Introduction

Behavioural based safety (BBS) programmes have been demonstrated to be effective in improving safety in a variety of industries and applications. In some cases, however, the results of meta-studies have shown mixed results in the efficacy of BBS approaches (Tuncel et al., 2006). One industry where BBS programmes have been implemented with great success is the oil and gas industry—an industry where safety is critical. Some studies of BBS programmes in the oil and gas industry have shown significant and lasting improvements in safety (Medina et al., 2009).

In this proposed project, an existing BBS programme within an oil & gas company based in Kazakstan will be observed and monitored to determine whether the BBS programme is being correctly implemented, and if so, how to improve its success in improving the worker safety of the plants involved.

Need for This Study

The need for this study is based on the results of an existing BBS programme over the past several years. This programme was implemented in Karachaganak Petroleum Operating b.v (KPO) at the end of 2003. The programme has succesfully trained a substantial number of observers in various departments within the organisation.  Each unit or department has its own BBS committee, and all observation reports are analysed locally on a monthly basis, and forwarded to corporate safety departments quarterly. Despite this effort, the overall safety record since implementation of the BBS programme has worsened rather than improved. Figure 1 illustrates the scope of the problem.

Clearly, something is not working properly in the BBS programme as it is currently implemented. The goal of this project is thus to determine what’s going wrong with the BBS programme and ideally develop a set of suggestions to improve the BBS implementation.

Figure 1. Actual safety results at KPO for the six years after the 2003 implementation of a BBS programme.

Because the results of the BBS programme instituted in 2003 have been not as expected, it is the objective of this project to determine the reasons for the lack of success and to develop changes to the programme that will improve the safety results.

Opportunity

The management of KPO have been concerned over the lack of success of their BBS programme. A five-year audit of the program is planned to review the system and determine its success. The timing for this project is ideal, since the company management want to understand what has gone wrong and how to correct it. The project will have full access to all information and databases with regards to this project, as well as being permitted access to personnel to conduct whatever surveys that may help determine these answers.

Hypotheses to Be Tested

The hypothesis to be tested is that there are some implementation errors that can be determined which, if corrected, will improve the effectiveness of the BBS programme. Specifically, the hypotheses includes the following:

H: A gap exists between the plan for the BBS programme and the actual implementation of the programme.

A secondary set of hypotheses on possible sources of the problems with the KPO BBS system are:

H1: That the employees in the general workforce are not willing to implement the BBS programme.

H2: That the trained BBS observers do not correctly perform their observational duties within the BBS system.

H3: That the section heads and managers of KPO are resistant to the BBS system implementations within their units.

H4: That the feedback system is not being properly implemented.

It is unlikely that all of H1, H2, H3, and H4 are true. Therefore, the goal of this project will be to determine which of these are true, as part of determining how to correct the BBS programme at KPO.

Project Focus

Although a number of studies have been published on the results of BBS programmes in various industries and cultures, including some in the oil and gas industry, none have addressed the problem of discovering why those with poor outcomes failed and attempting to correct those failures.  This project will provide a guideline to determine how to discover failures in implementation or design of BBS programmes, as well as how to define a modification to the design or implementation that can correct those failures.

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