The current issue of ‘Connexus’ magazine describes Baker Hughes’ revamp of its health, safety and environment (HSE) management systems in a post Macondo world. An earlier project to harmonize HSE standards was fast-tracked to meet a November 2011 deadline for new Gulf of Mexico regulations. The result is that best practices from seven former divisions have been rolled into enterprise wide controls.
The new common operating standard has been audited by Shell under its global wells business improvement plan—an initiative that Shell shares with its service providers including BHI. The plan includes joint management visits and a ‘deep conversation’ between business managers from both companies. Site visits enable sharing of good practices and opportunities for operator/provider collaboration.
HSE manager Don Elam observed, ‘If you don’t meet Shell’s requirements, you don’t work for them.’ Scorecard key performance indicators track inter alia, lifesaving, dropped objects prevention, temporary pipe work and process safety. Shell recommended that BHI’s operational controls documents, some of which were 200 pages long, be summarized in a four to five page best practice document with hyperlinks to other documents. Lessons learned from Shell’s work on life saving rules, staff competency development and Shell’s ‘Drops’ dropped object prevention scheme were shared during the project.
This article originally appeared in Oil IT Journal 2012 Issue # 5.
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