The Offshore Supervisor's Role in Safety Management: Law Enforcer or Risk Manager

Abstract

Abstract This paper describes a project (sponsored by the UK oil industry and Offshore Safety Division of the HSE) which is designed to examine the role of the supervisor in safety and to identify best supervisory practice in offshore work site risk management. To date there has been no in-depth investigation of the offshore supervisor's safety and risk management skills. Research in a number of other industries (e.g. construction, transport and mining) has demonstrated the importance of the supervisor in the management of safety. The safety responsibilities of the offshore supervisor in the UKCS have changed due to the recent extension of onshore legislation to offshore installations. This legislative change has caused a shift away from prescriptive safety legislation to a regime based on risk assessment, placing a legal requirement on supervisors to assess and control the risks to which their work group are exposed. The supervisors role in safety management has been examined by carrying out semistructured interviews with offshore supervisors. The Critical Incident Technique (C1T) has been used as the basis for the interviews that have been carried out to date. The CIT involved getting individual supervisors to describe two recent hazardous operations that their work group had performed, one that had gone as planned and one where there were some difficulties. The initial phase of interviews has identified the formal and informal risk assessment techniques currently being used by supervisors. The differences between supervisors who manage safety effectively and those who are less effective will be identified. How the results of the above and future interviews might be used to establish best supervisory risk management practices will be described.