Is There a Place for High-Reliability Organizations in Drilling?

Thorogood, John

doi:10.2118/151338-pa

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 12 publications

(4 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“… System and individual Petrochemical plant Resilience as an outcome Resilience promoting safety Skjerve et al (2012) Empirical Qualitative It investigates the potential of a coaching approach in promoting reflection about resilient collaboration. System and individual Production Resilience capabilities Resilience promoting safety Thorogood (2013) Conceptual Resilience as a characteristic of high reliability organizations (HRO). It provides actionable steps to the cultivation of resilience.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One way of analyzing such findings is to place the selected studies in a continuum ranging from formal and more technological approaches to informal and relational aspects of resilience. Examples of the first kind of study are the articles by Azadeh et al, 2016 , Rabbani et al, 2019 , Thorogood, 2013 , Thorogood and Crichton, 2014 . Azadeh et al (2016) operationalizes the concepts of resilience engineering in terms of human and equipment redundancy as a factor contributing to improving system efficiency.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Organizational resilience in the oil and gas industry: A scoping review

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Highlights An optimistic perspective on the concept of resilience in the oil & gas industry. Resilience presented as an analytical concept rather than guiding existing practices. Integrated operations has raised questions about system resilience. Research on resilience in oil and industry rarely describes adaptive processes. There is a need for research on resilience beyond safety concerns.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizational resilience in the oil and gas industry: A scoping review

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…First, they might consider developing in their teams the characteristics of high-reliability organizations [see Thorogood (2013) for further explanation]. They should acknowledge that nontechnical skills are an essential part of the supervisory skill set and train their people accordingly.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Thorogood and Crichton (2013) describe, incidents such as the shuttle losses of Challenger (1986) and Columbia (2003), the nuclear accidents at Chernobyl (1986) and Three Mile Island (1979), and the tragedy of the Piper Alpha offshore installation (1988) all emphasize the contribution of poor-situation awareness in the evolution of the events.…”

Section: Additional Interpretation Of the Event: Human Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Case Study of Weak Signals and Confirmation Bias in Drilling Operations

Thorogood

Crichton

Bahamondes

2014

SPE Drilling &Amp; Completion

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The paper presents a case study of the circumstances leading up to a situation in which a supposedly vertical well ended up at 14 before the deviation was detected and a correction could be made. This case study illustrates how a relatively routine activity could end up off the plan, and also highlights the impact of weak signals and confirmation bias on the situation.Process safety has become a focus of attention, with much work performed to ensure that organizations are educated and trained in the techniques necessary to avoid catastrophic incidents. Human error has come under the spotlight and "human factors," including nontechnical skills, are being included in training programs, such as well control. However, the language around human factors and the psychological terms used, such as "cognitive bias," "chronic unease," and "weak signals," are abstract and unfamiliar to the drilling community.The recent emphasis on human factors has mostly been placed on well-control training, suggesting that nontechnical skills are only required during abnormal events. Yet, as this case study will show, developing these skills, in general, brings benefits in routine operations to avoid what might be regarded as "normal" nonproductive-time incidents.By describing a real and very recent well incident, the paper shows how the same set of circumstances can be investigated from several different perspectives and how one can draw different conclusions about root cause, depending on the agenda of the investigator. There is no doubt that no single perspective fully explains what happened in this incident, and why, but traditionally there is little evidence of a human-factors perspective being adopted during incident investigations beyond the use of the label of "human error."The paper shows how, without the benefit of hindsight, the rig team made a perfectly reasonable set of decisions under the circumstances with which they thought they were being confronted. There was evidence in some of the data to suggest that the well was deviating from the vertical, but there were competing pressures on the team for them to disregard the warnings.Although there are certain obvious procedural and technical lessons to be drawn from the event, deeper lessons relate to the difficulties associated with overcoming the tendency to see what is expected and the central role played by leaders to support and commit to the time and cost of precautionary actions.It is hoped that the paper will encourage the drilling community to look beyond the apparent interpretations of an event to consider why it was that otherwise sensible people did what they did. There are many incidents of this type from which the community can learn at a relatively low cost, particularly focusing on the human-factors aspects. Yet, the learning from these incidents and the training to avoid them will, ultimately, develop the skills that will be instrumental in helping teams identify and react to conditions that might otherwise develop into a catastrophe. Description of TermsBefore c...

show abstract

“…Despite these unresolved questions, researchers have widened the application of high reliability theory to several other highly complex and consequential operational environments -for instance: healthcare (Chassin & Loeb, 2013;Ruchlin, 2004), power generation (Roe, Schulman, van Eeten, & de Bruijne, 2004;Roe & Schulman, 2008), oil and gas industry (Mannarelli et al, 1996;Thorogood, 2013), firefighting (Barton et al, 2015;Thomas, Fox, & Miller, 2015;Vidal & Roberts, 2014), the military (Bierly & Spender, 1995;Demchak, 1996) and construction (Busby & Iszatt-White, 2014;Olde Scholtenhuis & Doree, 2013). However, there are very few studies that have explored large-scale projects through the lens of high reliability theory and those that have are limited to either IT (Denyer, Kutsch, Lee-Kelley, & Hall, 2011;Sullivan & Beach, 2009) or construction projects (Brady & Davies, 2010;Olde Scholtenhuis & Doree, 2013).…”

Section: The Theoretical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responding to project uncertainty: Evidence for high reliability practices in large-scale safety–critical projects

Saunders

Gale

Sherry

2016

International Journal of Project Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In large-scale safety-critical projects unforeseen events and uncertainties must be carefully managed to safeguard the integrity of the end product and deliver projects to time and cost. Based on 47 'vignettes' of uncertainty across projects in two safety-critical sectors, this study provides an empirical examination of whether practices consistent with theories of high reliability organising are adopted by project managers as a response to project uncertainty. Our findings are that confronting uncertainties in safety-critical projects does involve many high reliability practices. Respondents expressed a sense of balancing competing demands, and provided evidence of learning, acting mindfully, avoiding over-rigid processes, and of upholding constructive tensions, conceptual slack and close interdisciplinary working.However these practices are often fragile in nature and dependent on key individuals. There are also differences between the two sectors studied, with more widespread evidence of high reliability project organising in civil nuclear than in aerospace projects.

show abstract

Is There a Place for High-Reliability Organizations in Drilling?

Cited by 10 publications

References 12 publications

Organizational resilience in the oil and gas industry: A scoping review

Organizational resilience in the oil and gas industry: A scoping review

Case Study of Weak Signals and Confirmation Bias in Drilling Operations

Responding to project uncertainty: Evidence for high reliability practices in large-scale safety–critical projects

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About