A resilience engineering approach to safety excellence in the maintenance of oil and gas assets.

摘要

The established approach to safety management has failed to handle socio-technicalsystems that have become more complex. The main argument is this approach is basedon assumptions that systems are protected against accidents by barriers (well-trainedpeople, redundant mechanisms and safety devices, and procedures and safe systems ofwork). Complex systems, such as maintenance, are actually labour intensive;maintenance staff often works under pressure to finish tasks as rapidly as possible. Theycontinuously adapt and make adjustments using available resources, time, knowledge,and competence to achieve success. Thus, they are accidents prone. Human factorsinherent to maintenance accidents are most times difficult to identify. Research in thisarea in the oil and gas industry in maintenance management is limited in comparison tothe aviation and nuclear sectors. Therefore, it has been suggested to overcome this lackby exploring the maintenance system and identifying appropriate methods and tools thatlead a system to safety excellence. Resilience engineering (RE) approach has been foundthe suitable solution. Moreover, four system abilities (cornerstones of RE: ability torespond, to monitor, to anticipate, and to learn) have been identified to characterise theresilience of a system; if these abilities are known and increased, it will make the systemAs High Resilient As Possible (AHRAP). However, there is a need to bridge betweenRE theory and practice. Particularly, a tool that measures these abilities lacks in the oiland gas industry, specifically within the maintenance system.In doing so, a framework based on a Gap Analysis (GA) was outlined. A tool, theMAintenance System Resilience Assessment Tool- MASRAT, was developed to assesscurrent system resilience and identify strategies for improvement to achieve safetyexcellence. The maintenance system of SONATRACH was explored by the analysis ofthe system documentation and processes, interviews with maintenance staff,questionnaires, field observations, storytelling, and functional analysis. MASRAT hasbeen validated by means of congruency and principal components analysis, PCA(content validity), and Cronbach’s alpha (reliability). An expert panel testing was carriedout to test its usability.The exploration of the system came up with a snapshot of daily activities as well as abetter understanding of the maintenance system. The study identified the most significant human factors (resources, time pressure, and supervision/coordination) andtheir probable impact on plant safety. The elements of the system were found tightlycoupled, hence the system complex. Stories describing the continuous adaptations ofpeople to achieve assigned objectives were collected. On the other hand, MASRAT wasvalidated. All items were rated above 0.75 in congruency test. The results of PCA forthe three selected factors confirmed the items may be clustered after extraction into fourcomponents which interpretation represents the four cornerstones of RE. The analysisshowed MASRAT is reproducible. Cronbach’s alpha results were found higher thanwhat is required (0.7). MASRAT was found usable by maintenance expert panel. It wasused to measure the maintenance department resilience. Strategies that may lead thesystem from current maturity level to excellence were identified. Eventually,recommendations were made to management to be implemented both at corporate anddepartment levels. For the first time, the maintenance department resilience of petroleumassets was measured to fill in the gap between RE theory and practice. Besides, this canbe of benefit to the petroleum industry by a better knowledge of the maintenanceworking environment and human factors impact on safety and by profiles determinationand improvement strategies identification.