One of my favourite photos is the one above of an engineer walking atop the wet, spherical roof of a new LNG storage tank at an onshore regasification plant wearing rubber boots and holding an umbrella. One of our collaborators and I were visiting the plant to conduct an on-site pre-start-up and commissioning audit. This picture was taken during a rainy day just as we were finishing up inspecting facilities atop the tank roof (during which time we remained on a safe access walkway). What cannot be seen so well in this photo, however, is a rapidly approaching lightning storm, nor the increasing wind gusts.
We thought he was crazy. One slip and he’d have fallen about 40 metres. We called out to him but he just kept wandering about as we ourselves were heading down to shelter. He did not respond to repeated requests to come down. During this client assignment we witnessed many unsafe acts, poorly constructed facilities, and a number of incorrectly commissioned facilities. Our observations included documenting two fatalities – one, a repeat of another that had occurred just days earlier – that required us to report serious concerns to our client. Our client, a western consortium, had engaged us to provide expert opinion on whether or not critical interfacing facilities (that included an LNG supply vessel) were going to be impacted by any unsafe conditions arising from plant construction or commissioning.
This assignment highlighted many differences in safety culture that I have witnessed over three decades in a diverse range of project and host country settings. It is fair to say I have seen good and bad safety culture and its effects.
Safety statistics aside, the value of life and the protection of front line workers is directly impacted by culture. There have been significant improvements in safety culture in some industries over the decades that are evidenced by declining injuries and fatalities – BUT – many of these gains can be swiftly destroyed when companies and corporate leaders drop the ball. When industry is suffering economic setbacks and projects are delayed or under-funded it can be staggering how quickly some management teams lose safety focus. Reductions in spending on process safety and asset integrity, delays in maintenance, and reductions in personnel training and manning point to an incoming storm.
I get to speak to a wide range of front-line operators working for multiple clients and it is interesting how good they are at forecasting the changes in culture in their constituent companies. One only hopes that their superiors are listening and not hiding their heads in the sand.
In his article “Safety Cultural Preconditions for Organizational Learning in High-Risk Organizations”, author Olav Nævestad states:
“Comparison of perspectives and reflection upon (safety) practice (or cultural redundancy) is a precondition for processes of learning and culture change that may reduce ignorance to hazards and signals of danger in high-risk organizations. Such processes are, however, contingent on a climate of trust and openness in which co-existing safety cultures can meet and set forth processes of organizational learning.”
There are still too many organisations with “my way or the highway” attitudes that effectively insulate themselves from such learning and reduce their safety effectiveness in the long term. Let’s hope they see and hear the storm coming.
