An Effective Health, Safety and Environmental Management System for Production Engineering Organization

Abstract

Abstract Successful health, safety and environmental (HSE) management is critical to the oil and gas Industry as no one can put a price tag on human life. HSE performance and business success are interdependent to achieve organizational goals. Saudi Aramco has created a corporate HSE management system for its organizations to address its own unique operating needs. Saudi Aramco also requested each organization to create its own HSE management systems based on the corporate HSE management system. The Southern Area Production Engineering Department (SAPED) at Saudi Aramco has developed a production engineering and operation HSE safety management system that addresses several safety items, such as risk assessment, operating standards, asset integrity, incident reporting, and emergency handling in 11 key elements. These elements are intended to provide clarity to SAPED personnel on the safety requirements and their roles and responsibilities. The appearance of this management system is seen as a milestone event and the vision is perceived as the objective. The move to management systems in operational fields recognizes the need for accountability, measurement, hazard management, feedback and priority of resource allocation. The management system deals with valuable human resources and assets including employees, wells, facilities, equipment and vehicles. For effective communication of these processes, SAPED assigned an HSE advisor for each organization and an HSE coordinator for each division to ensure full HSE compliance and implementation to enhance the overall organization HSE performance. SAPED has established systematic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to ensure meeting specific, measurable, applicable, realistic and time-bounded (SMART) objectives. This initiative has provided positive results, which include improved awareness of the SAPED HSE management system's expectations, improved understanding of SAPED HSE requirements, improved cooperation towards achieving the HSE goals and targets, and lowered accidents and incidents, which ultimately resulted in enhanced HSE performance. This paper outlines the processes, methodology and leading indicators analysis being used by SAPED for enhancing its HSE and KPIs performance through an effective HSE management system.