Safety Engineering and Risk Management Debate 2012

I saw that every 2 or 3 minutes came out a new post. Tomorrow is the deadline, and you are all crazy! Take a break and have some free chat.

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is an inductive method of performing a system reliability or safety analysis from a low to a high level. It is a Bottom Up approach in which the analyst looks in turn at each system component, assesses the effects of its failure on system behaviour.
The basic FMEA technique is to:
i. Examine each component in turn
ii. Identify ways in which it can fail (Failure Modes)
iii. Identify the consequence of these failures (failure Effects)

Body mechanics describes how your body moves. Being aware of and practicing good body mechanics throughout your day may help prevent injury and reduce strain on your body. Whether you're sitting at a desk all day or working on a drilling platform, you can practice and improve your body mechanics to help prevent stress and pain and reduce wear and tear on your muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints.

 Using divers in offshore operations carries significant risks.  The environment presents a number of hazards such as poor lighting, restricted oxygen supply and sometimes extreme temperatures or pressures.  Discuss these risks and the safety measures in place to help reduce them.  

Working at height refers to working at a distance above the ground from which a person could fall or any distance liable to cause personal injury. This includes access and egress except by a staircase in a permanent workplace, work at or below ground level, but does not include slips and trips on the level.

Excavation is the most fundamental and important element in the construction industry, whether brownfield or greenfield. Basically, four excavation methods are employed during pipeline construction: vertical excavation; horizontal excavation; step trenching and cofferdams.

Operations with two or more installations and simultaneous operations such as construction and production need appropriate management systems and controls for effective use of resources and to minimise risk.

Confined space refers to an area which is enclosed with limited access that makes it dangerous to work. An example is the interior of a storage tank which workers may enter for maintenance work but which is not a habitable place.

An emergency water landing is  an unplanned landing into water made by an aircraft in response to  a crisis. 

Slips, trips and fall are the most common cause of injury at work. On average, they cause 40 per cent of all reported major injuries and can also lead to other types of serious accidents, for example falls from height. Slips and trips are also the most reported injury to members of the public.

A fire must have three things to ignite and maintain combustion: Fuel, Heat and Oxygen. The basic strategy of fire prevention is to control or isolate sources of fuel and heat in order to prevent combustion. If all three are not present in sufficient quantities a fire will not ignite or a fire will not be able to sustain combustion.

Hazard is defined as a chemical or physical condition that has potential to cause harm to human life, property or the environment and a reactive hazard has potential to initiate a reactive incident. It is an outcome of changes to chemical structure leading to rapid release of energy, heat and gaseous products leading to severe consequences e.g. fire, explosion, or toxic release.

A reactive hazard may involve:

There has been an increase in the exploration of unconventional crude oils, which almost equal global conventional oil reserves - from bitumen through to heavy oils. Discuss the safety and environmental issues that arise from their exploration, and possible solutions.

The Macondo incident failed due to the failure of the BOP atop the Macondo well.  The BOP was designed to activate and seal the well if control was lost, even in a “low probability, high impact event”, such as the blowout that occurred the evening of April 20, 2010.  The report released from NAE/NRC, entitled “Macondo Well-Deepwater Horizon Blowout, lessons for improving offshore Drilling Safety”, summarized the known and suspected reasons for why the BOP failed:

Personal Floatation Devices (PFDs) are protective equipments used on an offshore platform location, on the barge, during boat travel, when travelling in a Helicopter or aeroplane, when fire drills or emergency drills are being conducted or any other time deemed necessary by boat captain, supervisor, pusher or pilot. It is also important to note that proper attention has to be paid on the use of thee PDSs. Examples of these PFDs are life preserver, work vest, life buoy, life raft, survival capsules etc

Ergonomics is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.

Pipeline is a safe and reliable mode of transportation and distribution of oil and gas. It is also an economical and dependable mode of transportation particularly to the sensitive and strategic areas where vessels cannot access easily. It provides a long term infrastructural option and solves difficulties in handling large volume of products by rail from one loading point to another and therefore reduces minimum transit loss.

In some years to come a large proportion of the offshore
platform will need to be decommissioned. Can we discuss the health, safety, environmental and cost issues as
regards the operation,disposal, and any potential re-use of decommisioned plants and structures?

These blogs are the perfect way to develop many and various safety discussions covering large areas of industries. As a student of an MSc in Oil and Gas Engineering I would like to develop a discussion related to safety issues in the sector of well drilling and generally the operations associated with this activity.

Transportation and distribution are two sectors of industry which should also be mentioned regarding safety issues applied there. Many incidents are indicating that there is a need of some improvements in practices applied so far. So, my suggestion is to discuss this topic further.