Establishing cost-effective safety management for major oil and gas exploitation projects in the design phase

Disasters such as Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, in April 2010, continue to blight the oil and gas industry despite a significant amount of research effort carried out by academia, regulatory bodies, and oil and gas companies to understand how safety-related incidents, especially disasters, can be prevented. While these have contributed to the discussion around reducing risk, they often lack the systemic influences that determine the value drivers affecting decision-making, and the ability to achieve continuous and sustainable improvements in safety performance. Consequently, this research aims to provide a more holistic approach to understanding the nature of disasters in the oil and gas industry, and identifying how future disasters can be prevented by establishing "more cost-effective strategies. Quantitative research was carried out to determine the type and validity of the data used to construct trends in major accident safety performance, and qualitative research was carried out to assess the key factors that influence safety performance, and whether these are effectively applied. The conclusions of this research are that the industry has not demonstrated effective implementation of an Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OH&S-MSj. Historically safety performance shows wide annual variations where trends are difficult to define and extrapolate, making it difficult to provide any significant benefit for major accident prevention. There is no evidence to indicate that moving from a prescriptive, to a goal-setting regime, has improved safety performance, and reduced the prospect of future major accidents. Disaster investigation reports have shown that the role of the regulator has been ineffective. However, the adoption of a more comprehensive, and effective approach to inherently safer designs, and the way projects are managed, have the potential to make safety management more cost-effective and reduce the prospect of future disasters

Simulacija s celičnimi avtomati – širjenje elektronskega poslovanja v malih organizacijah

This paper describes the cellular automata- based simulation model of electronic commerce diffusion in small organizations. The model and method is verified with historical data. The focus and purpose of the research was to study long-term influences on electronic commerce caused by organisational characteristics in small organisations. Five maturity levels of electronic commerce were defined. The study found that the most influential factor of diffusion is “management support”.The dynamics of electronic commerce introduction and usage in non-innovator organisations were significantly influenced by the verbalisation process through business partners. The greatest progress toward upper maturity levels were detected when internal factors strongly predominated over external factors. The developed methodology shows new approaches for cellular automata usage in the study of organisational systems. Key words: small organization, cellular automata, electronic commerce, innovation diffusionČlanek opisuje simulacijo elektronskega poslovanja v malih organizacijah s pomočjo celičnih avtomatov. Model in metoda sta verificirana na zgodovinskih podatkih. Namen raziskave je bil preučevanje dolgoročnih vplivov na elektronsko poslovanje, ki so posledica karakteristik organizacij. Definiranih je pet stopenj zrelosti v elektronskem poslovanju. Raziskava je potrdila, da je najpomembnejši dejavnik na širjenje elektronskega poslovanja „podpora vodstva”. Na dinamiko uvajanja in uporabe elektronskega poslovanja v organizacijah, ki niso inovatorji, pomembno vpliva proces verbalizacije. Največji napredek v stopnji zrelosti elektronskega poslovanja v malih organizacijah je bil dosežen pri dominantnejšem vplivu notranjih dejavnikov pred zunanjimi. Razvita metoda je pokazala nov pristop k uporabi celičnih avtomatov za preučevanje organizacijskih sistemov. Ključne besede: mala organizacija, celični avtomat, elektronsko poslovanje, širjenje inovacij

Baseline study of employability related activities in Scottish colleges

In October 2004, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC)'s predecessor bodies, theSFEFC and the SHEFC, publishedLearning to Work(SFC 2004), a discussion paperabout how Scotland's colleges and universities can help to enhance learners'employability. In subsequent dialogue with stakeholders, there was agreement thatemployability should be a specific focus for quality enhancement in the college sectorfrom 2006-07. As a basis for further development, the SFC commissioned this studyto provide information on the range of current activities and practices in Scotland'scolleges which contribute to enhancing employability

Rethinking the spaces and institutions of flood governance

In 2007 the city of Hull in Yorkshire, England, experienced extremely high levels of rainfall. The city is very low lying, built predominantly on drained land which relies on a pumped drainage system; as a result, the city flooded. There were a number of other incidents of flooding across England in the summer of 2007, but Hull was unusual as such a large proportion of the city flooded – 91 of the 99 schools in the city were flooded – the city was faced with a crisis. The flooding 2007 was widespread and also affected some politically sensitive areas, consequently, after the flooding, there was a government inquiry which looked specifically at the lessons that could be learnt from the event and Hull’s local narrative was picked up by the panel in this inquiry as it was an exemplar of pluvial flooding, an issue that came to light nationally in 2007. The flooding in Hull in 2007 became part of a nationally important event which drove change in policy and resulted in the Flood and Water Management Act 2010.This thesis uses evidence from 31 in-depth interviews, participant observation and policy analysis to explore the theory that rapid policy change can occur in the windows of opportunity which open up as a result of a shock to the system. For example, changes made to flood governance and policy when a nationally important flood crisis occurs. Specifically, this thesis uses the 2007 flood event to re-examine the theory of policy windows in driving changes in flood governance in England and Wales. Furthermore, where previous studies have focussed on national level policy change and policy windows, this study explores the applicability of the theory to the local level, looking at the case study of the city of Hull between 1945 and 2010