Position and responsibility of health and safety practitioner
Risk management is a fundamental part of everyday actions in the petroleum industry as it faces dangers starting from prices of raw materials which are linked to global socioeconomic factors to increased health and safety, from recent major accidents impacting the environment as well as the brand reputation of the industry (Wolke, 2017). Risk management is an extensively used term which operates worldwide covering a different type of industries. It helps to identify and measure specific hazards and make decisions about managing and mitigating them in the future. Risk management can be of many types such as financial risk management and health risk management. In this report, the analysis and significance of the health risk management are conducted (Modarres, 2016). Oil and gas industry has much complexities, risks and it involves a considerable number of stakeholders as they are technologically tough and must stick to tight funds and timetables. There is always a need for proper and efficient management techniques, constant monitoring and reviewing of project risks in both the office and site focusing on the development of management policies to reduce project catastrophes.
To increase project performance and maintain competitiveness in oil and gas industry effective health risk management strategies are adopted by their administrative bodies. These strategies are meant to help the corporations to improve value creation among the corporation deliverables. Safety and health fortification is the main urgency for the petroleum industry they deal with strict EHS guidelines across the entire process of their productivity ranging from manufacturing, pipeline management and advertising (Bigliani, 2013). These guidelines are not only strict but also regularly reviewed to take into reflection of the industrial development and the risky environments in which petroleum corporations work. Following these guidelines regarding health and safety will help to reduce the risk of major contamination occurrences and contribute to safeguarding the energy resilience in UK and it will also help to protect workers from health hazards, maintain the regulations of the licensing and financial essentials of the industry (Witter et al. 2014).
The purpose of this section of the document is to review the position and responsibilities of a health and safety practitioner in the UK gas and oil sector. Every organization is bound to fulfil the compliance related to the health experts and every individual associated with it (Boyle, 2015). The organizations which do not accomplish the regulations of the state of health and safety are at higher risks as compared to the other organizations.
Health and Safety officer in the petroleum industry has the responsibility of safe implementation of many activities which builds the status of this corporation. The petroleum industry is accountable for the accurate insinuations of all the guidelines that assures the safety of the employees. Since oil and gas sectors are measured to be at higher risks in this relevancy because of the extraction procedures including the extraction and manufacture of petroleum is susceptible to the fitness and lives of individuals. This can be easily affected by the fire and other harmful chemicals resulting in a blast or other accidents. To achieve a safe working environment in health and safety consultants work with managers and the employees. They help in liaising with external associates such as workers, clients and the health and safety executives who inspects factories and imposes compliance.
Offshore accidents and risks
The role of the health experts involve advising the managers on how to obey health and safety regulations, development and implementation of effective approaches, strategies and procedures for the oil corporation, carrying out site visits and evaluating the safety audits, identifying all the possible threats, designing and delivering the training courses on health and safety issues to all the employees working on the office irrespective of their designations, inspecting the accidents and finding suitable ways to prevent them to happening again in the future (Nolan 2014). The work of health and safety practitioner also includes advising on sensitive areas such as fire precautions and control of hazardous elements, making written reports about all the observations such as accident statistics to maintain a track of all the incidents of the organisation, the job also involve a lot of site appointments, visiting a workshop floor, offshore oil and gas platforms. This job involves working outdoors in all climates and there may need to work at height in restricted conditions or in dusty workrooms so it requires protective clothing. However, it can be seen that in spite of following all the guidelines as instructed by the health and safety practitioner hazards are not contained fully but decreased to a limited extent (Dahl 2013).
