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Risk Evaluations and Safe Job Analyses are common to both the energy and oil sectors.
“I believe that it is important to draw on experience from both industries,” tells Leif Røv. Røv manages AAK Safety’s competence centre. AAK is a leading company in fall safety, rope rescue training, and work at height. AAK Safety has one foot in the oil industry and one foot in the energy industry.
On 20 October 2009, Leif Røv and around twenty other industry professionals participated in a professional development workshop, arranged by the Norwegian Electricity Industry Association (EBL), on Risk Evaluation and Safe Job Analysis.
From the left: Terje Evensen (BKK), Leif Røv (AAK) and Randi Sekkeseter (Mintra)
We Lift Our Feet Automatically
Kjell-Ivar By, General Manager of KIBY Consult, kicks off the gathering with a presentation about risk evaluations.
“We are constantly conducting risk evaluations,” tells By. “Every time we cross a threshold, we lift our feet automatically. It is a trained motor response, based on having stumbled enough times. We make a quick evaluation and lift our feet. The consequence of not doing so is that we could stumble and hurt ourselves, and we certainly want to avoid that.”
Kjell-Ivar By, KIBY Consult
By maintains that we have a culture where our mindset is that “some things are just unavoidable”. This causes many people to think that “it is not possible to do EVERYTHING safely”. At the same time, By asserts that we also have a deep-seated belief that every individual can make a difference. If this belief is stronger than the more passive, negative conviction, we are in a position to take appropriate measures to prevent unwanted incidents – just like when we lift are feet as we cross a threshold.
The Underlying Causes of Accidents
Kjell-Ivar By points to the importance of finding, and learning from, the underlying causes of accidents.
“To prevent accidents from recurring, we need to investigate them and learn from them,” tells By. “It is also important to take those lessons learned seriously, even if they require changes to the organisation. For example, tiredness is often a significant cause of accidents. Since we are aware of this fact, it is important to take measures that contribute to ensuring that personnel performing tasks with an element of risk are well rested. Shift plans, overtime work, etc. should take this into consideration.” Further, by claims that human error is the most common cause of accidents.
“We need to work constantly to find the underlying causes of accidents,” says By. “Why is it that human errors occur when we have so many good procedures and best practices? What are the underlying causes of these human errors?”
Employee Participation Gives Good Results
The participants at the professional development workshop all agree that employee participation gives good results.
“When working at height or on a course, we always perform a buddy check before doing anything at height,” tells Leif Røv. “It isn’t just another procedure launched by management or the HSE manager; we do it because we want to be sure everyone gets home safely. The consequences of not physically checking that a colleague’s fall safety equipment is properly rigged can be dire, both for yourself and your colleague. We believe that this understanding of consequence directly affects our actions. When we go mountain climbing in our free time, we follow exactly the same procedure; it is an automatic action that our employees have brought with them to AAK’s operations.”
The discussion between the participants was active and many good experiences of employee participation were shared between companies. One company told that they had used their own employees to develop safety films. The films were very well received and employee participation ensured that both management and the employees were fully committed to the project. Another company told that they challenged their employees to develop a Safe Job Analysis form themselves. That was also a big success, because the employees felt that they were involved in the process.
Look Ahead Not Back
Hermann Wiencke from Proactima took over the podium after Kjell-Ivar By. Wiencke has long experience from working with risk in the oil industry and, in recent years, has also worked with the energy industry. Wiencke has a solid theoretical approach to risk evaluations and safe job analyses.
Hermann Wiencke, Proactima
“Professor Terje Aven defines risk as the potential danger unwanted incidents represent to people, the environment, and material assets,” tells Wiencke. “Risk addresses the uncertainty of the results of future activities, and the amount which one looks forward or backward depends on the situation as well as the system.”
Wiencke points out that far too many companies only look back at past numbers when they evaluate future risk. He would like to see more focus on future factors that affect the risk picture.
“If, for example, I were to perform a risk analysis for an ICT company, it wouldn’t be enough just to look at data threats from the 1980’s,” points out Wiencke. “It is far more important to look ahead and interpret IT trends. We should pay more attention to futurists.”
Measures and Activities
Wiencke continues by defining risk control.
“By risk control, we mean all measures and activities implemented to control risk,” says Wiencke. “The object of risk control is to ensure the proper balance between developing and creating value, and avoiding accidents, damages, and losses.”
Categorising Risk
Risk can be divided into several categories. Wiencke defines the following categories:
- Strategic risk
- Financial risk
- Operational risk
“Operational risk can be subdivided into personnel, installation, and organisation, for example,” tells Wiencke.
