Behavioral Safety, Success Factors
Authors: Denney Dennis 
Published: February 2015

This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper SPE 118311, "Behavioral Safety at RasGas Company Limited Doha Qatar, Success Factors," by Ramasamy Arunachalam, RasGas Company, prepared for the 2008 Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 3–6 November. The paper has not been peer reviewed.

Unsafe acts account for approximately 88% of accidents, followed by unsafe conditions (10%) and acts of providence (2%). Unsafe acts result from unsafe behavior. In an analysis of management-system faults that trigger accidents, unsafe behavior is the most common. Although it is important to track injury-related incidents, the incidents themselves most likely are the result of actions taken by one or more people.

Introduction

To eliminate injuries, proactive monitoring is recommended. Although tracking incidents is important, measuring the potential for incidents to occur also is important. This approach allows the worksite to make adjustments before personnel injury occurs or property is damaged.

A proactive approach measures safety in terms of ongoing behaviors and measures how often employees perform "safe" vs. "at-risk" behaviors on a daily basis. This approach is most effective when behaviors that relate to previously incurred incidents are studied.

RasGas Example

A review of injury records showed a high occurrence of hand-related injuries. Knowing that appropriate use of gloves should prevent those injuries, RasGas used a behavior-based safety process to measure how often employees wore gloves in situations warranting their use. By observing occurrences of this safe behavior (i.e., use of gloves during critical times), RasGas found a remarkable reduction in hand-related injuries. With the appropriate use of gloves, the company has experienced no hand-related injuries.

Behavioral Safety

RasGas is a leading supplier of liquefied natural gas and has developed a safety process in which the workforce participates. This systematic behavioral-safety process can be implemented and monitored such that both management and the workforce receive feedback. The intention is to focus workers’ attention and action on safe behavior to avoid injury. Interventions are aimed at observable interactions between safe behavior and the working environment.

Behavior-based safety was a major safety initiative introduced in 2006. This initiative focused on improving performance by targeting people's behavior. Unsafe behavior triggers most workplace incidents. People often behave in an unsafe manner because they perceive that "cutting corners" makes their job easier, yet will not result in injury or incident. However, these "shortcuts" can result in serious incidents and/or severe injuries. Eliminating all incidents by means of engineering solutions and management procedures appears ideal. However, these strategies do not always work as intended, simply because it is the individual who chooses whether to adhere to safety or not. Behavioral safety targets these types of behavior to reduce the number of incidents, with the aim of achieving a zero accident rate.