Crew Habitability on Offshore Installations
Authors: McCafferty Denise B. , McSweeney Kevin P. , Baker Clifford C. 
Published: October 2008

To fulfill energy needs, Exploration and Production Companies are searching for oil and gas in deeper and deeper water. Consequently, installations are being positioned farther from shore and the length of stay aboard these installations for crews could also increase. Long stays offshore for crew members can challenge their mental and physical fitness levels, which in turn may impact crew and installation productivity, performance, and safety. To help maintain appropriate levels of fitness, crew members must be provided with properly designed accommodations and workspaces with favorable ambient environmental factors. To assist crew members in maintaining appropriate levels of fitness, ABS has developed a comprehensive guide that integrates human factors and ergonomics with accommodations and ambient environmental design criteria.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of the ABS Guide for Crew Habitability on Offshore Installations, which includes accommodations and ambient environmental criteria and measurement methodologies, as well as the results of field-test validation measurements for ambient environmental criteria on ships and offshore installations.

Introduction

In the offshore industry. crew members are often required to live at their workplaces (i.e., aboard offshore installations). While this facet is shared with some other industries, the conditions that personnel may be subjected to are unique and under some conditions may even be considered harsh. These conditions can take a toll on offshore crew members and can influence their performance by increasing physical and mental fatigue that can lead to an increased potential for human errors.

The quality of accommodations together with the ambient environmental conditions can also influence crew members' job performance, overall sense of comfort, and well-being. Additionally, attempts at optimizing staff levels and increases in the complexity of on-board systems due to technological advances, makes it vital that offshore crew members maintain enhanced levels of mental and physical fitness while aboard offshore installations. To maintain these enhanced levels of fitness, crew members need to be provided with well-designed accommodations spaces and workspaces.

Accommodations spaces and work spaces include areas where crew members work, rest, recreate, relax, and dine. Ambient environmental factors include vibration, noise, lighting, and indoor climate variables. All of these factors can influence human performance. For example:Vibration - Extreme levels, low and high, can expose the human body to acceleration vectors of varying directions and magnitudes, which can consume energy and induce fatigue.Noise - High noise from environmental or mechanicalsources, can significantly affect voice communications, audibility of signals and alarms, and the ability to rest.Lighting - Appropriate lighting levels are critical because vision is the dominant sensory channel for receiving information.Indoor climatic - Indoor climate variables can influence performance when conditions either change or become extreme. The author's believe that the accommodations and ambient environmental criteria presented in ABS Guide for Crew Habitability on Offshore Installations1 will costeffectively improve system performance and reliability by optimizing personnel performance, and promote health and safety by providing acceptable levels of crew habitability aboard offshore installations.

For the purposes of this paper, "offshore installation" is defined as a manned facility that contains hydrocarbon production and processing sys