Increasing Operational Managers' Awareness and Ability to Address Major Accident Risk by Means of Operational Training

Abstract

Abstract Major accidents are rare for any individual oil and gas company, but not for the industry. The individuals’ and organizations’ memory and awareness may therefore tend to diminish over time. To increase awareness towards, and hence reduce the risk of major accidents, a series of training sessions have been conducted for the 28 on-shore management teams of the Statoil NCS operations in the period 2012-2015. The competence and skills of individuals at management level who introduce risk and therefore also manage risk on each oil installation have been addressed. The program has been tailor made to the management teams with special emphasis on onshore managers including relevant managers from contractors. The training cases have been designed to be realistic and are based on their own work environment. The objective has been to enable the operational management team to understand and recognize the prerequisite and "nature" of a major accident "chain of events" and increase their ability to simultaneously address major incident potential, as well as daily risk. The top management has in the same period received training relevant to their roles and responsibilities. The program increased the managers’ awareness, competence and skills towards major accident risk. The individual knowledge on major accident risk was strongest related to technical and sharp end issues compared to human, organizational and blunt end issues. The importance of and focus on the onshore preparation work, the blunt end, represented important learning for a majority of leaders. The acknowledgment of interdisciplinary understanding and importance of quality in the risk assessment and decision making yielded all groups to alter routines post training sessions. The inclusion of relevant contractors gave a positive effect in the understanding of how risk is transported between organizational units. It is important to put major accident risk on the agenda at all levels in the organization. This paper reviews how Statoil NCS, through training of management teams, have addressed the individual and organizational knowledge and awareness towards major accident risk in normal operation. The paper is written to share experience and get feedback that can enforce this effort.