Page 97 - Hydrocarbon Exploration and Production Second Edition

84 Safety Culture

High
A

number of accidents

B

Low
Low employee commitment to safety High
Figure 5.1 Safety performance and employee commitment.

Another measure might be the monetary cost of a safety incident. Many
techniques are applied to improve the company’s safety performance, such as
writing work procedures and equipment standards, training staff, performing safety
audits and using hazard studies in the design of plant and equipment. These are all
very valid and important techniques, but one of the most effective methods of
influencing safety performance is to create a safety culture within the company.
The practising engineer has an excellent opportunity to influence the safety of
operations by applying techniques such as hazard and operability studies (HAZOP) to
the design of plant layout and equipment. This technique involves determining the
potential hazard of an operation under normal and abnormal operating conditions,
and considering the probability and consequences of an accident. This type of
study is now commonly applied to new platform design and to the evaluation
of refurbishment on existing platforms. Some examples of innovations in platform
design which have resulted from this type of study are

freefall lifeboats, launched from heat shielded slipways on offshore platforms
emergency shutdown valves installed on the seabed and topsides in incoming and
outgoing pipelines, designed to isolate the platform from all sources of oil and gas
in an emergency
protected emergency escape routes with heat shielded stairways, to provide at least two
escape routes from any point on the platform
physical separation of accommodation modules from the drilling/process/compression
modules (creating a pressurised ‘safe haven’). On an integrated platform the areas
are at opposite ends of the platform, and are separated by fire and blast walls