Bringing to life line-of-sight for major accident prevention

The process safety of exploration and production has evolved since Piper Alpha with safety cases, hazard identification studies (HAZIDs) in design and, more recently, Bow-Ties becoming industry norm; however, recent incidents such as Texas City, Macondo, Varanus Island and Montara have shown industry and regulators from the UK, Australia and beyond that complacency cannot be allowed. The industry has been acting on process safety, but it has struggled to bring it to life in daily operations. Missed warning signals, poor change management, failure to follow procedures, capability issues and lack of communication have been preventable factors in these incidents. Recent efforts in Australia, using the line-of-sight methodology, are advancing process safety by bringing to life major accident prevention. The methodology focuses organisations on systematic management of preventative barriers to accidents and can be applied to all elements of the value chain. The methodology involves: conducting analysis of safety cases; assessing performance standards and safety to identify critical preventative barriers; developing measures and assigning accountabilities to monitor barrier effectiveness; and, developing tracking and reporting systems to provide visibility across operations management. A case study about an Australian operator has shown benefits in improved safety and operational performance. This is done by focusing the operators on critical barriers (as well as their normal daily jobs), better visibility on the state of operations and hence allowing a proactive approach to managing process safety. The system is in its infancy, but it is being improved to support line-of-sight becoming a standard tool across the industry.