Petrofac's Control of Work team celebrate success at UK Oil and Gas Industry Safety Awards

Petrofac Offshore Projects & Operations’ (OPO) pioneering Control of Work e-learning programme has been recognised at the prestigious UK Oil and Gas Industry Safety Awards.

The OPO Control of Work team, responsible for delivering the bespoke, industry first training programme, won the ‘Ideas in Safety Prize’. The award recognises ‘the resourcefulness and creativity of individuals or teams working offshore who have an idea to reduce hydrocarbon releases’.

The judges said the team had developed ‘… a very practical tool, in conjunction with the workforce, that deserved to be widely adapted.’

Accepting the award on behalf of the team, Operations Director Ray Sclater thanked the judges and said: “We were up against some very worthy projects and it is a privilege to have been chosen ahead of them.

“It is also a privilege to be the person to collect it on behalf of the team, because so many different people from different backgrounds and disciplines contributed to the Control of Work programme. It was a genuinely collaborative piece of work and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all our onshore and offshore personnel who were involved.

“Of course the real test is not just whether we win awards but whether working on one of our installations is safer as a result of this piece of work. We truly believe it will be, but we won’t be complacent about it and like everyone else here today we’ll be treating this not as an end, but as a starting point from which we can keep improving.”

The programme arose out of a number of incidents where control of work was identified as one of the primary root causes.  Rather than accept such performance and stick with the 'norm' of trying to reinforce their permit to work system, the team looked at how the workforce was working, and what improvements could be made across the whole control of work area.  By involving all levels of the onshore and offshore teams, an approach was developed that suited the needs of the users.

OPO employee Ian Murray, Elected Safety Representative on the Ninian Northern platform, was also shortlisted as a finalist in the ‘Safety Representative of the Year’ category, for ‘an enthusiastic and committed safety rep who is driving the safety agenda at their worksite’.