Human and Organizational Factors in Deepwater Applications
Authors: Curole Michael A. , McKinney Anne , McCafferty Denise 
Published: October 2008

Human and Organizational Factors have been incorporated in all Shell Deepwater Projects since 1990. This paper discusses Shell Deepwater's experience with Human and Organizational Factors. A description of Shell Deepwater's history of Human and Organizational Factors efforts, the successes and failures, and the current state of these efforts will be discussed in relation to the following sub-elements of Human and Organizational Factors: Management Participation, Workplace Design, Personnel Selection, Environmental Control, Interpersonal Relationships, Training, and Job Aids.

This paper will be of interest to all firms that engineer, construct, and operate offshore installations. It will provide a blueprint of one company's attempt to incorporate Human and Organizational Factors into its design, construction, and operation of offshore structures. It will also suggest where a firm might begin to enhance its safety performance by incorporating Human and Organizational Factors.

The paper will show in which areas Shell has successfully incorporated Human and Organizational Factors into its business. A qualitative perspective of the effort's accomplishments will be presented.

This paper will demonstrate that Human and Organizational factors play a significant role in providing an offshore installation that can be operated and constructed with enhanced safety performance.

Introduction

As Shell Oil Company undertook its venture into deepwater offshore operations, the organization began to consider new ways of improving its approaches to design, operations and maintenance. Shell recognized that the new deepwater facilities would be bigger, more complex, and would require a much larger staff to operate and maintain the systems and equipment, raising the potential for losses from personnel injuries, fatalities or property damage. Around this time, Shell also realized that human error was another factor that could have huge effects on the safety of its facilities. A variety of catastrophic accidents in other parts of the world reinforced that many fires and explosions are the result of human error. In the search for ways to control losses and reduce human error, Shell decided to investigate the potential benefits of incorporating human factors engineering in their design process.

History of Shell's HOF Efforts

In May of 1990, Shell Offshore initiated its first formal Human Factors Engineering (HFE) program in the design of an offshore platform. At that time, the design for its first tension leg platform (TLP), Auger, was two years old. Shell assigned a human factors engineer to work with the Auger design team to determine what improvements might be possible. This effort did yield numerous contributions, but since the majority of the engineering design was already completed, the number of feasible improvements was restricted. It became evident that maximum advantage would have been gained by including HFE from the beginning of the design process. Starting on the Mars TLP, this is just what happened: human factors engineering became an integral part of the engineering design effort. The subsequent platforms, Ram-Powell, West Delta 143 and Ursa, have all included human factors elements gleaned from previous platforms, as well as new input from human factors specialists from design inception. The newest TLP, Brutus-Glider, is following this tradition.