Game changing safety performance

Integrated Process and Technology is changing frontline working effectiveness; delivering tangible efficiency benefits with improved safety performance as a by-product. Iain Mackay, EVP of Petrotechnics outlines the opportunities.

While billions of dollars are invested in technologies to optimise how work is planned and how production is achieved, there is currently very little investment in technology that assists frontline workers to execute the work in an efficient, consistent, compliant and safe manner.

Over the past 15 years we have seen a greater emphasis placed on improving hazard management in the workplace driven by stricter regulation, improved industry best practice and a strong corporate drive for incident reduction. Many organisations rely on paper processes to manage frontline work. Much of the work is unplanned, reacting to local needs and changing priorities rather than the overall plan; studies show that in some industries less than 40% of the plan is achieved at the worksite in the period intended.

To compound this, little governance is available at the Corporate level to provide assurance that operations and maintenance work is conducted in a safe and compliant  manner, be that Corporate or Regulator requirements. This dynamic environment presents challenges to frontline workers and supervisors; where are the work instructions associated with the job?  What lessons have previously been learned? What pre-work is needed prior to commencement and what are the risks to the plant and personnel?

Ensuring workers consistently apply "best-practice"- whether these are rules, regulations, processes or lessons learned, not only provides safety and assurance benefits but also delivers efficiency gains: better ways of working, an improving corporate knowledge base and shorter execution time.

A shift from "paper based" to "technology based" systems has emerged as a new approach in this area, bringing with it significant advantages including an improvement in the factors that fundamentally drive safety performance.

Organisations working in hazardous industries now realise that "Work Execution", the space where identified, planned and scheduled work is performed, contains a high proportion of the inefficiencies and safety concerns that impact cost and risk.

Supporting behavioural improvement

Managing behaviours on industrial sites also presents all operations with a challenge; how to build, deliver, develop and exercise best-practice amongst the frontline personnel. Driving from policy can lead to a tick box response; if policy is too vague then everyone complies, if policy is too prescriptive many organisations simply cannot comply with all the rules in the prescriptive way they have been written, and the policy's impact erodes.

Supporting processes with a system removes opportunities to subvert the process. This "systematised" assurance can be achieved in a shorter timeframe than focussing on building workforce competence or behaviour - process rigour is the quickest way of gaining control in areas where workforce competency and behaviours are a critical link in the execution of work.

In today's industry, ensuring that information from corporate initiatives, corporate standards, local regulations, previous learning and other nearby work is collated and provided to the worker easily also presents challenges. Technology based systems can be used as an information channel to frontline workers, ensuring that key information, such as work procedures, lessons learned, safety alerts or risk assessments, are provided to the frontline worker, rather than expecting this dispersed information to be collated by the worker. This in turn builds "buy-in" from the workforce- immediately improving behaviour that conforms to expectation.

Obviously, instilling proactive behaviours in the workforce is highly dependent on people, but by using the framework of a process embodied in a system it is possible to engage the people in a new approach, with a much greater degree of overall control, providing a more solid foundation from which to address behaviours and competency. Today, most global organisations working in hazardous industries understand the effects - both at home and abroad - of high-profile environmental and safety incidents.  Many organisations are now realising the benefits of evolving paper systems, through "e-permitting", to Integrated Safe Systems of Work (ISSOW) to provide clear, robust and consistent ways for frontline staff to plan and control work on the site - safely and efficiently.

Proven solutions

Petrotechnics' experience in delivering work execution solutions to 50,000 users in 20 countries demonstrates the ability to deliver compliant, best-practice solutions built on high reliability software into diverse environments with minimal workforce management of change. Petrotechnics' unique and demonstrable implementation track record reflects the balance between technology, people and process. Unlike some solutions, Petrotechnics are not building bespoke solutions for every site- rather they are configuring a common, mainstream product to fit Corporate/ Federal and regional requirements. Our domain expertise extends beyond software: Petrotechnics have industry-experienced process safety personnel who apply many years of operational experience to ensure the rapid design and delivery of solutions. As the largest provider of ISSoW systems in the world, Petrotechnics' experience base includes best practice solutions applied across a variety of sectors, industries, geographies and languages.  These practices continue to demonstrate effectiveness in our community of reference sites.

Petrotechnics' Sentinel PRO^® solution fundamentally shifts the approach to planning and integration of all aspects of frontline work to give real control and assurance of work activities. Sentinel PRO^® overcomes the challenges presented by the unstructured and dynamic nature of operations, maintenance and associated activity through a unified business process, integrating permit to work, risk assessment and isolation management, delivering it to the frontline user in an intuitive graphical real-time software tool.

Sentinel PRO^® is built on stable enterprise technologies such as J2EE and Oracle, and delivered to the end user via web-browser. Interfaces designed for use over low bandwidth, high latency connections ensure robust performance in challenging infrastructure environments.

Using advanced toolsets and standard methodologies, Petrotechnics can engage with clients, train user communities and implement the solution typically within 3-6 months.

Proven benefits

Combining swift solution delivery with low-impact technology and rapidly recognised benefits brings an immediate high return on investment to the client. Organisations realise the hard benefits immediately following implementation; increasing achievement of planned work, a decrease in unplanned activities, delivering better maintenance of equipment and more effective utilization of personnel. Payback has been repeatedly demonstrated within 12 months of implementation; investment decisions justified by hard dollar benefits cases are repeatedly proven, by evaluation of the solution in operation.

In addition, many executives recognise the soft benefits; improved governance and assurance of hazardous sites, auditable records of work performed, clear oversight of plant condition, high visibility on work status and the ability to review individuals' work histories. Furthermore, in almost every location the workforce users, often perceived by client management to be a barrier to significant change, demonstrate rapid recognition of the value of the solution.

Emerging Opportunities

There is further opportunity to develop these benefits; for example integrating work execution systems with ERP, Maintenance Management and Planning & Scheduling systems.  There is also potential for linkage to HSE systems such as incident and action tracking systems, creating the opportunity for real-time 'contextual' delivery of relevant safety alerts and lessons learned.  Integration with engineering data and document management systems provides the opportunity to introduce more rigorous isolations and Management of Change procedures; thus improving the integrity of engineering data and ensuring an accurate reflection of the current status of the plant.