Enhancing the implementation of safety engineering systems in oil and gas construction projects in the UAE

Risk assessment is one of the most critical methodologies used in the safety engineering system in oil and gas construction projects that require high levels of precaution in construction activities such as pilling, materials fabrication, and structure installation. The main purpose of risk assessment is to provide full protection to the four main elements that are crucial to the oil industry: People, Environment, Assets and Reputation (PEAR). Any failure or defect in the risk assessment implementation can potentially lead to catastrophes not only during the construction stage but also in the advanced stages such as operation and productions. Historically, in oil and gas construction projects many oil spills and blow outs occurred due to lack of efficient risk assessment in the construction phase, resulting in financial loss and human capitals. The aim of this research is to enhance the implementation of safety engineering systems in the oil and gas industry construction projects through risk assessment application in the UAE. Firstly, the aim is achieved via conducting a questionnaire to determine the current defects in the risk assessment applied methodology in the safety engineering system. Secondly, interviews are conducted with safety construction professionals to examine top risk factors in UAE oil and gas construction projects. After that, a framework to enhance the application of risk assessment and optimize safety engineering system is proposed based on the results found during the questionnaire and interviews phases. Finally, qualitative and quantitative validation of the proposed framework is applied to strengthen its feasibility and mechanism. This research study contributes to construction safety knowledge by studying behavioral safety performance and its critical role in risk assessment implementation. The main outcomes of this research study expose a gap in the understanding and the practices of risk assessment methods between management and workers, especially with regard to human factors effects on safety performance. In addition, this study recommends using proactive KPIs to measure the safety culture in the construction site in which it gives the chance to conduct early correction actions before the occurrence of the incidents

A field study on human factor and safety performances in a downstream oil industry

afety culture and awareness by workers are pivotal tools for the implementation of systematic procedures aiming to risk mitigation in the process industry. The evaluation of human factors on safety performance can reveal unsafe attitudes and failures in training, supervision and management, whose correction greatly contribute to the enhancement of safety program. In this work, the role of human factors in an oil industry was studied by the collection of field data through a structured questionnaire filled by shift, daily and outsourced workers. A deep investigation on the variables involved in the process was carried out, firstly quantifying three conceptual key dimensions (individual, human resource management, equipment and technology) and then analyzing data by means of Response Surface Methodology (RSM), to identify the statistical significant factors and the overall level of safety awareness, behaviour and risk perception of the respondents

Indicative method of human failure in sustainable chain of custody management

PURPOSE: The purpose is for the action chain (AC) of sustainable management (SM) by monitoring the failure rates of the operator of technical devices and presentation of the results of selected validation of the developed method.DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The presented method focuses on the monitoring and assessment of the organization’s state, diagnosis of the causes of deviations from the operator's desired state and modeling the state of the system as a result of the planned implementation of ergonomic interventions (IE). Measuring the operator's reaction creates knowledge about the interaction and possibilities of modifying the system thanks to objective data.FINDINGS: The presented method allows to characterize the working environment (including employee workload) with the values of variables which constitute fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM) concepts. The state of the interaction process is determined by potential distractors, which include, inter alia, factors of the work environment, conditions of cognitive and decision-making processes, conditions of manual activities and personality traits.PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The implementation of the indicator method enables the assessment of the potential of IE, which may prove to be a threat to safety, task efficiency and convenience.ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The use of monitoring techniques and the analysis of operator loads and reliability in Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is possible in real time, when registering psychophysiological indicators for the so-called User experience (UX).This work was supported by the Faculty of Management Engineering at the Poznan University of Technology. This article was prepared as part of the project [grant number 0811/SBAD/1036].peer-reviewe

