Applying Crew Resource Management on Offshore Oil Platforms

The aviation industry recognized the significance of human error in accidents almost 30 years ago and has been instrumental in the development of effective training programs, designed to reduce error and increase the effectiveness of flight crews, known as crew resource management (CRM; Wiener, Kanki, & Helmreich, 1993). Because of the success of CRM in the aviation industry, it has been adopted by a number of other professions, including anesthesiologists (Howard, Gaba, Fish, Yang, & Sarnquist, 1992), air traffic control (ATC; introduced in the United Kingdom as team resource management); the merchant navy (Byrdorf, 1998), the nuclear power industry (Harrington & Kello, 1992); aviation maintenance (Marx & Graeber, 1994) and, the subject of this chapter, teams on offshore oil and gas installations (Flin, 1995).