The importance of safety

Hugh Williams, Chief Executive of the International Marine Contractors Association, debates the issues.

“We’re moving into a new era; but there is a major concern about whether skills and safety levels will match the sophistication of this ‘new-look’ fleet”
-Hugh Williams

There is nothing more important to the International Marine Contacting Association (IMCA) and its members than safety. Indeed, the quest for ‘zero incidents’ remains at the heart of virtually every guidance published by the international trade association that represents, and works on behalf of, over 500 offshore, marine and underwater contracting companies in more than 50 countries. Heading our list of aims and objectives is our commitment to strive for the highest possible technical and safety standards. Nothing can, or should, override this key mission statement and associated action.

Safety ranks so high up the list of IMCA activities that its two core committees –Safety, Environment & Legislation (SEL), and Training, Certification & Personnel Competence (TCPC) – work right across all the special interest divisions within IMCA (Marine, Diving, Remote Systems & ROV and Offshore Survey) and the four sections (Americas Deepwater; Asia Pacific; Europe and Africa; and Middle East and India).

There are a number of ongoing safety initiatives which include the IMCA safety flash system; publication of safety statistics and of annual incident reports; the continued development of safety aids such as pocket safety cards, safety posters and videos; and also the work of the Security Task Force that addresses such issues as piracy and security. These initiatives rely on sharing where IMCA is the conduit used to share individual experiences with the wider industry for the common good.

Current concerns
With a strong oil price and exceptional levels of activity throughout the offshore oil and gas industry we are living in exciting and challenging times. The US$20 billion-a-year offshore marine contracting industry, key to the offshore oil and gas industry, is responsible for construction work on major oil and gas field developments globally as well as undertaking specific contract work for field improvements and extensions. Sophisticated vessels and platforms are vital for the safe and efficient support of underwater and surface construction, so many would expect the industry to be overjoyed by the knowledge that over US$17 billion-worth of new vessels are in yards or in planning and engineering phases. However, there are very strong concerns.

In a relatively short time some 50 new marine construction vessels and 600 offshore support vessels will be in service around the world; to say nothing of 40 floating drilling rigs, 100 new work class ROVs; 10 new portable or modular saturation diving systems; and a whole new generation of dredgers and seismic vessels.

The top-of-the-range installation vessels will be fitted with cranes of 3000t-5000t capacity, whilst the top-of-the-range pipelay vessels will have up to 60” diameter pipe handling capacity. Except for vessels such as Allseas’ Solitaire and Lorelay, nothing like these top-end vessels has been built for two or three decades. A new breed of ‘single lift’ vessel with capacities from 20,000 – 48,000t is also being built with decommissioning in mind. At the same time, more heavy lift transport ships are being added to the fleet, and these, plus some of the offshore support vessels may be used for offshore construction projects.

The offshore fleet is certainly about to become physically larger (in terms both of the number of vessels and their actual size), and more sophisticated with the majority featuring dynamic positioning (DP) and state-of-the-art control systems. Many vessels will have the scope to fit and operate additional capacity such as cranes, ROVs, diving systems and reels for pipelines, umbilicals and cables. We’re moving into a new era; but there is a major concern about whether skills and safety levels will match the sophistication of this ‘new-look’ fleet; and, of course, there is a pressing need for current and new supply bases to accommodate these large vessels, and all the high tech equipment which goes with them. Progressively we should be considering new bases incorporating supply chain elements; for example, major contractors are establishing shore-based pipeline fabrication and spooling facilities in remote areas as close to offshore fields as possible.

An item topping the IMCA agenda is the global concern about skills shortages. To operate just these new construction vessels, we need some 2000 additional watch-keepers across the bridge, deck and engine room; 800 personnel in saturation diving and related positions; 1000 additional survey and inspection personnel; 1200 ROV personnel and many other diving, support, project and engineering personnel. It is a huge ask.

With zero incidents in mind, all these people, newly recruited to the industry, must be capable of absorbing the available knowledge and taking on board industry safety objectives. Training must continue across the board to keep them safe – training establishments and trainers will be in high demand. Yes, even more people will be needed to man them.

It may be that many of the people new to the industry have transferred from other sectors of the civil or defence marine industries, but whatever their background and wherever they are from, training to the high levels required by the offshore oil and gas industry, and adopting the ethos of our industry is vital.

