Real time monitoring of operational/organizational safety barriers

According to Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSAN), personnel shall be aware of what barriers have been established and which function they are intended to fulfil, as well as what performance requirements have been defined... [ view full abstract ]

According to Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSAN), personnel shall be aware of what barriers have been established and which function they are intended to fulfil, as well as what performance requirements have been defined in respect of the concrete technical, operational or organizational barrier elements necessary for the individual barrier to be effective. The term barrier generally refers to planned measures to regain control, to mitigate development of defined situations of hazard and accident, or to mitigate consequences. An important question is: "How can personnel monitor the current status of safety barriers of a petroleum installation? During activities such as planning of work on pressurized hydrocarbon-carrying systems or when bypassing detection systems due to welding activities in the area, it is important to have sufficient information about the status of the safety barriers. A major challenge related to the present methods for risk control is their lack of ability to continuously monitor barrier status of operational/organisational barriers, thereby limiting their suitability to provide decision support during daily operations. Several companies have implemented systems for monitoring of technical barrier elements based on information in the maintenance systems, e.g a red status light is shown when a gas detector fail to respond to test gas, and the red light remains until the failure is corrected. However, identifying indicators which show current status of operational/organizational elements has proved to be challenging. As with technical barrier elements, PSAN require specific performance requirements to be established for operational/organizational elements which play a key role in realizing various barrier functions. An approach for identification of operational/organizational barrier elements has been developed in a case study for an offshore petroleum installation. The first step is to review and systematize relevant barrier functions and tasks to be carried out by operational/organizational barrier elements. Important operational barrier elements in an offshore installation are for instance Control Room Operators, Field operators, Lifeboat Captain and Crew. The next step is to look at each operational/organizational barrier element and establish relevant performance requirements (e.g time to complete required task) and corresponding performance influencing factors such as competence, workload, physical working environment, and management. The possibility of automatic data collection and processing is an important criterion when selecting specific indicators for operational/organizational barrier elements. Several examples of indicators for real time monitoring of operational/organizational safety barriers will be given in the presentation.