Threat and Error Management: The Connection Between Process Safety and Practical Action at the Worksite

Abstract

Abstract High Reliability Organisations have five important characteristics: a preoccupation with failure, a reluctance to simplify, sensitivity to operations, resilience, and a respect for expertise. Experience from recent incidents suggests that these qualities may generally be lacking in organisations that manage drilling operations today. Research sponsored by OGP and others has suggested that creating a sense of ‘chronic unease’ in relation to barrier integrity and operation of safety-critical systems, combined with understanding of the psychological issues that create error-producing conditions, will strengthen defences against major accidents occurring. The question remains as to the best way to embed the necessary skills through teaching, coaching, and assessment and their integration into routine working practices. Experience from aviation suggests that successful implementation of non-technical skills needs to be combined with a clearly defined operational framework. Such an operational framework, however, is not widely observed in the drilling community at present. A standardised approach that defines how drilling operations are to be executed, activities monitored, decisions made or changes managed in a time-constrained environment provides the context in which the necessary individual and organisational skills can be taught. Training needs to address the underlying psychological theory, in particular cognitive biases, of non-technical skills to counter threats and errors in the workplace. The paper summarises the principles of high reliability organisations and their contribution to process safety in the context of drilling operations. Next, we describe Threat and Error Management, which evolved from aviation-based Crew Resource Management to produce the levels of safety that today we accept as normal. We introduce operational risk management in drilling as the analogous link with aviation. The paper concludes by illustrating how these concepts can be used in drilling operations to enhance routine risk management activities, and will describe the tools and techniques involved. The advantage of this approach is that effective non-technical skills can be observed, coached and assessed on a routine basis in the workplace. Active use of these methods in every-day drilling operations promotes the essential characteristics of a high reliability organisation by instilling the sense of chronic unease and concern for barrier integrity, thereby reducing the chance of minor anomalies cascading into major accidental events.