Abstract In July 1988 the fire and explosions on Occidental’s Piper Alpha platform, 120 miles north east of Aberdeen, resulted in the world’s worst offshore oil disaster. The Piper Alpha disaster claimed 167 lives. The occurrence of this event was not circumstantial. It was the outcome of an intrinsically flawed regulatory safety regime and an accompanying authoritarian labour relations regime, in which workers’ voices were ignored.

Reforms of the regulatory system of British offshore oil production were initiated in 1990, on the basis of the report of the public inquiry into the disaster, conducted by the Scottish High Court judge, Lord Cullen. This report emphasised the importance of workforce commitment to, and involvement in, safe operations. Cullen, moreover, stated that ‘the first-line supervisors are a key link in achieving that, as each is personally responsible for ensuring that all employees, whether the company’s own or contractors, are trained to and do work safely and that they not only know how to perform their jobs safely but are convinced that they have a responsibility to do so’.

In recent years, the Cullen report has been held up as a safety blueprint for the global oil industry. At the same time, there have been industry claims of a profound change in employer attitudes towards safety and labour relations practices in the offshore oil industry. This paper utilises testimonies from offshore workers to document patterns of distorted communication, which limit the possibility and efficacy of offshore risk management and, ultimately, the building of an appropriate offshore safety culture.

Offshore oil and gas production commenced in the UK sector more than three decades ago. Throughout this time period, offshore workers have experienced some of the highest accident and fatality rates in UK industry, ranking only behind such industries as coal mining and forestry.

Over time, attitudes towards safety offshore have changed as have management approaches to the offshore work environment. In terms of workforce involvement, we can distinguish two periods. One, during which almost any form of workforce involvement was considered undesirable by management. The other, following Piper Alpha, in which a limited non-conflictual pattern of workforce involvement has been either tolerated or encouraged by industry.

The first section of this paper examines the early phase of oil exploration in the North Sea, which was characterised by a casual, top-down approach to safety management. The second section examines the post-Piper Alpha reconstruction of the offshore regulatory regime that was marked by the formal acceptance of modern risk management practices by the industry. We note that the industry’s adoption of the ‘language’ of risk management has created new obstacles to workplace communication. The main section of our paper discusses why feedback mechanisms, in which workers report problems and incidents to management, have remained flawed and ineffective.

At its inception, the exploration of North Sea oil was part of an evolving strategy aimed at gaining independence from OPEC producers. With a leap in oil prices in the early 1970s, oil extraction had become economically feasible in the North Sea, even though the costs involved in exploiting these oil fields remained high. At the time, the scale of investment required was beyond the resources of either the British Government or UK private investors. North Sea oil exploration therefore required a strategic alliance with US capital. This alliance was conditioned on the importation of a US style production regime. Both Labour and Conservative governments enthusiastically endorsed what Carson was to call ‘the political economy of speed’, in which as much oil as possible was to be produced at the fastest possible rate (1982: 84).

Out on the platforms, attitudes to the safety and occupational welfare of employees were casual, as was the general view on existing UK safety regulations. The priority was to get the oil out of the sea bed. Money was no object, and the drilling companies’ and operators’ focused on quick production. To this end, a site-level management style was adopted which attached a great deal of authority and independence to line and platform managers. Such auditing and monitoring mechanisms as existed, were implemented only to the degree that they did not infringe on speedy production.

Workforce participation in safety matters, and even more so as collective bargaining partners, was unwelcome. An internal 1976 analysis by a union noted that oil companies, virtually without exception, employed a number of strategies aimed at obstructing the expansion of unions offshore. These included:

The insistence on full ballots, not only for collective bargaining rights but also for simple representational rights; company initiated anti-union propaganda being spread in the run up to the ballot; prolonged delays in holding ballots, and delays in affording rights where the ballot has been successful; the setting up of staff consultative machinery to undermine the activities of bona fide trade unions … more favourable conditions of service to non-unionised areas and asking prospective employees their attitudes to trade unions (ASTMS, 1976).

Even in the early days of offshore activities, UK trade unions voiced dissatisfaction with management-dominated consultative committees, and particularly their ineffectual role as concerns safety matters. This is not surprising, given the role assigned by the oil majors to these committees. An unpublished doctoral thesis by Thom cites an industry handbook which defined ‘consultation’ as ‘a process for communication between staff and management to enable the views of staff to be expressed, discussed and taken into account before management makes a decision on a matter’ (Thom, 1989: 101).

