Kathryn Mearns

Measuring safety climate: identifying the common features

Abstract In UK industry, particularly in the energy sector, there has been a movement away from ‘lagging’ measures of safety based on retrospective data, such as lost time accidents and incidents, towards ‘leading’ or predictive assessments of the safety climate of the organisation or worksite. A number of different instruments have been developed by industrial psychologists for this purpose, resulting in a proliferation of scales with distinct developmental histories. Reviewing the methods and results from a sample of industrial surveys, the thematic basis of 18 scales used to assess safety climate is examined. This suggests that the most typically assessed dimensions relate to management (72% of studies), the safety system (67%), and risk (67%), in addition themes relating to work pressure and competence appear in a third of the studies.

Risk perception and attitudes to safety by personnel in the offshore oil and gas industry: a review

Abstract In the aftermath of the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988 and the subsequent inquiry and recommendations made by Lord Cullen in 1990, there have been legislative changes and a renewed committment to safety by oil companies operating on the UK continental shelf (UKCS). Part of this new regime involves the preparation of a ‘safety case’ for each installation operating on the UKCS. Details vary according to installation type and function, but, as a minimum, the safety case has to demonstrate that (i) the management systems comply with health and safety law; (ii) a regular independent audit of the management system has been provided for; (iii) potential hazards that can cause major accidents have been identified; and (iv) risks of major accidents have been evaluated and measures taken to reduce risks to personnel as far as is reasonably practicable. Much of the safety case depends on quantitative risk assessment to assess the effects of potential hazards to the installation and the personnel onboard; however, there is another side to risk estimates, namely the ‘qualitative’ or subjective risk perceptions of the people who work and live offshore and are actually involved in hazardous offshore operations. These subjective perceptions of risk form the basis for risk acceptance, regardless of the objective or quantified risk, and, as such, they are important for understanding feelings of safety, attitudes to safety, risk-taking behaviour and accident involvement amongst the workforce. The present review considers psychological studies of offshore workers on UK and Norwegian installations and discusses how working environment and socio-organizational factors can affect risk perception and attitudes to safety, and ultimately risk-taking behaviour and accident involvement, within this unique and specialized work group.

Facets of Job Effort in Bus Driver Health: Deconstructing "Effort" in the Effort-Reward Imbalance Model

This research aimed to test the relative value of developing and using job-specific facets of effort and testing them using J. Siegrists (1996) effort-reward imbalance (ERI) theory to extend understanding of how one might determine job strain in urban bus driving. In addition, the interactive effects of the ERI model are further investigated to address the lack of research into the relationships of the models constructs. Using focus groups and published papers, a measure of bus driver effort was created, which was subsequently completed by 186 male U.K. bus drivers as part of a questionnaire study. The results were factor analyzed to create 4 facets of effort, which demonstrated additional variance in predicting strain, above and beyond J. Siegrists original effort construct. One facet, workload and fatigue, was observed to be a particularly important contributor to strain. The analyses further indicated that the ERI models assumptions that ERI creates job strain could not be completely upheld, although poorer levels of reward and higher levels of overcommitment were strong main predictors of job strain. Research and applied implications are considered.

Assessing the Human Factors Causes of Accidents in the Offshore Oil Industry

In the past, industrial accidents were reported mainly in terms of technological malfunctions and the human element in accident causation tended to be ignored. Since the frequency of technological failures has diminished, the role of human error has become much more obvious. Preliminary investigations into the accident reporting forms used by some UKCS oil companies indicated that the human factor accident coding systems vary from company to company. The question which remains is : Do these systems adequately cover the human factor problems specific to the oil and gas industry ? Data from both the oil industry and other industries regarding human factors causes of accidents should enable the development of a more comprehensive human factor coding category for accident reporting systems. The present paper briefly reviews the international accident research in various industrial settings such as the nuclear, mining, marine and oil industries. A compilation of the human factors causes of accidents from these soures forms the basis for the assessment of accident reporting systems used on oil and gas installations on the UKCS. A review of the current accident coding systems used by 30 offshore oil operating and contracting companies in the UK will be presented. From this review, further examples are given for a comprehensive human factors coding system for use in the oil industry. It is intended that human factors coding categories are used for accident reporting, safety training and for raising awareness of the human factors causes of accidents.

The offshore supervisor's role in safety management : Law enforcer or risk manager

This paper describes a project (sponsored by the UK oil industry and Offshore Safety Division of the HSE) which is designed to examine the role of the supervisor in safety and to identify best supervisory practice in offshore work site risk management. To date there has been no in-depth investigation of the offshore supervisors safety and risk management skills. Research in a number of other industries (e.g. construction, transport and mining) has demonstrated the importance of the supervisor in the management of safety. The safety responsibilities of the offshore supervisor in the UKCS have changed due to the recent extension of onshore legislation to offshore installations. This legislative change has caused a shift away from prescriptive safety legislation to a regime based on risk assessment, placing a legal requirement on supervisors to assess and control the risks to which their work group are exposed. The supervisors role in safety management has been examined by carrying out semi-structured interviews with offshore supervisors. The Critical Incident Technique (CIT) has been used as the basis for the interviews that have been carried out to date. The CIT involved getting individual supervisors to describe two recent hazardous operations that their work group had performed, one that had gone as planned and one where there were some difficulties. The initial phase of interviews has identified the formal and informal risk assessment techniques currently being used by supervisors. The differences between supervisors who manage safety effectively and those who are less effective will be identified. How the results of the above and future interviews might be used to establish best supervisory risk management practices will be described.