Summary Many oilfield companies require field crews to systematically analyze safety aspects of their activities before starting work. Most commonly this process is called a job safety analysis, or JSA. Recent developments in measuring safety performance have changed the JSA process by better defining its function, as explained in this paper. This change provides major improvements and is rapidly gaining acceptance throughout the Gulf of Mexico petroleum industry. An informal survey of Gulf of Mexico offshore production facilities and drilling rigs showed that JSAs tend to be viewed as a tedious formality that crews comply with only because they are required to do so. For a typical jackup drilling rig, adopting the new JSA process and its standards can reduce the total time spent in JSA meetings from approximately 30 man-hours per day to fewer than 4 man-hours per day. In general, work crews enthusiastically approve of the new style of JSA because of the time savings and because it clarifies key responsibilities. Where conventional JSAs simply identify things that should happen, the new style causes things to happen, and the result is a considerable reduction in the likelihood of accidents. Introduction Major oil companies often require their own employees, and most contractors, to use a JSA process (although the process is sometimes referred to by another name). The crux of the idea is that crews hold a meeting before beginning any job, analyze the job, and decide what they can do to prevent accidents during the job. While visiting rigs, production facilities, construction sites, and other work areas, a considerable difference between perception of implementation and the actual implementation of JSAs was noted. For example, on one location the noise level was so high outside the offices and quarters that everyone had to wear hearing protection. The crew gathered and the supervisor read a JSA while the crew members stood, unable to hear any of the JSA information. The crew then completed the job and the supervisor filed a report stating that a JSA was conducted according to the requirements of the company policy. It was no surprise to find the crew was privately scoffing at the JSA process and viewed it as bureaucratic excessiveness. Company health, safety, and environmental departments often believe the JSA process is being followed and accepted scrupulously by work crews; they may even identify records and testimonies that support that conclusion, as in the example above. However, objective observers who spend enough time with a work crew to gain their confidence often find people privately confessing they see no benefit in the JSA process and generally consider it a required-but-meaningless formality. This situation is common throughout the industry: management sends out strongly worded orders that a JSA must be conducted and they get back reports that the order was followed, but what actually happens has little or no effect on the probability of accidents. Because of this, it was necessary to develop a better way to accurately gauge the effectiveness of a JSA program. A JSA is valuable only if it prevents accidents, but even without a JSA, most jobs would not result in an accident. That makes it hard to determine if the JSA made a real difference. The problem is amplified by official or unofficial programs that encourage employees to hide accidents or to change their records. In many instances, accident reports are distorted to make the occurrence of accidents seem less frequent than they really are. How, then, can management better determine whether a given accident report decreased the chances of that particular accident occurring again? How, then, can we prove that a JSA actually decreased the chances of accidents occurring? Effective JSAs produce the same corrective actions produced by a good accident report. The only difference is that the JSA determines the corrective action before, rather than after, the accident occurs. Therefore, the effectiveness of a JSA can be measured by the exact process used to measure the effectiveness of corrective actions in accident reports (Veley 2002). This means that an effective JSA is a plan, or a prearranged schedule of events leading to a particular objective. To meet theis definition, a JSA must produce specific things to do that will become corrective actions when they are assigned.
TX 75083-3836, U.S.A., fax 01-972-952-9435. ProposalSafety performance is an increasingly important factor in deciding which bidders get contracts. Companies also make safety performance an important element in selecting employees for promotion, or for termination. The stakes are high, and it is critical that safety performance measurements accurately reflect probability of future accidents.Conventional measurements are proving to be unreliable indicators of the future and can cause contracts to go to bidders with the highest, not lowest, probability of accidents. They punish supervisors and companies for things they cannot control. Additionally, they can unfairly derail the careers of capable employees at all levels. This new system rewards supervisors based on corrective actions entirely within their control. It receives strong approval from all management levels, and is proving much more effective in preventing accidents. Now, a new metric is available that eliminates these problems. It is based on a simple, objective, highly reliable system of evaluating corrective actions. This new system generates a single number directly indexed to future safety performance. The system eliminates problems with conventional frequency and severity ratios, and it is proving to be a powerful management tool in many ways. It is currently being tested and implemented by large and small companies throughout all of the industry.
TX 75083-3836, U.S.A., fax 01-972-952-9435.
The Oil and Gas E&P industry has embarked upon the journey to a zero incident workplace. SPE has taken a leading role by organizing forums such as "Getting to Zero - An Incident-Free Workplace: How Do We Get There?" To date, the industry has not yet reached its desired destination. This paper will describe five common opportunities for improvement in organizations that seek to reach the zero incident goal. A systematic examination of a large number of incident and accident investigation reports from a variety of E&P companies and contractors has been conducted, including both near miss and loss events. The analysis identified consistent areas where responses to an unplanned event are not effective in terms of likely reduction in future probability of the event reoccurring. This was found to be the case in a significant proportion of the event reports examined. The issues are common across all segments of the E&P industry examined. By understanding and addressing the identified barriers to success, the E&P industry will be better able to progress the journey to zero.
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