UK offshore safety culture has changed beyond recognition since the Piper Alpha disaster of 1988 but industry officials argue the elected safety representative system introduced across the North Sea since then is still failing to protect workers in the way it was intended to.

Trade unions and industry officials argue that poor understanding and patchy adoption of SI971 regulations among duty-holders and contract companies means that industry remains less safe than it could or should be.

This is compounded, some believe, by a reluctance on the part of the Health & Safety Executive (HSE), the safety regulator, to use the toughest of its powers to sanction under-performers, as well as an increasingly competitive commercial environment.

Workforce engagement

Jake Molloy, regional organiser of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) in Aberdeen, says: “We are three decades on from Piper Alpha and 29 years after these regulations were introduced. I am amazed and saddened that workforce engagement on safety is still an issue. SI971 never seems to go away.”

The SI971 regulations were deployed in September 1989, more than a year before Lord Cullen concluded his landmark inquiry into the 6 July, 1988 disaster that killed 167 and led to the massive regulatory overhaul that to this day underpins the UK North Sea’s goal-setting safety regime.

Formally known as Offshore Installations (Safety Representatives & Safety Committees) Regulations 1989 (SI971), the legislation gave rig workers certain powers and functions in formally promoting health and safety they never had before.

For the first time, staff had the right to elect safety representatives from among their number for two-year terms and to form safety committees to represent them on health and safety issues independent of management structures.

Safety reps were also given the right to carry out inspections of equipment and make recommendations to offshore installation managers (OIMs) and regulators.

Duty-holders, meanwhile, were required to provide safety reps with training and consult them on a range safety issues, including the preparation of the installation’s safety case.

Allan Smillie, operations HSE advisor at Abu Dhabi-based Taqa, calls SI971 a “fragile beast”.

In a presentation at the Safety30 conference in Aberdeen last month, Smillie described how Taqa has revitalised its own safety rep system but questioned why the industry at large was still not reaping the full benefits of the legislation.

“There are many reasons and opportunities to derail a platform committee or safety rep engagement,” Smillie said.

“On occasion it is by intent. However, these occasions are few and far between. Most of the time it is misunderstanding, ignorance of the legislation or a desire to fix things by not following the standard effort.”

Conditions vary from “operator to operator, platform to platform and shift to shift”.

On some facilities, committees struggle to meet regularly.

Elsewhere, reps still feel the threat of NRB – or “not required back” – the unofficial blacklisting process used to dismiss troublesome contractor staff who speak up about safety issues, he says.

“Those three letters damage our reputation. It puts lives at risk. It puts our jobs at risk,” said Smillie.

Some employers fail to give reps sufficient time or training to exercise their functions.

Education needed

Operators can also be poor in ensuring not just reps, but also offshore installation managers, supervisors, constituents and onshore teams are educated in how to use the regulations.

Safety reps who work for contractors face issues created by the commercial tensions between their employer and its client, a situation some feel is worsening as a result of the intensifying competitive environment in the North Sea industry.

Molloy says he is worried by the emergence of fierce commercial competition between contractor companies, some of which are turning their backs on long-standing collective bargaining agreements.

“The downturn has led to a return to old management styles and bad practices,” he says. “We are seeing the creep of NRB, an increasing use of employment agencies and ‘zero hour’-type contracts.

“This is putting pressure on workers. When an employer’s primary concerns are commercial matters, workers are scared to speak out.

“It has echoes of what happened before Piper Alpha,” he says.

“We hear anecdotally that contract companies are feeling less able or less willing to challenge or question a client on health and safety matters and therefore protect their employees.

“I think that is a sad indictment on the industry, which I thought had gone beyond ‘boom and bust’ cycles in terms of delivering continuous improvement in matters of safety.”

Molloy acknowledges the safety rep system can work well, citing Taqa and Chinese-owned Nexen as two North Sea operators that have “embraced what the regulations can offer”.

But there are also numerous examples of poor practice, he adds.

The landmark Cullen Report, which followed the public inquiry into Piper Alpha, emphasised the importance of workforce representation in ensuring safety and boosting worker morale on offshore platforms.

Molloy agrees: “It has been shown time and time again that many accidents in the oil and gas industry have a route in a failure to involve the workforce. The workforce are the people who face the most severe consequences when all goes wrong.”

Weekly

Offshore safety struggle is still not over 30 years after Piper Alpha