Working Together For Safety: A Project To Identify And Recommend On Use Of Best Practices, Involving Employer'S Organisations, Unions And Authorities
Authors: Erik Wiig 
Published: December 2007

What do you do when there is a gap in the perception of safety performance and safety standards between management and employees, authorities and society at large, and the industry reputation is at stake?

This was the background for why the project "Working Together for Safety" (SfS) was established. How trust gradually was rebuilt between employers, authorities and employee's organisations.

This is also about a working program, which was established and agreed as a result of extensive teambuilding, and the good results obtained so far.

The main task has been to identify Best Practices and recommend these to the parties involved who have committed themselves to implement the recommendations.

The project covers the whole chain of activities within E&P, comprising drilling, construction, operation, logistics, maintenance and abandonment.

Introduction

During the last parts of 1990ies the focus on safety was gradually weakened in the companies working on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). Rationalisation and effectiveness were high on the agenda. Gradually priorities changed while personnel involved perceived that they still were on a positive trend regarding safety performance. Most people thought that they could keep the momentum on safety while at the same time focusing on cost and productivity.

When E&P business was introduced on the NCS in the late 60ies, safety, or HSE for that matter, was not taken as seriously as we would expect, when handling hydrocarbons. Bad safety habits and a macho culture became dominant in many companies. Although technical safety standards were strict and prescriptive, safety attitudes and safety in operations was generally poor.

Historically, Norwegian industry in general also had a bad safety record. Focus had for many years been on the major task to rebuild the country after the Second World War, and historically nobody had bothered too much about safety, except when serious accidents happened.

Typically the LTI frequency rate in some industries was in the order of 50 to 100 per million man-hours exposure.

Tragic accidents like the capsizing of Alexander Kielland made the industry, general public and the authorities to demand better safety performance and safe operations. The industry had to change.

Large safety campaigns were introduced in the companies and in the Norwegian Oil Industry Association (OLF). A huge national safety research programme was launched in mid 80ies and ran for seven years, aiming at competence development.

The safety performance now improved steadily. Typically the early improvements were impressive. But as the improvements got more and more difficult, the safety statistics were flattening out. The co-operation in OLF on safety issues and the steady work did not result in notable improvements any longer and we did not produce safety results, as was expected.

The trend was even turning, and instead of improvements, we could see a slight negative trend in some companies.

The industry was accused of not taking safety seriously any more. Employees expressed their concern in public, and the public at large was very sceptical.

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) had for a time expressed their concern, not only based on statistical measures, but also on an objective review of the situation through their supervision and audits of the industry.

A debate took place in all media on the topic of safety, outlining the theme "How safe is safe enough". While management representatives from the industry claimed that there had never been such an excellent safety performance and high safety standards before, unions, authorities, politicians and public were of the opinion that safety standards had deteriorated and that safety statistics published did not give a true picture. The differences in opinions on the actual situation gave clear indications that stakeholders were far apart. The situation culminated when the Norwegian parliament asked for a "White Paper" on safety to be presented.

This was a very serious situation for the industry regarding our reputation and had to be managed!