New and sophisticated technology
Within the offshore contracting industry we are used to multi-redundant, fail-safe systems. The lack of new vessels over the past decade or so has meant working with vessels with long histories, systems have been added and evolved; teething problems ironed out; and performance improved. Now, fresh from the yards we are going to see very sophisticated vessels (with similarly sophisticated equipment fitted on them) often going straight out to remote oil and gas provinces. Almost without exception, this will see them operating in ever deeper and more hostile waters far from shore – yes, it really is ‘new frontier’ country. What can we expect?

Debating the issues
There is no simple answer to the three inter-linked issues of skills availability; skills and safety; and the impact of new technology. We need to debate the issues, get feedback and views from across the industry and ensure we work together to identify challenges, and set the wheels in motion to share solutions. IMCA’s real-time safety flash system will be used to share specific operational knowledge as it becomes available.

Learning from collective wisdom
The new fleet and its new personnel will want to learn from the collective wisdom of the past. This is contained in new design codes that have improved since much of the current fleet was built. But a considerable contribution comes from the equipment specifications, procedures and personnel competence described within IMCA’s good practice guidelines. These also address trials and commissioning; ‘failure modes and effects’ analyses; audit and maintenance programmes developed on past successes and occasionally from past incidents; and the development and recognition of competence in the workforce.

We can certainly help to build strong foundations for the new fleet and new people who will be joining the industry. IMCA has published well over 200 guidelines relevant throughout the world. The most pertinent to the new fleet may be DP for supply vessels (and many other DP documents including incident analyses); the Common Marine Inspection Document – more of that later; Training and competence framework; Crane specifications and lifting operations; Maintenance of wire ropes; Communications (bridge and dive control); Incident investigation; Vessel and personnel security (including ISPS); as well as the suite of diving documents which support IMCA’s International code of practice for offshore diving. There are specific guidelines relating to various aspects of safety, and also our much used safety promotional material aimed at individuals within the industry, but safety and efficiency are the goals of the content of almost all our guidelines.

CMID a living example
IMCA’s Common Marine Inspection Document (CMID) was developed originally to reduce the number of audits carried out on individual vessels, together with the adoption of a common auditing standard for the offshore marine industry. It is gratifying that the CMID is seeing ever-greater adoption around the world and members are actively promoting its use to clients, sub-contractors and other vessel operators. Indeed, a significant part of the international offshore industry has accepted the CMID as the standard for vessel inspections and therefore, when requesting copies of recent inspections they will expect them to be in the format laid out in the CMID.

The CMID is treated as a living document. Some parts can be completed by the crew prior to an independent auditor’s arrival and, thereafter, the vessel’s crew can keep it updated wherever possible, so that the minimum amount of work is required at each audit, and auditors can spend their time on board as effectively as possible. We view it as so important that it was the subject of one of the workshops at our annual seminar when we explored how the CMID is used in practice and how the use of the document can be enhanced. It is vital to ensure that the CMID meets (and indeed exceeds) all needs and that there is no need for duplication of effort, something that would dissipate the element of self-regulation, a key step in ever-increased safety standards, that is now working so well.

In our desire to facilitate safe and efficient marine operations, we look forward to a challenging and far-reaching debate and resolutions to ensure the enlarged offshore fleet can operate optimally – and safely.

Hugh Williams is Chief Executive of the International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA), which represents offshore marine and underwater engineering companies worldwide. The association has over 500 company members in 50 countries around the globe. Williams is a chartered civil engineer with 33 years broad experience. His career has focused on marine operations particularly heavy lifting and marine construction in the offshore oil and gas industry. To find out more about the IMCA please visit www.imca-int.com.

Safety flash system
A key tool of IMCA is its safety flash system, which enables prompt distribution of safety flashes across the industry on topics that would otherwise pose a latent hazard to other members. The purpose of an IMCA safety flash is to notify IMCA member companies of a significant hazard that could be present at their worksites and to provide solutions for controlling the hazards. Such a hazard may already have led to a fatality, injury or illness at a member’s site or it may be a recognised problem that could lead to an unwanted incident. In either case, the publication of such hazards through the IMCA safety flash system informs and helps prevent similar occurrences.