The benefactor of an annual Oil and Gas UK safety prize has warned that management must work more closely with the offshore workforce in the fight to reduce hydrocarbon leaks.
One of the main challenges facing the industry is asset integrity in the face of ageing infrastructure; the very place that many hugely-knowledgeable workers ply their trades.
The service sector entrepreneur, who wished to remain anonymous, told Energy: “There remains a gap between operational decision-making and the condition and capability of equipment.”
He said good progress has been made towards the target of a 50% reduction in North Sea hydrocarbon leaks, set by Oil and Gas UK last year. However, it was pointed out that last month’s Cormorant Alpha incident showed there is still much to do.
Despite safety changes, which have been based primarily on people and process, including better training and new management systems, improvements are still falling victim to institutional blockages.
The gap between management and the workforce is accentuated in the industry due to factors such as staff not always being able to visit the shore-side office at the end of a contract.
The benefactor said safety must be moved to a higher plane and a critical key is shop-floor buy-in.
“We need the workforce coming through with ideas, confident that their views will be respected,” he said, explaining that this bottom-up approach lies behind the Ideas in Safety Prize launched last year and which rewards technology-based safety solutions that come directly from the workforce.
It hopes to re-capture the old-school spirit of engineering ingenuity and improvisation in the workplace to improve safety offshore.
“The best ideas come from the coal-face and I hope the prize will incentivise employees to come forward themselves,” he said.
The £5,000 prize will be awarded to an individual or team working aboard a UK offshore facility who come up with an original, effective way of reducing or preventing leaks of hydrocarbons. It will be part of this year’s Oil and Gas Industry Safety Awards scheduled for April 24.
The proposal can be an invention, a new method or process or even an unproven idea with potential.
The 2012 prize was won by Stork Technical Services’ on-site machining and bolting team.
They devised a clamp system to allow the safe replacement of corroded and substandard flange bolts, without interrupting flow-through. The system has since been granted technical authority approval by a number of operators.
Nominations for the prize are open until March 1.