Assessment of Safety Management Systems in the Oil and Gas Industry
Authors: Santos-Reyes Jaime , Santos-Reyes Daniel 
Published: October 2008

Recent major disasters, such as San Juanico fire (Mexico City, 1984), Bhopal (India, 1984), fire at the Manchester Airport (UK, 1985), Challenger spacecraft explosion (USA, 1986), Chernobyl (Ukraine, 1987), Piper Alpha fire (UK, 1988), and the more recent world-wide air and train crashes have highlighted the need for effective safety management systems (SMSs). Managing the risks associated with an organisation's operations has been a subject of increasing importance over recent years. However, very little emphasis has been given in both academe and industry to define what constitutes either a safety management system (SMS), or an effective SMS. There are still no well-defined and accepted criteria that may help to establish an effective SMS in the oil and gas industry. This paper addresses this issue and presents a Systemic Safety Management System (SSMS) model that aims to maintain risk within an acceptable range in an oil and gas organisation's operations in a coherent way. Then this systemic approach is used as a diagnostic tool to assess the effectiveness of the existing safety management systems standards. This assessment process drew examples of SMSs from existing standards and management systems in the oil and gas organisations to show the value of the SSMS model. It is hoped that this systemic approach will lead not only to more effective management of safety, but also to more effective management of safety, health and the environment for any organisation.

1. Introduction

Traditionally, both academe and practitioners have tended to address safety by focusing on technical aspects and looking for the immediate causes of accidents after they have taken place. Recent major accidents or disasters, such as San Juanico fire (Mexico City, 1984), Bhopal (India, 1984), fire at the Manchester Airport (UK, 1985), Challenger spacecraft explosion (USA, 1986), Chernobyl (Ukraine, 1987), Piper Alpha fire (UK, 1988), and the more recent world-wide air and train crashes have highlighted the need for addressing safety pro-actively. In addition to this, the emergence of new regulations and international standards have driven organisations to improve their safety performance. As a result of this, organisations have to some extent shifted from a reactive approach to a pro-active approach to safety [1,2,3]. In this new perspective, Quantified Risk Assessment (QRA) is usually used to identify the main contributors to the risk, estimate risk levels and assess their significance, and devise actions to control them [4].

Managing the risks associated with an organisation's operations has been a subject of increasing importance over recent years. However, very little emphasis has been given in both academe and industry to define what constitutes either a safety management system (SMS), or an effective SMS. There are still no well defined and accepted criteria that may help to establish an effective SMS. In the oil and gas industry, for example, the Offshore Installation (Safety Case) regulations [5] emphasise that the term ‘management system’ means 'the organisation and arrangements established by the duty holder for managing his undertaking.