Measuring and Improving Blended Project-Safety Culture in Operations of Offshore Oil and Gas Facilities

Abstract

The offshore oil and gas industry is a highly fragmented industry where contractors execute most everyday activities in all its phases. These contractors comprise around 80% of the personnel performing project activities in the different platforms and oil fields. Moreover, the personnel performing the activities are subjected to constant rotation due to the variety of activities. We can find modification, maintenance, repair, and testing among these activities. These situations present a challenge in which safety and project cultures must be adequately addressed while ensuring alignment between stakeholders.

To approach these challenges in the best possible way, the organization needs to perform some detailed analyses. These must identify the main drivers for the cultures and the stakeholders' performance while considering the dependencies and interactions between the project management culture and the safety culture. Also, interactions between the contractors' drivers and the operators' drivers need to be considered. The current work proposes a theoretical framework that measures the level of alignment between stakeholders and the expected performance for the project that is being conducted, based on the cultural status of the organization for both project and safety dimensions. In addition, the model supports the management of the offshore facilities by providing an additional tool that recommends several management strategies for improving the required processes during the operational phase of the platform, based on the assessment conducted previously.