After 35 years of gaining experience in offshore oil and gas exploration and production in the north sea, we are still experiencing people getting injured or even worse, killed, while involved with lifting operations.
WHY?
Are we not taking the subject seriously enough? As far as I’m concerned, that IS EXACTLY the problem and here’s why:
In your private life:
When you have a problem with your teeth, you go to the dentist.
When you have a problem with your health, you go to the doctor.
If you needed surgery, you would expect a surgeon to operate. All good common sense.
In the oil and gas industry:
If you have a problem with your turbines, you contact the turbine specialists.
If you have a problem with your valves, you go to your valve specialist.
If you have a problem with your wells, you go to a down-hole specialist.
But if you have problems with lifting operations, do you consult the lifting specialists? NO. You consult an industry body who have no subject matter specialists who then form a work group to try and solve the problems.
No disrespect to these work groups as they put in a lot of effort and mean well, but THEY ARE NOT EXPERTS PER SE! The work group may contain one or two experts but (speaking from experience) by the time they can get the rest of the team to agree to any particular course of action, the main points are so diluted that they are practically worthless. You inevitably end up with a “one size fits all” solution to the problem which in reality, DOES NOT WORK.
We have in the past tried to help these work groups by participating in them but have found them to be very slow to produce, mostly due to politics and alternative agendas and at the end of the day, the output is often something we would rather not be associated with.
Competence in rigging and lifting operations is a classic example. Starting in the year 2000, we spent 18 months as a member of a work group attending monthly meetings and offering solutions free to the group.
We were largely ignored while the group ploughed on in various different directions. After 18 months of zero progress, we, as lifting experts, created our own competence programmes within a month and had them endorsed by a national award body to give them credibility. The competence programmes are controlled and evidenced via individual logbooks and are auditable.
This national award body, EAL, actually issue the certificates of competence to our successful delegates and these are recognised internationally.
Companies worldwide that use our competence programmes are noticing marked reductions in lifting-related incidents and accidents.
Now, 8 years later, we find the industry body through yet another work group are still trying to produce standards of competence for lifting operations and guess what, they will be controlled by log books etc.
Why do people keep reinventing the wheel? …. and thinking “square” might work better?
Obviously, it’s a lot easier to do when there is a model to follow but by the time the “latest” issue is altered enough to avoid copyright issues, a lot of the original quality disappears.
The industry suffers as it ends up with something pretty mundane as an operating standard and unfortunately, a lot of companies are happy just to be able to tick the box without considering the quality of what they are getting.
Maybe it’s time for the real lifting experts to make a stand against the amateurs who are going to end up tarnishing the industry’s good reputation.
Oh-oh, all this rantin’ has made my tooth start to twinge, ….. I suppose I better phone a plumber!
NSL – Always First, Usually Copied, Never Bettered.