in the oil and gas industry have the ultimate goal of zero injuries and, in particular, zero fatal injuries within their workforce. Current injury trends show that the total recordable injury rate (TRIR) for a given company can still be systematically reduced year on year if the right commitment and focus is given to safety. This does not hold true in many cases for the fatal accident rate (FAR) which often no longer mirrors the TRIR trend as one would intuitively expect. This begs an answer to the question of whether the tools and methods used to reduce fatalities are still working. This paper demonstrates that Heinrich's principle works only when applied to a large number of combined hazards and activities. The paper shows that ratios postulated by Heinrich do not work when applied to specific activities. The result is that companies tend to over focus on the easily identifiable risks which follow the Heinrich triangle but are often nonfatal, at the cost of losing sight of activities that have the potential of a fatal outcome.By drawing on the 2.3 million risk reports recorded in the health, safety, and environment (HSE) database of an oilfield services company, the paper also demonstrates the value of focusing on risk potential-rather than only on actual event outcomeas a key tool for minimizing catastrophic loss. It discusses strategies of how to specifically target and actively work on improving the FAR as opposed to the more general TRIR.
The accident triangle, developed by H.W. Heinrich in the 1930s, is a fundamental cornerstone of safety philosophy which postulates that there is a numerical relationship between unsafe acts, minor injuries, and major (fatal) injuries. This principle has driven the approach and techniques used by all companies actively engaged in reducing injuries in the workforce for over 70 years.All companies in the oil and gas industry have the ultimate goal of zero injuries and, in particular, zero fatal injuries within their workforce. Current injury trends show that the total recordable injury rate (TRIR) for a given company can still be systematically reduced year on year if the right commitment and focus is given to safety. This does not hold true in many cases for the fatal accident rate (FAR) which often no longer mirrors the TRIR trend as one would intuitively expect. This begs an answer to the question of whether the tools and methods used to reduce fatalities are still working. This paper demonstrates that Heinrich's principle works only when applied to a large number of combined hazards and activities. The paper shows that ratios postulated by Heinrich do not work when applied to specific activities. The result is that companies tend to over focus on the easily identifiable risks which follow the Heinrich triangle but are often nonfatal, at the cost of losing sight of activities that have the potential of a fatal outcome.By drawing on the 2.3 million risk reports recorded in the health, safety, and environment (HSE) database of an oilfield services company, the paper also demonstrates the value of focusing on risk potential-rather than only on actual event outcomeas a key tool for minimizing catastrophic loss. It discusses strategies of how to specifically target and actively work on improving the FAR as opposed to the more general TRIR.
The oil and gas industry has reduced the fatal accident rate significantly over the last two decades, although in recent years this trend has slowed or stagnated, or in some cases fatalities have even increased. The reasons leading to many of these fatal incidents are not new. Incidents are often repeat events or events that are similar to previous incidents. So, the immediate question to ask is why have companies within the oil and gas industry, despite having investigated and communicated such events extensively, apparently not learned from past events? This paper discusses and defines what learning means in the context of learning from a past event. It identifies the types of events companies must learn from, namely those with a higher probability of a catastrophic outcome. Having defined these first two points, the paper presents a method that meets the requirements of a learning process. Participants who attend such a learning session are taken through a three-step process, which engages them at different stages. The aim is to let the participants derive the solutions that would have prevented the incident—instead of giving them the outcome of the investigation and the associated lessons learned. This paper presents a learning process that has been specifically designed to engage front line staff to gain a deeper understanding of lessons learned from past catastrophic or high potential events. The aim is to improve comprehension of what led to these events, to increase the memory retention of what would have prevented the catastrophic outcome, and to gain verbal agreement and commitment from the participants to apply the identified control measures needed to prevent a given event from happening again. This should ultimately lead to achieving further reductions in the fatal accident rate.
Performance monitoring and improvement are key elements of any safety management system. Companies record and review many different health, safety, and environmental (HSE) indicators on a monthly basis with the aim to continuously improve HSE performance. As a result, company management may initiate safety stand-downs and various campaigns based on month-to-month variations seen in key performance indicators (KPIs).Challenges involved with this include whether the changes seen in data represent an actual trend or whether they are just variations around a stable process. Other questions raised include whether the actions taken by management regarding an actual trend prove to be effective over time at countering a negative trend, and did an opportunity exist to identify the onset of a real trend earlier in time to enable a faster counteraction?To answer these challenges and questions, the authors investigated how control charts applied to one company's safety data detected statistically significant trends in a deterministic way. The paper describes how the authors incorporated control chart logic into a reporting engine to enable automated detection of trends and presents the authors' observations based on the results this method provided. The observations include how applying a control chart method reduced unnecessary or erratic safety initiatives due to otherwise incorrectly interpreted safety data.The paper also describes how the method provided a better indication of whether a safety campaign was having a statistically significant impact on safety performance over time and how, if it was not adding value, the campaign was stopped. Additionally, the paper examines how this method has a partially predictive capability as it enables identification of the earliest data point in a time series that could be the start of a new statistically significant trend and how this enables a company to take action before a negative trend can establish itself.
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