Maximum risk reduction with a fixed budget in the railway industry

Decision-makers in safety-critical industries such as the railways are frequently faced with the complexity of selecting technological, procedural and operational solutions to minimise staff, passengers and third parties’ safety risks. In reality, the options for maximising risk reduction are limited by time and budget constraints as well as performance objectives. Maximising risk reduction is particularly necessary in the times of economic recession where critical services such as those on the UK rail network are not immune to budget cuts. This dilemma is further complicated by statutory frameworks stipulating ‘suitable and sufficient’ risk assessments and constraints such as ‘as low as reasonably practicable’. These significantly influence risk reduction option selection and influence their effective implementation. This thesis provides extensive research in this area and highlights the limitations of widely applied practices. These practices have limited significance on fundamental engineering principles and become impracticable when a constraint such as a fixed budget is applied – this is the current reality of UK rail network operations and risk management. This thesis identifies three main areas of weaknesses to achieving the desired objectives with current risk reduction methods as: Inaccurate, and unclear problem definition; Option evaluation and selection removed from implementation subsequently resulting in misrepresentation of risks and costs; Use of concepts and methods that are not based on fundamental engineering principles, not verifiable and with resultant sub-optimal solutions. Although not solely intended for a single industrial sector, this thesis focuses on guiding the railway risk decision-maker by providing clear categorisation of measures used on railways for risk reduction. This thesis establishes a novel understanding of risk reduction measures’ application limitations and respective strengths. This is achieved by applying ‘key generic engineering principles’ to measures employed for risk reduction. A comprehensive study of their preventive and protective capability in different configurations is presented. Subsequently, the fundamental understanding of risk reduction measures and their railway applications, the ‘cost-of-failure’ (CoF), ‘risk reduction readiness’ (RRR), ‘design-operationalprocedural-technical’ (DOPT) concepts are developed for rational and cost-effective risk reduction. These concepts are shown to be particularly relevant to cases where blind applications of economic and mathematical theories are misleading and detrimental to engineering risk management. The case for successfully implementing this framework for maximum risk reduction within a fixed budget is further strengthened by applying, for the first time in railway risk reduction applications, the dynamic programming technique based on practical railway examples

Fuzzy-based Prioritization of Health, Safety, and Environmental Risks: The Case of a Large Gas Refinery

The main objective of this study was to develop a fuzzy–based framework for the prioritization of health, safety and environment related risks posed against employees, working conditions, and process equipment in large gas refineries. The First Refinery at Pars Special Economic Energy Zone in South of Iran was taken as a case study. For this purpose, health, safety and environment related risks were determined based on the three criteria of impact severity, occurrence probability, and detect-ability using a questionnaire of 33 identified failures. The values obtained were processed by a so-called ‘contribution coefficient’. The results were then subjected to fuzzification and fuzzy rules were defined to calculate the risk level indices as the model outputs, which was then employed to facilitate the management decision-making process by prioritizing the management options. The prioritization values were then classified in six categories in the order of risk severity. Results revealed that failure in a combustion furnace had the highest rank while failure in the slug catcher ranked the lowest among the risk sources. It was also found that about 0.4% of the identified risks prioritized as “intolerable”, 79% as “major”, 20% as “tolerable”, and 0.7% as “minor”. Thus, most of the risks (more than 79%) associated with the refinery has the potential of significant risks. The results indicated that the risk of the pollutant emissions from the combustion furnaces is the highest. Exposures to harmful physical, chemical, psychological, and ergonomic substances are the other risks, respectively

Safety and Reliability - Safe Societies in a Changing World

The contributions cover a wide range of methodologies and application areas for safety and reliability that contribute to safe societies in a changing world. These methodologies and applications include: - foundations of risk and reliability assessment and management - mathematical methods in reliability and safety - risk assessment - risk management - system reliability - uncertainty analysis - digitalization and big data - prognostics and system health management - occupational safety - accident and incident modeling - maintenance modeling and applications - simulation for safety and reliability analysis - dynamic risk and barrier management - organizational factors and safety culture - human factors and human reliability - resilience engineering - structural reliability - natural hazards - security - economic analysis in risk managemen