Health and Safety Executive are accountable for regulating safety matters offshore (Paltrinieri et al. 2014). HSE works with other regulators where there are possible edges in responsibilities. This section of the document provides particulars of offshore damages, dangerous incidences and ill health reported to HSE under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR), and HSE’s controlling action offshore throughout 2016. There was one deadly injury in 2016; there have been six mortalities in the last 10 years, 20 specified injuries with a rate of 66 per 100,000 full-time equivalent employees. There were 78 over-7-day injuries with a rate of 257 per 100,000 full time workers,10 occupational diseases, 263 dangerous occurrences,104 hydrocarbon releasing incidents. The hydrocarbon release rate swings over the last 10 years. There were 132 inspections undertaken at 101 offshore installations operated by 44 duty holders and 199 safety cases were assessed along with 51 investigations were completed. 56 workplace health concerns and 816 non-compliance issues were raised with operators. In 2015 it was found that no fatal injuries in 2015, 33 wounds, with a rate of 103 per 100,000 employers, 15 occupational diseases, 299 dangerous occurrences, 94 hydrocarbon releases (Hse.gov.uk. 2018). There is a need to maintain the focus on strengthening collective determination to drive further improvement.
There are many potential risks in several departments in the Oil and Gas Corporation of UK (Villa et al. 2016). They have specialists in photoionization detection (PID) technology, ION Science is the leading manufacturer of PID sensors in the world. PID sensor technology helps in giving reliability in the most extreme conditions (Zhou et al. 2013). Weather proof technology safeguards the sensor from condensing moisture, Pumped and diffused variants are a part of the available. Environmental and Emissions Monitoring System provides measured and calculated data relating to emissions from offshore installations (Shibaev et al. 2015).
The different types of monitoring system for petroleum industry which includes subsea sensors such as pressure sensors, temperature radars, proximity devices, inclinometers, rotation radars, load beams for tension and compression, linear displacement gauges, elastic pipe systems, riser technology and monitoring systems such acoustic sensor market underwater vehicle, doppler current Profiler, hydrophones, wireless sensors and satellite radio navigation (Fingas 2016).
There are certain rules and regulations for the stakeholders of the organisation used for reporting specified incidents in the petroleum industry in UK (Chiu, Bullock and Edwards 2015). Enacted in 1995, RIDDOR is the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations. It includes a wide variety of hazardous incidences to work related deaths. RIDDOR is completed through an online system via the HSE website. It helps to record all the accidents, wounds, diseases, hazardous incidences, work-related demises and specific compensations those records are kept in a folder, accident book or a computer system. The records are helpful in understanding the patterns in injuries. The records are properly organised and updated so that it can be review and examined for preparation of the training materials for each employee so that they can be aware of the causes of the hazards and deal with them whenever it is needed for himself or for any other employees.
The RIDDOR records are kept for more than 5-6 years for any civil hearing procedure. Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 is a British act for ensuring the employment security. It is used for protecting others against dangers of health or security in connection with the activities of employees and preventing the unlawful achievement, ownership and use of dangerous substances (Holt and Allen 2015). The oil and gas sector follow the above guidelines to regulate safety measures of the offshore industry in UK. It helps to improve the health and safety performance of all the employees of the organisation. RIDDOR and HSE ensure that the risks are consistently managed well across the industry. Although it was found that these efforts have been only partly successful. There has not been a dependable focus to ensure necessary enhancements are applied across to the petroleum industry and that improvements are sustained. This method intends to rectify this by safeguarding senior stakeholders to take responsibility for delivering high standards of health and safety offshore. Giving the proper knowledge about the various types of health hazards to all the employees working in the petroleum industry in UK is very important. The employee training is conducted to improve the worker’s abilities and to help the other employee to gain an essential information and skill to efficiently and lucratively achieve the job without harming any entity (Grant 2013).
In the petroleum industry, PPE is damaged across the panel but varies site-by-site according to the chemical threats encountered (Podgorski et al. 2017). The upstream oil sector includes a variety of worker tasks that may require different levels of protection from equipment maintenance to oil-based drilling. Hazards vary from low-level dirt and grime to low concentrations of chemicals in oil-based muds. Sulfuric acid and a variety of solvents including benzene, xylene and toluene (Kelland 2014). Safe working in the petroleum industries requires systems in place to administer such hazards for workers and assets. A strong permit to work system establishes executive work control that is necessary. The fire-detection and warning system of the oil and gas sector in UK is helpful in warning people in the structure in all conditions (Malsane et al. 2015). The fire extinguishers are installed, tested and maintained in accordance with instructions. Ethical issues raised in this report concerns the sustainability of human rights and the acceptance of social responsibility of the ptroleum industries during the extraction of petroleum since the oil and gas industries operate in some difficult locations and adverse weather conditions (Raufflet, Cruz and Bres 2014).
