Framework for the assessment of the safety culture in the oil and gas industry.

Approaches to safety culture assessment may have many limits if supported exclusively by quantitative methods. Based on this, a research team developed a quantitative-qualitative approach to assess the maturity of the safety culture on an oil platform. To that end, the team sought to develop and test a method consisting of an initial ethnographic phase followed by four other distinct phases: definition of homogeneous groups; production of customized questionnaires; quantitative evaluation; and qualitative assessment. The results show the emergence of trends, from pre-defined themes in safety culture to specific levels of maturity for each of the homogeneous groups. At the same time, it was perceived that the maturity level of the groups is defined from the daily work practices developed by each one of them. This experience allowed us to propose a framework for assessing the maturity levels of safety culture for the oil and gas industry.

The practice of ergonomics as a design discipline in the basic design of oil platforms.

BACKGROUND: Ergonomics is increasingly gaining ground in projects in the energy sector, as well as in the continuous process industry, although the discipline is still framing its space in this milieu. This issue emerges from the designers' lack of familiarity with ergonomics work, especially in engineering design projects, combined with the usual expectations of organizations regarding the participation of ergonomists and the deliverables they ought to develop throughout the project. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to report the participation of a team of ergonomists in an oil platform basic design, discussing ergonomics structuring as an emerging design discipline. METHODS: This qualitative study used participant observation as a methodology approach aligned with the theoretical framework of Activity Ergonomics (AE). The data collection occurred between October 2018 and June 2020 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. RESULTS: The results show the challenges faced by the ergonomics team and strategies adopted in order to create technical specifications (TS), which will determine the work conditions in the future platforms. An evolution in relation to the practice of Ergonomics during this project can be pointed out, even though part of its scope of action remains to be better understood among the design team. CONCLUSION: Considering oil platform project contexts, this work highlights how ergonomics can help integrate the different rationalities that compose the design process.

Integrating work into the design: The case of offshore maintenance.

BACKGROUND: Ergonomics in design is intended to close the gap between what is designed and the real work. This study discusses the creation of technical ergonomics requirements for the basic design stage of workshops on offshore platforms. OBJECTIVE: This paper intends to show how the ergonomics discipline contributes to integrating knowledge on the real work of the maintenance crew with the design. METHODS: This case study uses procedures, data collection, and analysis guided by the Ergonomics of the Activity's (EA) theoretical framework, focused on design projects. RESULTS: The results show how ergonomics contributed to a better understanding of maintenance work, as well as how this knowledge was integrated into the project design. This occurred both through the construction of a new layout and equipment list, and through the development of technical specifications. These products enable greater operational efficiency, reductions in the costs of alterations in the next stages of the project, and improvement in working conditions. CONCLUSIONS: This work points to the need for new studies on platform maintenance work, in addition to studies that deepen the debate on consolidating ergonomics practice in design projects.

Organizational resilience in the oil and gas industry: A scoping review.

Resilience derives from the study of socio-ecological systems and refers to the dynamical capacity to adapt to internal and external perturbations by changing its mode of operation without losing its ability to perform. The present article offers a scoping review of organizational research discussing the concept of resilience in the oil and gas industry. Rather than approaching a narrowly defined question as in systematic reviews, scoping reviews produce an overview of a body of knowledge covering broad questions. It reviews organizational research on resilience in the oil and gas industry by covering five main categories: conceptualizations; article type/methods; context/unit of analysis; relation between resilience and safety; and, central topics highlighted in the literature. The review of both empirical and conceptual literature reveals that the concept of resilience tends to be researched in terms of system capabilities or outcomes rather than processes. Integrated operations has provided new scenarios to discuss and investigate resilience in oil and gas production. However, findings demonstrate how resilience is often presented as a normative construct and there is little development in terms of understanding the dynamics of adaptive processes in the industry. The overall goal is to contribute to the study of organizational resilience by identifying areas for further study and by producing new knowledge that can permeate practices in organizations.