This casual attitude towards communication with the workforce can be illustrated by examples of management responses to workforce demands for change. In one instance, a consultant, hired by industry to investigate workforce dissatisfaction, depicted the employees’ desire for collective representation as a form of neurotic response. In reality it was largely driven by workforce concerns for greater occupational safety. The report, written by Robert de Board of Henley Management College, found that workers on the platform were suffering from ‘acute anxiety’. The workers were ‘looking for the feminine mothering side of human nature which is being deliberately excluded in the macho management style’. The consultant concluded that the wish for union representation was ‘a cry for help, "come and look after us"‘.

There is evidence that the employers’ casual attitudes towards the needs and fears of the workforce seriously undermined their own awareness of safety and related managerial deficiencies. In the authoritarian management culture offshore, the informed knowledge of the platform worker could not filter upwards to inform the risk perception and awareness of management. Perhaps even more importantly, the authoritarian management style adopted by the industry in the first decade of oil exploration and production, eroded the possibility of consensual co-operation between management and the workforce in the area of health and safety management.

These problems were compounded by the specific nature of offshore production. The North Sea production regime, established in the 1970s, included a dependent layer of specialised sub-contractors. Only a quarter to a third of the offshore workforce were direct employees of the oil companies. The majority of offshore employees were employed by contractors who provided services to their client oil companies. This production system further compounded the difficulties of risk management, which existed in this ‘frontier’ industry of authoritarian managers and distrustful workers. In more ways than one, the Piper Alpha disaster was an incident waiting to happen.

Survivors’ transcripts submitted to Lord Cullen’s public inquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster reveal the total breakdown of emergency procedures during that cataclysmic event. Communications were knocked out, sprinkler deluge systems failed to operate and support vessels could not perform rescue functions adequately. Management on pipeline linked platforms failed to shut down production and continued to feed the fires on Piper. Those responsible for emergency action proved totally unprepared for a major emergency of this sort. Those workers who survived only did so because they ignored the existing safety procedures. The narrative of these dramatic events and their consequences is documented elsewhere (Woolfson, Foster and Beck, 1996).

In his 800 page inquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster, Lord Cullen concentrated on the causes of the disaster and the measures that could be taken to prevent a recurrence of such incidents (Cullen, 1990). In this context he was eager to examine the issue of ‘workforce involvement’ in the safety process. Cullen suggested that

It is essential that the whole workforce is committed to and involved in safe operations. The first-line supervisors are a key link in achieving that, as each is personally responsible for ensuring that all employees, whether the company’s own or contractors, are trained to and do work safely and that they not only know how to perform their jobs safely but are convinced that they have a responsibility to do so. Possibly the most visible instrument for the involvement of the workforce in safety is a safety committee system’ (1990: 21.84).

Moreover, Cullen conceded that the issue of victimisation needed to be addressed and recommended that legal protection be made available to offshore safety representatives.

Cullen’s criticisms of the risk management procedures implemented by the operators of Piper Alpha, Armand Hammer’s Occidental Petroleum, were scathing. Cullen noted Occidental’s failure to operate a safe system of work despite a number of previous incidents on the platform.

Faced with this evidence, Lord Cullen’s report severely criticised the previous regulatory regime administered by the Department of Energy. Cullen noted that only five inspectors had been responsible for policing the entire North Sea. As a rule, an installation would be visited perhaps once every two years. More specifically, Cullen described the inspection of Piper Alpha in the weeks before the disaster as ‘superficial to the point of being of little use as a test of safety’ (1990: 15.48). The Department of Energy’s approach to offshore regulation, meanwhile, was described as being marked by ‘over-conservatism, insularity and a lack of ability to look at the regime and themselves in a critical way’ (1990: 22.20). For Cullen, and a number of experts, the time had come to look at ‘modern’ approaches to risk management.

Risk Management Systems and Employee Feedback

Risk management can be described as a process consisting of well defined steps which, when taken in sequence, support better decision making by contributing to a greater insight into risks and their impacts (Standards Australia, 1999). Effective risk management techniques are aimed at improving safety through an integrated approach to identifying, analysing, and controlling risks.

For this process to be effective, each step necessitates the full involvement of the workforce, rather than a reliance on nominated personnel. This raises crucial issues about power relations and political processes, in the sense that risk identification and control cannot be left to those in positions of organisational responsibility and power (Waring, 1998). In the context of occupational health and safety, this process has often been tied to the notion of a safety culture, which is modelled in terms of a feedback process in which a continuous monitoring of safety outcomes determines the level of safety inputs.

Source: modified from Felknor et al., 2000

At the core of this model stands the notion that workers’ participation in the recording and monitoring of breaches of safety is essential in informing strategic decisions on health and safety matters, and indeed the management of the workplace in general. This focus on all safety outcomes including minor breaches, equipment failures, near-miss incidents etc. is related to two considerations. Firstly it is based on the assumption, that accurate information feedback on outcomes is necessary to determine appropriate strategic responses, irrespective of the short-term interests of the organisation. Secondly it is based on the assumption that ‘minor’ events are per se important because they can act as warnings or ‘prodromes’ of a future, more serious incident (Fink, 1986).

