Integration of safety assessments in the oil and gas industry

Safety management systems are fundamental to the growth of businesses in the oil and gas industry as they provide a vital structure that underpins the delivery of safety performance. Companies invest significant time and financial resources in such processes and procedures to help drive improvements in health and safety and reinforce a safety culture across the business.

New research by DNV GL revealed that spending on health and safety will continue to rise in 2019. According to A test of resilience, the company’s ninth annual report on the outlook for the global oil and gas industry, 91% of 791 senior professionals surveyed expect to increase or maintain expenditure in this critical area – up from 81% in 2017.

The study also found a leap of 20 percentage points over the past two years in the number of respondents looking to grow and sustain investment in training and competence – up from 65% in 2017 to 88% for the year ahead.

In our recent special report, The State of Safety, we predict growing investment in digitalisation to more effectively and efficiently improve focus on safety monitoring, processes and responses. Understanding the root causes of poor safety performance within an organisation allows specific business cases to be developed which can incorporate digitalisation.

Safety management systems are used in many industries and their performance is monitored through a range of assessment methods. It is important therefore, that these systems are examined thoroughly and independently, and compared against a wider group of industries to determine their robustness. If performance improvements are identified during the assessments, it is important for business leaders to completely understand the implications and to identify how to incorporate any required changes in a positive and an efficient manner.

At DNV GL, we have developed our own method to regularly test safety management systems. The International Sustainability Rating System (ISRS) is based on a structured protocol, which comprises fifteen management system processes. It thereby provides deep insights to current performance, and guidance on how this can be improved in the short and long-term.

How far does the oil and gas industry understand the relationship between an organisation's safety management system and its safety culture?

Industry broadly recognises there are three dimensions (Figure 2) to delivering effective safety performance; human, organisation and technology (HOT).

The HOT triangulation diagram indicates where challenges lie within an organisation’s approach to safety. By using defined questions, the HOT triangulation can identify root causes in a systematic manner; supporting the identification of effective recommendations and measures to improve safety performance.

Elements within the HOT diagram can be assessed effectively using two connected activities; ISRS Assessment and Safety Culture Assessment. These two activities can deliver better value to a business.

What are the advantages of using assessments for safety culture tools? How is this integrated into the other assessment activity?

DNV GL’s Safety Culture Maturity vs Safety Performance model (Figure 3) outlines typical safety culture mind sets, where safety culture is defined as the attitudes, values and beliefs about safety shared by a group of people. This measure helps organisations realise their level of maturity and understand how to move on to the next stage of safety competence. The most mature level of safety culture is a learning culture. This is essentially the ability to learn and actively avoid and recover from critical situations.

The integrated assessment approach is a collaborative activity where DNV GL management system and culture assessors and the client work together to drive improvements in the organisation’s safety performance.

What are the advantages of using an integrated safety assessment?

We believe an integrated safety culture and ISRS assessment offers several advantages, the overriding one being an enhanced and holistic understanding of an organisation’s safety performance; leading to the development of specific improvement measures. It also creates time efficiencies and less overall disruption to operations, ultimately delivering financial savings by running the two assessments in parallel.

The assessment also helps organisations understand how they are doing in comparison to other organisations in their industry or compared to other sectors. This is achieved by benchmarking the results against data held by DNV GL.

We work very closely with the client to consider overall safety performance and its impacts at a global and site-specific level. This is crucial to the success of future safety strategies that the business puts in place and should constantly evolve.

An accurate picture of an organisation’s safety performance allows leaders to identify opportunities for change and provides early warning signs to prevent, mitigate and control safety risks.