Process Safety for the Offshore Oil & Gas Realm

Though new regulations have changed the way offshore companies operate, the need to make safety part of an enterprise sustainability management strategy has never been more important. As accountability moves higher up the chain of command, operators are coming under increasing pressure to place an emphasis on HSE - especially with regard to human factors and workforce training. At the same time, juggling compliance efforts with daily safety concerns has forced a re-thinking of how to evaluate SEMS and training systems for overall safe operation and to drive strategic decisions.

Del Forbes, Worldwide Corporate HSE Auditor & Culture Assessor at Noble Drilling, recently spoke with marcus evans about key topics to be discussed at the upcoming 3rd Annual Offshore Safety & Workforce Capability Assurance Conference, October 2-4, 2013, in Houston. All responses represent the view of Mr. Forbes and not necessarily those of Noble Drilling and its subsidiaries.

In preparation of the corporate HSE audit / assessment, how do you recommend reviewing the trends and data sets, progress and status against a company’s HSE activity plan and then close out corrective actions?

DF: As for me, with regard to data trends, I avoid using the LTI or REC numbers, as lagging indicators, they do not necessarily reflect the effectiveness of management systems; because I really don’t know how much of it was method and how much was just plain old luck. I must dig deeper to answer the question of effectiveness. So during planning, I data mine the incident reports and any investigations associated with them. I look at past internal, external audit results then match those to the corrective actions and cause analysis. Lastly I look at the activity plan and research how it was developed. I.E. - was it imposed on the leadership or was it developed collaboratively with them to facilitate their ownership? Often not doing the latter is why reaching some activity plan’s targets are marginal. These actions give me several areas to look at and provide the audited a comprehensive analysis.