Rachael Gordon

The contribution of human factors to accidents in the offshore oil industry

Abstract Accidents such as the Piper Alpha disaster illustrate that the performance of a highly complex socio-technical system, is dependent upon the interaction of technical, human, social, organisational, managerial and environmental factors and that these factors can be important co-contributors that could potentially lead to a catastrophic event. The purpose of this article is to give readers an overview of how human factors contribute to accidents in the offshore oil industry. An introduction to human errors and how they relate to human factors in general terms is given. From here the article discusses some of the human factors which were found to influence safety in other industries and describes the human factors codes used in accident reporting forms in the aviation, nuclear and marine industries. Analysis of 25 accident reporting forms from offshore oil companies in the UK sector of the North Sea was undertaken in relation to the human factors. Suggestions on how these accident reporting forms could be improved are given. Finally, this article describes the methods by which accidents can be reduced by focusing on the human factors, such as feedback from accident reporting in the oil industry, auditing of unsafe acts and auditing of latent failures.

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.

Designing a Human Factors Investigation Tool to Improve the Quality of Safety Reporting

Engineers in the UK offshore oil industry endeavour to analyse the causes of accidents with regard to the human and organisational factors. However, their expertise tends to lie in the analysis of the technical failures. In an attempt to improve the investigation of the human factors causes of accidents, a human factors investigation system was developed for the UK Health and Safety Executive and five oil companies. The development and evaluation of two previous reporting systems provides the background to this current study, where both systems were found to increase the quantity of human factors information collected. The Human Factors Investigation Tool (HFIT) improves on these two systems, where it collects four types of human factors information including (i) the observable errors occurring immediately prior to the incident, (ii) the error recovery process, (iii) the information processing stage at which the error occurred and (iv) the underlying causes.