Case Study: A Step-Change and Continuous Improvement in Safety Performance

Abstract

Abstract The contract drilling industry continues to injure too many people, especially U.S. Land. Industry's improvement has been slow, erratic and current accident rates remain high. U.S. Land contract drilling is most concerning, as this category of IADC's Accident Statistics Program consistently performs worst. Drilling contractors must take responsibility, and establish their own standards for safety. Today, the contractor / operator relationship is governed by contracts containing "knock-for-knock" indemnities and independent contractor status, and widely varying degrees of both operator safety support and drilling contractor safety ownership. Also, government authorities, such as OSHA, mandate that employers provide a safe workplace. Drilling contractors cannot be dependent on operators, nor government authorities, to provide, impose and / or enforce safety standards. In 1997, Nabors Drilling USA, Inc. ("NDUSA") made a commitment to create a step-change and continuous improvement in safety performance under the belief that all of its 5000 employees should return home without injury at the end of work. While NDUSA had historically performed better than industry peers, the company was not satisfied and thus established a framework, devoted the resources and set standards to achieve consistently challenging goals. During the subsequent three years, NDUSA and the industry experienced one of its most volatile and difficult operating periods in history. Since October 1997, NDUSA has achieved an 80% reduction in LTA incidence rate, 70% reduction in recordable incidence rate, and avoided 655 employee injuries. If NDUSA is compared to IADC's U.S. Land overall rate in 1998 and 1999, NDUSA alone prevented 90 workers from experiencing lost-time accidents and 250 overall recordables. From both a moral and economic standpoint, the effort is justified. If the whole U.S. Land industry had adopted such measures and achieved similar goals in 1998 and 1999, U.S. Land companies would have avoided a total of 445 (or 63% of) lost-time accidents and 1,225 (or 40% of) recordables.