Last year the International Pipe Line & Offshore Contractors Association's (IPLOCA) Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) Committee adopted 2020 targets for key health and safety performance indicators as part of an effort to better define needed actions. Lagging-indicator targets for 2020 consisted of zero fatalities and a total recordable incident rate (TRIR) of less than 1 per million worked hours (mwh). Leading indicator targets called on members to report at least 30,000 near misses per year and log at least 15,000 hr of training/mwh.
These were ambitious goals. IPLOCA's membership includes many of the biggest and busiest contractors in the oil and gas industry, working in often unforgiving environments. To cast the ambition in greater relief, IPLOCA members reported:
• 7,068 near misses in 2013.
• 6,101 hr of health and safety training/mwh in 2015.
• 24 fatalities in 2015.
• TRIR of 2.28 in 2016.
Progress
IPLOCA last month issued the results of its annual HSE survey of member companies. The 2016 results were derived from data provided by 94 regular members-97% of total regular membership-and 12 associate members. Progress was made towards meeting each of IPLOCA's 2020 health and safety goals.
Reported near misses in 2016 reached 22,159, nearly double 2015's total of 11,424. A near miss is any event that had the potential to cause injury, damage, or loss but was avoided by circumstances. Near misses are included in the incident rate.
Those outside the HSE arena might find describing a twofold acceleration in the rate of near-accidents to be counterintuitive. Wouldn't such a spike mean the workplace was becoming less safe, not more?
The answer would be affirmative if the problem being addressed was the number of near misses occurring. The actual problem, however, is the chronic hesitance to report near misses and the resulting loss of both detailed information regarding how improvements can be made and training opportunities through which similar events might be avoided in the future. Improved safety comes from a culture in which workers are comfortable self-reporting any unusual occurrences, and increase in the rate with which they do so is measure of such improvement.
Health and safety training hours rose to 7,099/mwh. In this area, unlike the others for which goals were set, the 2020 target has been met in recent years, IPLOCA members reporting 16,536 hr of training/mwh in 2011.
Fatalities fell to 11 in 2016 after what IPLOCA itself described as an "alarming" total the year before.
The steadiest progress of all, however, has been made in TRIR, the 2016 level down from 2.82 in 2015, 3.28 in 2013, 6.92 in 2012, and 7.22 in 2011. It's still more than twice the target but is less than one-third the rate reported just 5 years earlier. And lest anyone think that the TRIR drop stems from a reduction in the pace of activity, IPLOCA members included more worked hours in their responses than in any of the previous five surveys.
Environmental reporting
As part of improving its gathering of HSE information, IPLOCA last year made submission of environmental statistics compulsory for regular members. This was already the case for reporting of health and safety statistics. The results were not as promising as those in health and safety.
Environmental training hours were down, as was the frequency with which environmental training occurred. In 2011, ILOCA members reported 2.665 million hr of environmental training, defined as the number of worked hours spent by personnel to get trained to environmental standards and including all hours spent by all personnel to get trained. Training measured 1.628 million hr in 2014, 1.314 million hr in 2015, and 930,000 hr last year.
Liquid releases/mwh, meanwhile, roses steadily to 0.897 in 2016 from 0.494 in 2011. Minor releases accounted for 99% of the 2016 total, but the acceleration in their overall rate needs to immediate attention.