Risk Control vs. Incident Control
Wiencke believes that it is important to have a relationship to risk control and to differentiate it from incident control.
“After an HSE campaign, focus always drops after a while. That’s when safety levels also drop, and then an accident happens. After an accident, focus on safety increases again and we get a kind of rollercoaster effect, which we call incident control,” tells Wiencke. “In contrast to incident control, risk analysis is an investigation of incidents that have not happened, and we mustn’t loose sight of that. We must always focus our attention on the future.”
The Best Tool Is Safe Job Analysis
After a good lunch, filled with good discussions, Terje Evensen from BBK took the floor.
Terje Evensen, BKK
“The best tool for preventive work for those out there working is a Safe Job Analysis,” tells Evensen. “The goal is to discover and remove, or control, all elements of risk that can lead to harm to personnel, materials, or the environment, when performing a particular job.”
But Evensen also sees great challenges and questions whether we always need to experience a serious incident before we wake up.
The Employee’s Opportunity
“A safe job analysis is the employee’s opportunity to review and evaluate the work operation. It is a systematic review of all elements of risk in advance of a concrete work task,” tells Evensen.
Evensen also points out that it is important to plan for emergencies.
“We always need to have a plan for what to do if an accident should occur,” says Evensen. “It’s called being prepared.”
10 Years of SJA
Evensen tells that Safe Job Analysis has its roots in the oil sector.
“We need to learn from the oil sector,” says Evensen. “But we also need to make a critical evaluation of whether or not this tool is suited to our industry. Have we achieved what we wanted to achieve with Safe Job Analysis?”
Evensen points out that it is important to understand the target group in the energy industry.
“It is important that the language is not too analytical,” says Evensen. “I have held courses for the industry for many years and I have experienced that people just fall asleep if the information gets too theoretical. We need to bring concepts down to earth!”
What Is ABS?
Katrine Bråthen from Statkraft Energy is participating in a pilot project that is testing Advanced Behavioural Safety – commonly known as ABS.
“Behavioural safety observations are a preventive HSE tool, direct job observation,” tells Bråthen. “Statkraft is aiming to introduce an ABS system, with the goal of learning based on direct job observations. I am participating in the pilot project and it is extremely exciting and educational”
Katrine Bråthe, Statkraft
Bråthen tells that they are looking to find a simple and effective way to conduct ABS at Statkraft.
“We need to have a system that people will understand and appreciate,” tells Bråthen.
How is ABS Conducted?
The goal of ABS is to discover and change unsafe conduct to safe conduct.
“We have made it very simple. You ask your colleague if you can perform an ABS, you stand a little to the side and watch what is being done, both safe and unsafe actions. The observer’s experiences are registered on a form. The name of the observer is not registered. After the observation, the observer and the person being observed conduct an HSE discussion.
We have also established a target for how many ABS’s must be conducted (1 per obs. per month).”
The project control committee includes the Statkraft Group’s HSE Director, the HSE Director from Trondheim Energy, the HSE Director from Skagerak Energy, as well as the Statkraft Energy’s Production Director. The project group is headed by the Regional Director from Statkraft Energy’s Eastern Norway division, and has a total of 8 team members from Statkraft Energy and Skagerak Energy. “Having management fully committed to the project has been a crucial success factor,” tells Bråthen. Bråthen also mentions several other success factors, including, good preliminary work, a high level of focus, and that team members have taken ownership of the project.
Inspiration
Bråthen tells that the project group has been given the opportunity to conduct inspections both nationally and internationally to gather information from their own companies as well as other industry actors.
“It is important to learn from others and not try to re-invent everything,” says Bråthen. “We conduct ABS observations on work operations as well as driving. We see that driving is one of the most dangerous things we do, so we have chosen to implement ABS for that as well. So far, we have no knowledge of any other company doing the same.”
“We put ABS forms in all company vehicles,” tells Bråthen, “making ABS a natural part of driving, and lowering the threshold for feedback. I believe that many of those participating in the project have gotten better at thinking about safety when driving a car. At the same time, we have had continuous focus on ensuring that ABS is positive and preventive, not negative and controlling, and I think we have succeeded.”
Bråthen is also active in exchanging HSE experience across industries. Among other things, she is participating as a resource person for the programme committee for the Offshore & Energy HSE Conference 2010.
The Next Step
EBL’s professional development workshop was a productive and educational day. It is important to create arenas where people can gather to share experiences and build motivation for our ever important daily HSE work.
For information about other EBL arrangements, go to www.ebl.no
By: Randi Sekkeseter, Mintra AS
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