National Academy of Sciences Awards Grants to Advance Safety Culture in Offshore Oil and Gas
The
Gulf Research Program (GRP) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
and Medicine today announced $7.25 million in grant awards for eight projects
focused on strengthening safety culture in the offshore oil and gas industry.
Oil
and gas production in deepwater are inherently hazardous activities that can
fail in complex, catastrophic ways, as tragically shown by the Deepwater
Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and the 87-day oil spill that ensued 10
years ago. While many factors led to this disaster, several reports issued in
the aftermath emphasized the need for an improved safety culture within the
offshore oil and gas industry. A robust safety culture has many dimensions,
including leadership commitment to safety values and actions, a safe
environment for raising concerns or reporting incidents and “near misses,” and
organizational policies and practices that encourage employees to make safe
decisions.
The
GRP’s Safer Offshore Energy Systems (SOES) Grants 4 supports projects that
produce datasets, strategies, and tools for measurement that will promote a
culture of safety in the oil and gas industry. As the industry will continue to
be a vital part of the Gulf Coast economy, this work is urgently needed to
ensure protection of people and the environment.
“A
culture of safety has many characteristics,” said Kelly Oskvig, senior program
officer for the Gulf Research Program’s SOES initiatives. “Through this grants
competition, we hope to provide the tools to help strengthen some of those
characteristics as well as answer a few critical questions: What best practices
can oil and gas adapt from other high-risk industries? How can an organization
measure improvement of its safety culture? How can data be used to better understand
the dangers?”
The
eight SOES projects are:
Bringing
High-Reliability Safety Culture Decisions into Focus: Training with Interactive
Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping
Award
Amount: $684,054
Project
Director: Antonie Jetter (Portland State University)
Project
Team Affiliation: Portland State University in cooperation with Louisiana State
University
Overview:
Several studies have called for offshore oil and gas workers to adopt best
practices from other high-risk industries, including the nuclear power plant
and air traffic control industries. However, frontline managers remain unaware
of these external best practices, or have trouble customizing them for offshore
oil and gas operations. Inspired by so-called “management flight simulators,”
this project creates an interactive online platform that allows users to model
responses to everyday safety threats. The platform, FOCOS (Fuzzy Operational
Cognition of Safety Culture), lets users add, intensify, or stop interventions,
and see how their decisions impact the overall system and safety culture. To
inform future research and pilot programs, FOCOS will also collect data on
uncertain and controversial safety practices and differences in training needs
among different users (by role, professional background, and years of
experience).
Employee
Well-Being and Mindfulness as Predictors of Process and Personal Safety
Award
Amount: $828,113
Project
Director: Christiane Spitzmueller (University of Houston)
Project
Team Affiliation: University of Houston in cooperation with Robert Gordon
University
Overview:
Mindfulness exercises are shown to improve employee mental and physical health,
but there has been limited work to leverage mindfulness exercises for offshore
safety. This academia-industry partnership project will examine how mindfulness
affects safety culture, focusing on perceptions of supervisory safety culture,
worker situational awareness, employee burnout and well-being, and employee
participation in and compliance with safety behaviors. The team will develop 90
minute “train-the-trainer” programs, along with survey tools to measure program
effectiveness so supervisors can guide their employees through mindfulness
techniques they can use before their shifts and before high-risk situations.
Safety
Reporting Action Program for Offshore Oil and Gas Industry in the Gulf of
Mexico
Award
Amount: $755,851
Project
Director: Daniel Adjekum (University of North Dakota)
Project
Team Affiliation: University of North Dakota in cooperation with United States
Coast Guard
Overview:
In the offshore environment, minor workplace accidents tend to go unreported
because individuals fear blame. However, several minor unreported safety risks
can be precursors for catastrophic accidents, as was the case with the 2010
Deepwater Horizon disaster. Offshore oil and gas safety regulators have
recognized the need for a more proactive reporting system – and a culture shift
– that encourages workers to report mistakes and near misses, identify the
potential for error, and even stop work when needed. This project will assess
the viability of an offshore safety action reporting system modelled after the
aviation safety action program (ASAP) by using focus groups, interviews, and a
quantitative survey of about 1,500 personnel. It will also assess gaps between
the perceived level of safety reporting culture and the actual level of safety
reporting in the Gulf of Mexico oil and gas industry.
Measuring
and Improving Blended Project-Safety Culture in Operations of Offshore Oil and
Gas Facilities
Award
Amount: $733,631
Project
Director: Ivan Damnjanovic (Texas A&M University)
Project
Team Affiliation: Texas A&M University in cooperation with Proactima
Overview:
Measuring organizational commitment to safety is particularly challenging in
the offshore oil and gas industry, as 80 percent of personnel are third-party
contractors. The industry’s reliance on external contractors means team members
may not share the same training, experiences, and even language. Rather than
measuring safety culture in broad terms, this project aims to develop
quantifiable measurements of safety culture improvements that are specific to
three categories: activity, team (for example, contractors versus onshore-based
specialists), and the type of offshore installation. It will also provide a
tool for measuring safety culture while work orders are being planned and
executed; and a tool to help offshore plant managers specify project
requirements (for example, communication requirements) that could improve
safety culture.
