Safety Management Systems: Questioning Some Fundamentals

1.0 Abstract The Gullen Enquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster emphasised the importance of work practices as well as equipment hardware in ensuring safety offshore. In the complex offshore environment, the need to dovetail the various work practices and safety initiatives is paramount. The resulting integrated corpus is termed a Safety Management System (SMS). Many SMS concepts have been borrowed from the related discipline of Quality Management. Sometimes these concepts are used without thought as to what specific benefits they bring to safety. The authors believe that the industry is beginning to loose sight of utility when putting in place certain elements of SMS. Some work practices and initiatives are instigated because they are expected to be there rather than because of need. In three specific areas, BHP Petroleum has developed novel elements of their Safety Management System for North Sea Production operations in order to satisfy specific needs. The first element is Safety Auditing. BHP has developed a custom designed auditing system which focuses on the offshore installation rather than the overall Safety Management System. This auditing system takes as its point of departure the specific hazards that exist on the installation in question. The second element relates to safety responsibilities. In defining safety responsibilities, it is very easy to give individual members of the workforce too much direction. The result can be an overly proceduralised and rigid organisation. BHP are in the process of developing a system for delineating safety responsibilities in order to support training goals. This allows members of the workforce scope to apply good judgement in a goal setting way. The third element concerns the management of safety in contractors operations. Rather than requiring a contractor to import the Operators SMS, BHP has developed a mechanism for using and enhancing the Contractors existing Safety Management System. This paper provides a description of how these systems work.