Posted By David Allan
Those who work in the offshore industry, in particular the North Sea, are all too familiar with the ‘S’ word. As an Offshore Medic I am often privy to discussions on the subject by all levels of the workforce and it has occurred to me that the term ‘Safety’, can seem to encompass and aspire to so much and yet sometimes mean, and achieve, so little in practice.
Incidents, near misses, accidents, lost time incidents, reportable occurrences and all the paperwork generated by the many administration systems of various companies dominate these discussions. Safety, we are told, is the first priority of oil companies. If we can’t do it safety we shouldn’t do it. In themselves these are laudable objectives. Yet incidents and accidents continue to occur, and as colour graphs climb inexorably upwards, memos are circulated and overheads shown to group meetings, the pressure mounts. Safety awards or bonuses, (not to mention body parts), are at risk for the workers, closer scrutiny by regulatory bodies, (and the improvement notices etc. they threaten), seems inevitable for management. And as the pressure mounts the ‘S’ word is bandied about more and more in desperate attempts to prevent the next incident or accident. Safety as an issue looms over the workforce and everyone wonders who’s going to be next …..
Failure of safety, of course, has numerous consequences; harm to individuals, damage to plant and equipment, environmental damage and bad publicity to name but a few. However, it is the human element that we are rightly most concerned with in the first instance. You might think that with all the energy expended, and the time devoted, to issues of safety we would have things down to a fine art. But that does not seem to be the case, and in no small part achieving safe working practices is complicated by the numerous professions involved in the offshore industry and, more recently, the move to multiskilling/multitasking.
Safety is the holy grail, but how to achieve its acquisition, I believe, remains open to discussion. There are many vested interests in the subject of safety and it will take an open mind to consider the possibility of alternative approach.
Safety is a process. It is a way of living and working each of us must adopt in order to remain safe. It does not happen by itself. But safety means something different for each worker offshore, (because of their various professions), as each work process and work-scope is different. However, for any particular individual, the question of ‘how to be safe’ is best defined or described by imagining the absence of safe working practices. This is because each individual best knows what the consequences can be from working in an unsafe manner, thereby, (largely), having the opportunity to take ownership of the means to work safely.
The absence of safety leads to incident and accidents. An incident is a process; it is something that happens, and is important because it could have led to an accident, (which, by commonly understood definition, involves, or could involve, a human being). An accident is a process, usually rapid, that occurs to an individual and leads to an injury. But that is not the final outcome or consequence of an accident in human terms. Understanding what is, is the key to approaching the whole issue of safety differently, turning safety into an outcome rather than focusing on it purely as an instrument of good work practice.
If safety is the Holy Grail of offshore work practices, its acquisition as an outcome implies a process implemented to produce it. Yet with so many different working practices involved in the offshore setting how is this possible? Such a process would require a common denominator applicable to all workers, at any level of the hierarchy, in any work activity. There is such a common denominator and it is called ‘health’. It is the impact on an individuals’ health that is the most important, and sometimes far-reaching, consequence of an accident. The diminishment, temporarily or permanently of an individuals health as a result of an accident, and all the pain, suffering, anguish, disability, diminished quality of life - even death, that is implied in ‘diminishment of health’ is what matters about an accident. Safety equals the preservation of health.
An operational philosophy that focuses, in the first instance, not on the concept of safety per se but supports, educates and equips personnel to identify the risks to their health within their workscope, offers those personnel the opportunity to protect themselves throughout each and every shift. If offshore workers are truly able to work within such a philosophy, and by virtue accept the responsibility to avoid such risks, we will find they are working safely! If there is then an accident there will be two main reasons for its occurrence. Either there existed a risk that had not been identified or the worker chose not to protect himself from a known risk.
Identifying risk efficiently and comprehensively offers the opportunity for those carrying out the work to collaborate more closely with those planning the work, thus enhancing communication generally and the protection of health specifically. Where an incident or accident occurs because a risk was not identified, responsibility is more likely to be a shared rather than become an exercise in blame. All parties have the opportunity to learn from the experience and incorporate it into future work practices. Where an individual fails to take the opportunity to protect himself from an identified risk, responsibility will be more clearly defined as resting with that individual. This does not constitute a return to a blame culture. Being able to clearly define where a mistake was made will better protect the existing system of identifying risk, (and thereby educating, and supporting the individual to avoid that risk), and avoid unnecessary revision to and erosion of credibility to this system. It is, after all, a requirement of the Health and Safety at Work Act that workers, (at any level in the hierarchy), carry out identified systems of work so as not to prejudice their safety, (health), or the safety, (health), of others.