Aggregating
Essential Exposure Data to Enable Meaningful Analysis of Safety Incident Rates
Around the World
Award
Amount: $739,992
Project
Director: Xiaozhi Wang (American Bureau of Shipping)
Project
Team Affiliation: American Bureau of Shipping in cooperation with Safetec
Overview:
Historically, government agencies, industry groups, and companies from around
the world have collected offshore incident data to help understand and improve
safety conditions. However, these datasets were collected at different times
and used different terminology and data languages. This project aims to provide
recommendations for viable data science technologies that could be employed to
aggregate these disparate datasets, and establish common goals and metrics, to
improve understanding of safety risks and trends in the Gulf of Mexico. The
desired final product — a comprehensive global offshore incident dataset — will
help set a foundation for predictive modeling initiatives. The data could
inform government and industry decision-making processes such as permitting
emerging technologies, setting new regulations or policies to mitigate risk,
and choosing exploration projects.
Development
of an Evidence-Based, Multilevel Safety Culture Assessment Battery for the
Offshore Industry
Award
Amount: $1,130,591
Project
Director: Scott Tannenbaum (The Group for Organizational Effectiveness)
Project
Team Affiliation: The Group for Organizational Effectiveness in cooperation
with the University of Connecticut, Rice University, and the University of
Texas at Houston
Overview:
Safe behavior in the oil and gas industry is influenced by individual safety
readiness; the team’s safety assumptions, values, and beliefs; team leader and
team member behaviors; and the organization’s safety practices and policies.
This project will develop a set of evidence-based assessment tools to diagnose,
measure, and track these four factors. It will also provide actionable tips and
guidance for addressing potential deficiencies, which existing measurement
tools lack. The team’s deliverables will be made publicly available to
interested organizations, associations, and researchers.
EMPOWER
Safety Dashboards: Evaluate, Measure, and Promote Offshore Worker Engagement
and Readiness
Award
Amount: $943,008
Project
Director: Stephanie Payne (Texas A&M University)
Project
Team Affiliation: Texas A&M University in cooperation with Upstreams
Forensics LLC
Overview:
Traditionally, safety culture is measured with a lengthy annual employee
survey. Survey methodology is fraught with limitations including low response
rates, considerable time required to summarize and interpret data, and failure
to capture meaningful changes between surveys. This project aims to develop and
test field-friendly measurement tools, including experience sampling
methodology and wearable devices; and to design, develop, and evaluate the
value of a dashboard called EMPOWER (Evaluate, Measure, Promote Offshore Worker
Engagement and Readiness). The EMPOWER dashboard will display worker
psychological (safety culture) and physiological (lack of fatigue or readiness)
data on an interactive interface that supervisors can access daily to support
organizational decision making. The research team will evaluate the extent to
which supervisors value and anticipate using such previously unavailable data
in real time; as well as the data’s impact on hypothetical offshore
scenario-based decision-making.
Developing
an Integrated Offshore Energy Industry Safety Culture Evaluation, Benchmarking,
and Improvement Toolbox
Award
Amount: $1,440,330
Project
Director: Kevin McSweeney (American Bureau of Shipping)
Project
Team Affiliation: American Bureau of Shipping in cooperation with Lamar
University and the University of Houston
Overview:
There is a general perception in the offshore industry that more rules,
regulations, and procedures are unlikely to improve safety performance.
Instead, the industry needs a better understanding of the social and
organizational factors that foster professionalism during routine and emergency
situations. This project aims to develop a roadmap that the industry can use to
evaluate and improve organizational safety culture, reduce unsafe behaviors,
improve individual performance, and reduce management system failures, near
misses, and accidents. Deliverables will include a safety culture evaluation
toolbox, and data gathering and analytic methods to identify what actions have
been, or could be, successful in improving safety.
All
projects selected underwent an external peer-review process. These projects are
the winners of the Gulf Research Program’s Safer Offshore Energy Systems (SOES)
Grants 4 funding competition. For more information about the Gulf Research
Program’s grant opportunities, visit nationalacademies.org/gulf/grants.
The
National Academies' Gulf Research Program is an independent, science-based
program founded in 2013 as part of legal settlements with the companies involved
in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. It seeks to enhance offshore energy
system safety and protect human health and the environment by catalyzing
advances in science, practice, and capacity to generate long-term benefits for
the Gulf of Mexico region and the nation. The program has $500 million for use
over 30 years to fund studies, projects, and other activities in the areas of
research and development, education and training, and monitoring and synthesis.
Visit nationalacademies.org/gulf to learn more.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. The Academies operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln.