"Lives in My Hands": A Driving Safety Campaign for Transport Contractors

Abstract

A major oilfield services company has a project management group that, through the course of its business operations, travels over 38 million miles a year. This is an extremely large exposure to an activity that is the largest common cause of fatalities in the oil and gas industry. To exacerbate this exposure, 75% of this driving is subcontracted. Successfully managing contractors and subcontractors is a challenging task in our industry. Within the contracted group, there are approximately 200 transport contractors and logistic providers, and about 3,000 contracted vehicles operated by 8,000 different drivers. The escalating use of contractors came with an escalating and significant increase in the motor vehicle crash rate (MVCR). Vehicle rollovers within the contract group represented 11 crashes out of a total of 18 for the company over a 1-year period from May 2007 to May 2008. And some accidents had dramatic consequences, including one fatality and several major environmental spills. In order to manage the increased exposure and reverse negative trends, it was deemed critical to go beyond traditional approaches addressed by contractor management fundamentals. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a driving safety campaign aimed at transport contractors. The campaign contributed significantly to improved driving performance, with reductions in both the frequency and severity of transport-contractor–related incidents. The safety program was launched in 2008 on managed projects worldwide. The initiative analyzed existing performance, defined targets to ensure utmost positive impact, established clear roles and responsibilities, formalized package content in five languages, and implemented systematic monitoring processes to measure impact. The campaign materials put a strong emphasis on professionalism and on associated responsibilities with slogans such as: "I'm a professional driver," "Professional drivers don't…," and "Lives are in my hands." The paper also describes the campaign tool box that was developed to support the initiative. This program has created a solid foundation for further improvements in land transport safety. In a a typical well construction project, where operational continuity is imperative, field logistics is a key component that can have a significant impact on the project's success. Crashes, and other transport-related events, can cause significant delays which dramatically impact operational continuity. As well as this direct impact on NPT, another factor of even greater concern is the fact that crashes can cause other irreparable losses: human lives, life-altering injuries, and environmental damage.