November 28, 2018 | Mark Paradies

Process Safety in the Oil Industry – Are These Unacceptable Performance Indicators?

I’ve written about Admiral Rickover and his approach to process safety (see these articles). Those who read the articles know Rickover would consider the following examples from UK HSE inspections (from North Sea oil drilling, production, and processing) unacceptable indicators of process safety performance:

20 of 33 safety critical valves on a fire main system found stuck open during an inspection
Frequently using trainees, apprentices, and assistants to replace fully qualified control room operators
Only 73% of safety critical maintenance is completed in a typical month
Dropping a 2.6 ton riser during lifting operations when a polypropylene sling broke

What do you think? Are these unacceptable process safety performance indicators?

What would Admiral Rickover expect? Try these results…

ZERO stuck critical safety valves.
Only qualified watch standers.
All safety critical maintenance complete.
Lifts that don’t fail because of proper planning and equipment.

Those are the standards Rickover would set for the Nuclear Navy.

I guarantee that problems like those found by the UH HSE would have resulted in a blistering “counseling session” by Admiral Rickover to the Commanding Officer of the ship or sub. If it was a repeated … the CO would be gone (relieved for cause). Rickover would expect that problems would be found and corrected locally long before a regulatory inspection.

What standards do you accept?

Are your problems found and corrected locally?

Do you have unacceptable process safety performance indicators?

What are the root causes of these failures?

Is it time to set higher standards and achieve much better performance?

NOW is the time to improve process safety performance by learning about best practices from around the world at the 2019 Global TapRooT® Summit coming up on March 11-15 in Houston (Montgomery), Texas. See the complete schedule here:

https://summit.taproot.com/schedule

Read about the Keynote Speakers here:

http://www.taproot.com/summit/keynote-speakers/