Robert Wheddon, HSE Technical Instructor

- What is the main purpose of HSE discipline?

- Oil and Gas Industry has always been a very dangerous environment to work. In recent years people often expected to get hurt at work. There was a pressure from the population, from public, to make changes so that the area is safe for work. Oil industry is now leader in the HSE field and a lot of other industries looking at HSE in oil field to see how it became so successful. I think it is very important because first of all HSE saves money, if you think safety is expensive try an accident, it will cost a lot more. Hurting people is bad for reputation, think overall it is being a swing in the management, in the care about employee, probably nobody really wants to be hurt at the end of the day. That’s why HSE field became so important in the last 50 years.

- What is the main duty of HSE specialist?

- An HSE specialist specializes in one area of HSE. The most general function of HSE personnel is not a line function, it is a staff function. It is the support role to the direct business, critical part of producing energy. We are specialists in identifying information and how to advice to the supervisors and managers and we play an advisory role, we advise managers on what recommended safe practice would be. We are not directly involved in supervision. However the things are going to change. The safety adviser, the safety officer is a practical person or a technician who would be involved in maintenance, would service equipment, at the same time would be policing the safety, from that point what we are trying to change the culture of workplace. If you change the culture you do not need a policeman. So the safety person could be an adviser, who is independent of the accountability in a good position to give a good advice. HSE is very fragmented nowadays. Especially large companies 

Oil and Gas Industry has always been a very dangerous environment to work

have many departments and functions from administrational to emergency response, to the training, to advisers in the field.

- What are the main criteria of a good HSE specialist?

- A good HSE specialist has to have certain qualities. One of the critical qualities is he or she should be able to communicate at all levels of the organization. He or she should communicate from the workforce up to management. Another critical point a good HSE specialist should have is ability to analyze the situation. Probably, man would be employed in accident investigation and also should have ability to conceptualize something that may occur. He or she should conceptualize the possibility to foresee an event before it occurs, because at the end of the day we want to stop people getting hurt before it happens.

- What kind of disciplines you need to be good at to become a competent and aware HSE specialist?

- I think, first of all, one must have a good general knowledge of all the activity on the workplace. Also with the general knowledge one should be able to communicate as I said with all level of the organization from the contractors to the upper management. Also integrity is a critical to a safety person. Safety person just like everybody else has got his own opinion and he has got feelings, he has got a good days and bad days, but you must never foreplay for showing any type of discrimination or personal preference on the workplace. One example might be somebody may write a safe-r card which in that card this person might be critical of your behavior, and as a safety person that card landed at your desk.

- What kind of training should attend HSE specialist for work at Agip KCO plants?

- The type of training is really broad. I did mention about basic knowledge of all the activity which we do in the workplace. Also having had experience is only way to gain that type of independent knowledge. The skills that the safety advisor often required are administrational, often the safety people required to be able to gather information, they should be up-to-date with the new technologies in the industry, be up-to-date with changes in technology and standards. Also they should be able to apply common sense to the situation, because there is no one fast rule for every situation. Every situation must be risk, must be bolded ALARP, without technical parts, we need to balance the business function with the safety function and this is a way for balance to making a realistic solution to risks, that we come across with.

- Have you ever used your HSE skills on practice?

- Everyday. Definitely, the skills that you use in the business, they are not something you can switch it on or switch it off. You cannot take them home with you. It is true about the culture, which changes the way we work, because when you change your work culture, the culture will bound with you as well, and it will have effect on your family and friends. Actually, it has positive effect on people at home and even on people in the street.

Wherever you are, you will always be doing HSE.

- Could you describe the situation where HSE rules were not kept properly?

- Definitely, we all know about Piper Alpha, we all learnt about Texas refinery, BP incident in Gulf of Mexico, all of these are cases what I refer to normalization of deviation. We have standards and procedures for just about everything we do, we have a procedure for creating a procedure and where we do not have a procedure for something we create it. Unfortunately, it is human factor as not seen in the paperwork. Paperwork doesn’t make anything safe. A safety plan cannot make a situation safe.

- Have you ever witnessed where HSE rules helped people to prevent huge disaster or serious injury?

- I have witnessed an accident in Malaysia in 2003. On drilling operation, we were drilling semi-submersible tender assisted platform. We had strict procedures to access the derrick. We were running a casing and one of the contractors went up in this standing board, and he was not familiar with a way standing board operated. It was pneumatically operated board, when you stand on the board you can control the deck to the level of the casing. Apart from moving up and down, this board had a function to fall up and fall down, because when you are not using this board it was taken away. That employee was unfamiliar with the controls. He pushed a wrong button, and he crashed on the board badly. After that we changed the whole system of work. We changed remote controls, then pneumatic system to manual chain block, we took a few steps backwards.

Integrity of safety personnel is critical.

Consistency in the way you apply the safety and advice people are critical to people taking safety seriously.

Most of the changes in the oil industry unfortunately are motivated by this type of event and therefore we should take up our procedures very seriously.

- Could you please tell your opinion about HSE Golden Rules? Have you ever met the same policies?

- I said about safety expectation, which management set. The basic expectation is the prerequisites of behaviors that we should follow. In most of the companies, I’ve  served for several oil companies, I have not seen it put straight forward as in Agip KCO, these are Golden Rules,  these are minimum expectation that we all should know, and there should be no doubt of this criteria. Most of the other companies have safety policy, with the state management expectations. We are luckier with Agip and NCPOC. We have a good and firm foundation. This is founding a good culture. Safety culture in other word is a way we do our work. Anyone who doesn’t do it in that way will stand out and everybody will notice this. This is the way we do our work. It is 10 Golden Rules.