Internationally a corporation named IPIECA ensures that the oil and gas industry are sustaining good ethics and human rights policies by providing them with tools to respond effectively to environmental and social issues. The aspects considered with respect to the permission to work in the offshore petroleum industry such as skills and knowledge which are used to recognise a threat before and during maintenance. Ability to work in risky atmospheres and good communication skills. The employees should be sufficiently knowledgeable, trained and supervised to minimise a human failing during operation of the work permit system (Selley and Sonnenberg 2014).
The effective administration of major threats is an integral feature of safe operations on offshore the oil and gas sector in UK (Adgate, Goldstein and McKenzie 2014). There are strong detecting systems to identify and evaluate the chief accident hazards and it specifies measures taken to safeguard that major accident hazards are measured to ensure obedience with the relevant provisions. The offshore oil industry in UK constantly putting effort into making its operations safer as they need to remain competitive in the fiercely contested energy market (Adgate, Goldstein and McKenzie 2014). A big corporation like them cannot afford incidents and accidents for the many reasons as their performance is measured in safety terms as well as other values.
The planned prototype is analysed to improve the approximation of the risk and its impacts in the offshore oil and gas sector in UK (Castellote and Llorens 2016). The model involves both quantitative and qualitative methods. The contents of the model involve Likelihood assessment where the estimation of the probability of the failures is reviewed to build generic conception considering the facilities in the industry. The qualitative assessment is the probabilistic future abilities it includes the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) which have components of the failure data and human reliability which are helpful in determining the frequency of the occurrences of the incidents. Quantitative assessment is conducted for estimating the likelihood of risk based on the assumptions of risk exponentially with respect to time.
The purpose of the risk assessment model is to approximation the probability of the hazard. It also helps in evaluating the occurrence degree of the failure which is compared to the results of the likelihood of the failure (Paterson 2017). The purpose of this paper is to evaluation the significances of failure and its influence to the system and arrange their mechanisms on the basis of their unwanted influence to the system. There are many recognized impacts of the failure which are evaluated such as system performance loss, financial Loss, human health loss and environmental loss (Davies et al. 2014).
Conclusion
In this report the evaluation of the risk of the Oil and Gas sector in UK is conducted considering the financial impact of the risk events can be estimated. This document aims to increase the awareness in risk management within the offshore sites. Inconsequential deviations in hazard management can occur and have associated risk. The limited budgets and workloads are the important factors in the risk mitigation processes. Every employee should understand their ethical responsibilities and operational risk. Health and safety practitioners are developing and implementing the risk management strategies in the business.
The oil corporations adopt policies and give efficient training which will help to mitigate risk to a limited extent and also to improve the receptiveness to the opportunity of risk. The application of advanced technology and awareness is helpful in combating the major accidents in the offshore oil and gas sectors in spite of everything need to maintain the focus on strengthening collective determination to drive further improvement. Overall, this paper is helpful in enhancing the effectiveness of the maintenance by assessing risk which is authoritative is the nature of the oil and gas sector. Based on the descriptive evaluation of the risk management strategies it can be taken under consideration that one of the prime challenges that arise when comparing safety data in the petroleum industry of UK is the fact that they have a variety of regimes, contexts and histories of regulation. Incident and accident information is often taken as the single defining measure of the industry s safety and health status.
The Oil corporations have robust detecting systems for evaluation of the chief accidental hazards and preservation of those major accidents. The offshore oil industry in UK emphasizes on their operations as they need to remain competitive in the market. This paper also describes a proposed model involving both quantitative and qualitative methods is analysed to boost the approximation of the hazard and its significances. Oil and gas sector in UK have well drilling and servicing activities involving different types of equipment and materials. Identifying and controlling threats is critical to preventing damages and deaths.
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