“We should be ashamed of ourselves if we let our lawyers stop us from sharing things that can save people, businesses and lives,” a top North Sea safety boss has warned.
The chief executive of Step Change in Safety held industry to account at Offshore Energies UK’s HSE conference in Aberdeen.
Standing at the lectern at the Granite City’s P&J Live, he said: “Today I’ve heard many stories for people that stood at this very lectern who shared an incident is barely a month old.
“I could tell you we struggled to get incidents shared that of 2-3 years old.”
Mr Rae was referring to a major safety incident involving a helicopter in the North Sea during Storm Otto.
TotalEnergies opened up about the incident at the same conference the Step Change in Safety spoke at, saying “someone could have died” when blades from the helicopter ripped off on the Elgin installation while workers were still on the helideck.
The oil major said it is opening up in hopes of encouraging others in the industry to move towards transparency in HSE lessons.
“We could have kept quiet, we could have dealt with this internally, we could have kept the video to those that saw it within the boardroom and not allowed it to go any wider than that,” Ms Finnie told the conference.
“We cannot let the fear of judgment get in the way of doing the right thing for safety – so we released the footage.”
After those in attendance heard from the “industry guide dogs,” HSE and OPRED, Mr Rae said: “You have a duty of care not only to our colleagues and yourselves but to our families, our country and the security of our energy.”
“Poor leadership at any level will erode your safety culture,” he said.
Mr Rae told the delegates in Aberdeen that leadership is key to ensuring the safety of the offshore workforce.
He said: “Poor leadership has typically been associated with many tragic events that we have seen in our industry over the years.”
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