TRB Special Report 309: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Offshore Safety and Environmental Management Systems (2012) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 21-30
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From page 21... ...
The Committee on the Effectiveness of Safety and Environmental Management Systems for Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Operations (the committee) , which conducted the present study, was charged with recommending a method of assessing the effectiveness of operators' SEMS programs on any given offshore drilling or production facility.
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From page 22... ...
. Mandating SEMS programs and ensuring their effectiveness is a step toward improving governmental oversight of the offshore oil and gas industry and industry implementation of reforms to reduce the risk of accidents and to improve safety, which is needed according to some of the investigations of the Macondo well blowout (e.g., NAE-NRC 2011; National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling 2011)
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From page 23... ...
This compliance mentality does not necessarily correlate with an increase in the level of safety attitudes and actions on the part of the companies and individuals involved in the actual operations. Instillation of an appropriate culture of safety in an operation requires mechanisms that • Establish structure and control by specifying what is needed for safe operation and checking to see that these specifications are being followed, and • Build competency by developing individual knowledge and skill.
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From page 24... ...
It is much harder, if not impossible, to identify similar statistics that correlate with what the Occupational Safety and Health Administration calls "process safety" and what the National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council Committee for the Analysis of Causes of the Deepwater Horizon Explosion, Fire, and Oil Spill to Identify Measures to Prevent Similar Accidents in the Future (NAE-NRC 2011) calls "system safety" (i.e., the possibility of the occurrence of a very low-probability, very high-consequence event such as the Macondo well blowout)
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From page 25... ...
These agencies have found that engagement with the industry is more productive than punishment, although they maintain the threat of punishment if needed. Recommended AppRoAch On the basis of the information obtained from presentations to the committee, site visits, published regulations, notices of proposed rulemaking, API-recommended practices, and previously published reports, the committee recommends that BSee take a holistic approach to evaluating the effectiveness of SemS programs.
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From page 26... ...
. Making judgments about organizational safety culture and SEMS compliance will require training inspectors and scheduling of inspections to allow inspectors to spend more time offshore interacting with operating staff and observing day-to-day operations.
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From page 27... ...
BSEE, in consultation with the industry and, potentially, the Center for Offshore Safety, should develop an approach to certify auditors, develop audit standards, and establish the process by which audits themselves are conducted. BSEE Audits BSEE should perform complete or partial audits of SEMS programs when justified by reports from inspectors, reviews of operators' audit reports, incidents, or events.
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From page 28... ...
Whistleblower program BSEE should establish a whistleblower program to help monitor the culture of safety that actually exists at each installation and to help uncover any improprieties in its own operations. Workers must have a way to anonymously report not only dangerous deviations in norms and motivations that may not be obvious to BSEE inspectors or even to internal auditors, but also unprofessional conduct by BSEE's own staff.
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From page 29... ...
RefeRenceS Abbreviations API American Petroleum Institute BOEMRE Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement NAE-NRC National Academy of Engineering–National Research Council NRC National Research Council API.
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From page 30... ...
National Academies Press, Washington, D.C. National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.
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