Nopsa: looking for a new chief
Clegg farewells Nopsa
John Clegg, the chief executive of Australia's National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority (Nopsa), finishes his five-year tenure tomorrow, with Simon Schubach standing in as acting chief executive until a permanent appointment is made.
Clegg said: "It has certainly been a rollercoaster five years since I began as the first employee of Nopsa in July 2004 with no staff, no systems or procedures, no offices, no stationery and no IT support."
Since then, Nopsa has expanded and now employs 54 staff in Perth and Melbourne and has a complete suite of business and regulatory core processes all certified to ISO 9001.
"Nopsa has worked closely with industry leaders in this time to elevate safety to a higher level of priority in the management agenda. Health and safety challenges remain however," said Clegg.
"Some of the more obvious are the need for regulatory clarity, improving leadership, training and competence, and finding ways of better involving the workforce and unions."
"I note also, across 391 incidents reported to Nopsa during the 12 months to the end of last quarter, the top three root causes were maintenance deficiencies, failure to follow procedures and poor equipment design."
On the plus side, "the offshore petroleum industry now has the high quality health and safety regulator it deserves", added Clegg.