Lessons for rail from safety case approach to offshore petroleum – Part Two

By Jennifer Perry
Cleggs presentation included comparative and valuable lessons for the rail industry. He outlined a safety case approach to offshore petroleum and addressed the three major themes of the operators responsibility for safety management, the identification of the technical and managerial critical safety aspects of a facility, and workforce involvement.
Here is a continuation of the report.

John Clegg said that when he went out recently and spoke to middle managers and workers about what they think works for them in terms of health and safety, results were varied. Some of the priorities included:
. a clear regulatory framework
. a duty of care rather than a prescription regime
. an independent, competent, well-resourced regulator with full enforcement powers
. a balanced approach between promotion and enforcement/compliance
. the need to agree and monitor industry-wide improvement programs based on good data
. the need to find opportunities to involve the workforce and unions.
According to Cleggs survey, some of the things which dont work in terms of safety management included:
. overzealous inspectors
. lack of transparency
. regulators producing approved codes of practice
. a lack of technical skills and regulatory capture.
Clegg presented a number of case studies that highlighted the safety case approach to offshore petroleum including the Piper Alpha accident in 1988 that resulted in 167 fatalities.
He said that this incident was a turning point for the whole industry worldwide as it involved a huge loss of reputation. The accident also brought about great change in regulation, from prescription to goal setting (duty of care), in many countries including Australia.
The big lesson is [to] never let this happen...mitigation may not do a lot for you...and thats what the duty of care regime, where the operator is responsible for identifying and managing the riskscan deliver you, Clegg said.
Clegg went on to say that the operators job is hard:
They have to identify the hazards, assess the risks, identify all necessary control measures, understand the performance standards, and make sure controls are implemented, functional, maintained and audited.
The workforce also has to be competent in the management, maintenance and operation of the controls.
Interestingly, Clegg said that the major risk contributor in an offshore petroleum facility is transport.
Clegg used the example of a list of issues taken from the membership of the Society of Petroleum Engineers in 2005, of what future efforts were needed from regulators in the industry.
This list is also transferrable to the rail industry and included the points that: regulations should be based on good science; international regulator bodies need to be coordinated; international standards need to be developed; regulators need to cooperate with industry to combat corruption, they need good communication and transparency, and should work with stakeholders to create a balance between prescription and performance-based regulations; regulations should be equitably enforced within and across borders; and regulators should make timely decisions on project approval requests.
Clegg moved on to discuss the safety case and the importance of seeing it as a methodology and a process, rather than a document and a regime.
At the heart of our safety case is a safety management system, Clegg said.
When we took over I dont think that the regulator had used the safety case much for its inspections.
What we do now before inspections, is identify the top major hazards, talk to offshore management, select, audit and test and make sure the workforce properly understand and that the controls are implemented, functional, maintained and audited.
As a regulator you need transparency, competence and consistency and you must make sure...you dont work too closely - keep a professional distance.
In closing, Clegg said that leadership, skills and people shortages, and training and competence are all issues in his industry and that maintaining and improving reputation and building operational capability are key issues for NOPSA.
Good health and safety is good business; it must be number one, he said.
Clegg told Rail Express that he was struck by the statement of a CEO of one of the rail companies in one of the panel discussions at the conference that the industry had too many regulations, too many regulators and not enough safety.
The quickest way through this is to scrap the State-based prescriptive regime, much of which has been developed in response to individual incidents, implement a goal setting duty of care regime and put in place a single national regulator that is competent, consistent, independent, transparent and well funded.
I truly believe that what gets measured gets done; the [rail] industry needs to agree [to] a single set of simple performance indicators, both leading and lagging, and benchmark themselves.
This would be very powerful, because as part of the process, the industry and the regulator would need to work collaboratively to analyse the business and identify the key measures, and benchmarking would enable operators to rank themselves - nobody likes to be in the lower quartile.
This could be an extension/progression of the safety culture model/questionnaire that is currently being run-out across the industry.

If you would like to read the first part of this story, click here.