Applying Safety Lessons Learned from Commercial Aviation to Oil and Gas Industry

Commercial aviation safety-related protocols and initiatives have received considerable interest from several industries due to the widely recognition of their effectiveness as an ultra-safe industry. And yet, it’s not clear how to adopt these protocols in oil and gas sector. Thus, this article provides a typology of these protocols to apply to the oil and gas sector. This paper examines seven examples of error counter measures used in commercial aviation safety. Examples are Crew Resource Management (CRM) and Line Operations Safety Audit (LOSA) methodology. This would help in developing a conceptual typology that might potentially apply to the oil and gas industry. The initiatives examined in this article fall into twofold themes: concepts that seek to increase collective awareness of safety values; and concepts that promote safety by design. The results of this research revealed that all task checklists, joint safety briefings, and the confidential safety reporting system are protocols that help users routinely enhance workplace safety. However, initiatives such as the sterile cockpit system and LOSA approach in frontline operations fall under the responsibility of middle and upper management to ensure safety performance. Examining and discussing the proposed typology with the sector’s safety experts and front-line professionals before the implementation process would highlight any unanticipated challenges, and therefore proactively reduce them to promote an organizational safety culture in the oil and gas sector which enables operational cost reduction and mitigates loss-time injury. Finally, this study outlines that it is possible to benefit from aviation safety standards in the oil and gas sectors and achieve higher safety performance. Keywords: Oil Occupational Safety; Safety Management; Safety Culture; Aviation Safety; Threat and Error Management.