Resilience Control Room Operator During Pandemic Covid-19

Abstract

Abstract The control room acts as a central nervous system facility. This is where important decisions, using complex systems, are made every day. The actions of control room operators have a direct impact on uptime, production yields, quality, and industrial plant safety. In addition, long working hours per shift result in fatigue, irregularity of circadian rhythms and sleep cycles, and decreased cognitive performance at the end of day and night shifts. Fatigue causes decreased alertness, attention span, poor memory, and concentration and affect other mental factors. ADNOC Gas Processing established Fatigue Risk Management Taskforce (FRMT) to adapt practices to the specific conditions and create a safer working environment, leading to happier and healthier employees and an overall community. In industries that run continuous and heavy-duty plants such as Oil, gas, and petrochemical, shift work ensures production flow. After the outbreak of Covid-19, business needs to adapt quickly so that their activities can run. The finding suggests that the workers' cognitive performance is reduced, shown by the increase of triggered alarm by the average of 14.39% higher than before the outbreak of Covid-19. However, with the ability to adapt and implement control and monitoring measures, the number of alarm rate gradually decreased. The study framework was proven to be a valuable tool that decision-makers can use, especially to measure the performance of control room workers and their psychological fatigue affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.