Posted By Richard McLellan I work in the offshore oil industry, overseeing our permit to work system. We use an electronic permit system which is pre-loaded with ‘hazards’ and ‘controls’ which can be selected as required. The HSE criticise the system as they see it has having several weaknesses. 1) Hazards and controls are ‘too easy’ to add to the permit, allegedly promoting lack of critical thought. They say this leads to overlong permits where the critical hazards are difficult to differentiate from lower risk hazards. 2) Lack of 'human factor' considerations in risk assessments and permits 3)Hazards ordered on the permit in alphabetical order. We are in the process of incorporating a software fix to enable hazard re-ordering the on the permit. This will allow hazards to be listed according to risk, or sequence encountered in the task. My question, after all this preamble is. Are you aware of any incident/s where the length, readability or hazard ordering of a permit to work was a contributory factor? I have plenty of expert opinion that this is important, but no actual evidence. In my (limited) experience, there are many incidents where the permit was not read or followed, or did not adequately identify and control the hazards of the task. The investigation team then recommends that additional hazards and controls are added to the procedure / permit for next time. I have not heard of an actual incident where the findings were that the permit was too comprehensive and some of the hazards and controls should be removed or reordered for clarity. But perhaps you know different..... Any cases where the permit format was considered a contributory cause to the accident?

Posted By Bob Youel I think that the HSE is correct; as the more we go to check sheets etc the more we move away from getting to grips with really assessing the situation & getting a false sense of security Check sheets are good for QA/accounts/IT systems etc however they move H&S management into a tick box system like all other areas Time & again I have reviewed PTW's that are not suitable & sufficient e.g. mobile maintenance crews re public petrol stations are a point in mind; as they have become to have the same meaning as as a time/QA sheet with blind belief in them being adequate without any reality checking being in place Get one out & 'proof it' - In my days offshore PTW's were seen as something special - I am now lead to believe that they have lost their way because they are treated in the same way as all other documentation

Posted By Richard McLellan Thanks for your replies. Our ptw processes normally result in good quality permits, the relevant personnel certainly always visit the worksite and write the the permit to fit the task. We audit them regularly to check this. So, I am not looking for cases where permits were poor quality, ie technically incorrect- as I accept this can contribute to incidents. What I am looking for is evidence that technically correct permits can cause problems due to their formatting / layout or general user unfriendliness. Evidence and specific cases would be preferable to unsubstantiated opinion, as I am never short of third party opinions. But amusing, well-informed or wildly irrational opinion is always welcome Richard