Welcome to the third instalment of our series exploring ten compelling questions about key issues in the offshore wind industry. In this article, our resident offshore wind expert, Mike Young, delves into safety events and case studies.
A safety event is something that has either happened or has been identified that specifically relates to health and safety. Typically this would be a report of an incident or an observation where something unsafe has or could have occurred. However, a safety event could also be a positive observation or an idea to improve health and safety conditions.
Anyone can report a safety case. Whether it’s an actual incident that has happened to them or an unsafe condition they have noticed, everyone has access to report a safety event. This also includes any good ideas that would make their working environment safer. Within our software, events are recorded in the event dashboard that is accessible by all users. It’s a very simple process where key information is entered so the event can then be reviewed.
A safety case is when a safety event requires further action. This could be an incident that requires further investigation, an unsafe condition that requires multiple actions to remedy or an improvement idea that requires some design and installation to initiate.
A safety case can be managed by different users depending on their areas of responsibility. It could be the Operations Manager or the HSE Manager that are responsible for ensuring the safety case is completed. The actions within the safety case can be given to different users. The investigation might be carried out by an Offshore Technician, with the resulting actions split across different areas of expertise. All of the investigations and actions are managed within the software to ensure all the data is kept together.
First of all it’s important to make the reporting of safety cases as easy as possible so that all occurrences get reported. By using a software solution that is fully integrated, you can ensure all relevant information is captured easily by any of the users. Secondly, by having all of the safety cases in one place you can identify trends and investigate problem areas within your operation.
All users of the software have access to the safety case module, thus allowing them to be able to report incidents, accidents, observations and ideas. Based on their assigned role within the system they can go on to investigate the case, create actions and allocate actions to the relevant users. This process continues until the safety case is closed.
As the safety case module is integrated with the wider control room management system all relevant information is available to the user. If you need to see where a vessel was at the time of an incident or whether a team had transferred onto an offshore asset, it’s all available in the same system. The user can use the rollback function to go back to the date and time of the incident and see exactly how the operation looked at that time.
The weather forecast and live weather data is also available within the system so you can see if this had anything to do with the incident. Also, the Safe System of Work (SSoW) is managed within the software so you can see when a team took control of an asset and what documentation they were working under.
All of the data collected around safety events and safety cases can be used to build a custom set of KPIs. Whether you want to simply see how many safety events have been reported or you would like to see how many offshore specific events related to a particular asset. This can also be used to create lead and lag trends so you get a great overview of the safety environment you have on a site.
Once you have a set of KPIs and are starting to see some of the trends relating to your site, you can automate these findings into a weekly or monthly report. This could be customised to your own template making regular reporting not just easier but more accurate.