There will be those reading this essay who will feel that their company already incorporates provision for the identification of risk to their workers. This may be so. But the difference being suggested here is a change in emphasis. Traditionally the mantra is, Safety First’, with, in practice when work begins, the follow-on of mechanisms such as permit to work, job-specific risk assessments, manual handling assessments etc., which may or may not be used all the time or with particular effectiveness. It is not always the case that such mechanisms for identifying risk are seen as integral to an individuals safety, (and thereby health), but rather more something that is ‘supposed to be used’. Permit to Work systems, COSHH, Manual Handling Assessments, LOLER, etc., are all processes that are required by law to be used and regulatory bodies should be auditing them and not policing them. In addition, there are risks inherent within the constraints of working environments and processes which are site specific.
Consider then a company philosophy which extols to its workforce the objective of protecting their health. To do so the identification of risk to workers health at the worksite, becomes the First Priority, rather than safety, (safety then becomes the outcome of effective risk assessment, identification and mitigation). Promotion of statutory risk assessment mechanisms such as Permit to Work, COSHH etc becomes the focus of all pre-work activity for workers and a performance objective for management/supervision. Both statutory and local risk assessment mechanisms become much more widely and comprehensively used, enhancing familiarity of these mechanisms by the workforce and promoting the likelihood of their use within the variety of work activities on site.
Personnel at all levels within the company would require having the reasons for this change in emphasis explained. This is so that, at risk assessment meetings, toolbox talks and pre-work briefs etc., the terminology used changes from ‘working safely’, which can, in its present form, be ill defined for any worker, to ‘protecting health’ which is personal and person specific for every worker.
There is another reason why changing the emphasis from ‘safety’ to ‘protecting health’ is important and it has to do with mental models. If the reader of this article is asked, “not to think of an elephant”, it is almost certainly the case that the image of an elephant is exactly what sprang to mind. This occurs because the human mind is not good at managing certain mental exercises. The logic of the current emphasis on ‘safety at work’ is to engender individuals to avoid accidents. Yet as earlier explained, it is not the accident itself which is the true consequence of non-safety, or being unsafe. An ‘accident’ is a vague, ill-defined concept, (and does, in reality mean many different things), which in itself will do little to change behaviour or reinforce safe behaviour. One cannot truly imagine what it would be like to suddenly lose ones fingers for example: the shock, the fear, the pain, the anxiety induced by severed arteries or the diminished quality of life thereafter. We either intuitively avoid attempting to conjure up that mental picture or we cannot truly imagine it. And anyway, such an example is only one of a host of different types of accident that may occur to someone if they are unsafe and we tend not to expend energy on something we cannot define.
In contrast, statutory bodies such as Health Boards who are responsible for Health Promotion with their communities are placing more and more emphasis on helping people value the health they have – a concept which is personal, (person specific), and which focuses the mind on what health you currently have and the value the individual attaches to it . There is much greater merit in describing measures to preserve health, rather than attempting to repeat failed health promotion campaigns of the past in which attempts were made to scare people into changing behaviour by trying to have them imagine, for example, having lung cancer.
Health is something that is current, tangible and specific to the individual. If the reader is, at the time of reading this article, feeling well and comfortable, he or she can make the real-time decision as to whether they would like this to continue for the rest of the shift or offshore trip. If they do, they must recognise there are risks to their present state of health within their current workscope. These risks need to be identified and avoided, and if successful, they will find they have been working safely! If their health is diminished by a risk that was not avoided/foreseen then there has been a failure on their part or on their employers’ part to identify said risk, put measures into place to mitigate the risk and then adhere to those measures.
Health, as an issue to be actively included in planning to work safely, also has relevance to an ageing workforce offshore and the increasingly important role of Occupational Health and Health Promotion. In short, the health of the workforce is integral to operational considerations in the offshore setting. In terms of occupational health, the Medic acts as a resource and may undertake occupational health screening. However, occupational health is about the health of the worker during any particular activity. It is the workforce in its entirely that carries out occupational health and protecting health is central to it.
Oil companies need to reappraise how their workforce perceive the issue of safety and encourage them to make it the product of people helping each other to protect their health at, and during their work. Excelling at all forms of risk management will provide the opportunity for workers to adopt such a philosophy.
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