Determining the effectiveness of Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) management system based on anomaly report measurement in oil projects

Abstract

Today, development of a Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) management system which can protect human resources and the environment, while remaining accountable for demands of the companies involved in the large and national projects, seems to be essential. Certificates issued for developing such management systems are an evidence for the claim on existence of HSE management systems. However, the question which still remains is whether the established systems have any real effect on the organization’s performance in HSE management. Do the instruments designed to measure the performance of an HSE management system properly reflect the performance realities? This study seeks to measure the field performance of companies based on indicators of anomalies (reporting all cases of potential damage) and compare it with scores of HSE management system performance obtained by MCAT, in order to find out whether the companies having more robust management systems, especially those with a management certificate, gain better results in practice. A total of 24 contractor companies involved in construction of Phase 19 of South Pars were randomly selected from the statistical population and studied for 6 months in terms of operating results and management system performance. The obtained results were analyzed using a statistical software. Comparisons between the two groups of companies (with and without a certificate) in terms of management system score indicated the superiority of the group with a certificate. The superiority, however, was negligible with a difference score of 3.69 compared to the total score of 200. Considering the incident indicator, the average severity rate of incidents in the companies with a certificate was lower than in the ones without a certificate. However, the abundance indicator and its level revealed a better condition in the companies without a certificate. Considering the number of the anomalies reported per one million total man-hours worked, the companies without a certificate (with 821.5 anomalies) superperformed the companies with a certificate (with 937.8 anomalies). The number of lost working days to close each anomaly per one million total man-hours worked was calculated to be 283.9 lost working days for the companies with a certificate and 317.1 working days for the companies without a certificate, showing the better performance of the companies with a certificate.