This idea is elaborated in Fink’s model. His analysis of the development of crisis situations commences with the recognition that, if prodromes are ignored or underestimated, this will eventually escalate to a full, acute crisis. According to Fink, the acute crisis stage, for example when a major fire or explosion occurs, normally only lasts for a matter of hours. This stage necessitates the involvement of a variety of emergency services. Once the immediate crisis is over, the real problems for the organisation, which Fink describes as the chronic crisis stage, begin. During the chronic crisis stage, the organisation is confronted with extensive media coverage, reputational damage, potential liabilities for deaths and injury and the prospect of fines, criminal charges or greater regulatory interference. This stage, accordingly, can last for many years. Crisis resolution must then be the ultimate aim of the organisation. However, while seeking the resolution to one crisis, the company must be careful not to ignore or underestimate new prodromes (Fink, 1986).

In the case of Piper Alpha, there is evidence that a great number of warning signals preceded the incident. All of these were ignored by the operators as well as the regulator. While the acute crisis itself lasted less than one day, its after effects are still felt today.

One of the long-term consequences of the crisis has been the adoption of a new regulatory framework, and the attempt to impose lessons learned elsewhere on the offshore industry. Despite the desire to introduce new thinking offshore, the Cullen report’s concept of risk management was relatively narrow. At the core of this approache stood the notion that safety risks had to be assessed within a comprehensive, largely quantitative, framework. The concept of ‘Formal Safety Assessment’ (FSA), advocated in the Cullen report, involved ‘the identification and assessment of hazards over the whole life cycle of a project’ through all its stages of development to final decommissioning and abandonment. Included in the concept of FSA were a number of analytical techniques of risk assessment. Formal Safety Assessment was to lead to the development of a ‘Safety Case’ for each installation. The Safety Case was meant to provide a systematic documented review of all hazards potentially existing on an installation, and the safety management systems put in place to deal with them

The new framework of risk assessment, endorsed by Cullen, proved not to be conducive to workforce involvement. In his report, Cullen endorsed the techniques of Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) which provide a sophisticated cost-benefit analysis based on statistical probabilities. He saw this as a useful way of enabling the limits of what is ‘reasonably practicable’ in terms of risk management offshore to be accurately assessed (1990: Ch. 17.61). As a methodology, QRA itself had been a matter of some controversy.

The seemingly ‘scientific’ nature of the ALARP (as low as reasonably practicable) calculations and QRA have made these judgements difficult for the workforce to challenge. Today, judgements of acceptable risk are almost exclusively managerially determined; a fact that is obscured by the guise of probabilistic theory. With the adoption of QRA and ALARP, the power to decide what constitutes acceptable risk has shifted upwards, and in the final event rests with management. Moore, a critic of QRA, has commented:

There exists no available economic or statistical techniques which can readily provide ‘quick fixes’ as far as improvements in health and safety at work are concerned. Safety is about effective workplace risk control and public accountability, not pliable mathematical exercises in statistics or economics (Moore, 1991: 13).

What the QRA approach has failed to recognise, is that in developing a safe working environment, it is not simply specialised quantitative ‘expertise’, exclusively concentrated in the hands (or heads) of management, but also what is described as ‘low level safety intelligence’ which counts (1991: 11). Hazards are often identified and controlled most effectively by those most immediately involved in the work-tasks, through a process of constant monitoring or ‘risk valuation from below’ (1991: 11).

An example of such risk valuation from below is provided by an offshore incident on the Amoco Montrose installation. A pipefitter on the Amoco Montrose was given a ‘hot-work permit’ and instructed to cut into a length of pipe. The pipe contained potentially lethal explosive gases, but the worker did not proceed with the job using oxy-acetylene cutting gear and thereby forestalled what could have been a major accident. In this instance, on-the-job monitoring of safety saved the day. It did so only because the worker was prepared to exercise his initiative and adopt what he felt to be a safer work practice. The individual worker contested an already managerially approved task assignment on the basis of his ‘own tacit knowledge’.

For ‘risk valuation from below’ to be effective, workers need to be involved in the entire process of risk management, as active participants, able to articulate their collective concerns without constraints. For this process to have continuing validity, workforce views must be taken seriously and incidents correctly reported to the strategic decision makers of a company.

The safety culture model places great emphasis on the accurate reporting of outcomes as a guide to designing future safety policy. The rationale for this is straightforward; only if management has all available information about all types of safety relevant events, will it be able to take appropriate measures to prevent, what could ultimately become an acute crisis.

Over the past two years, an offshore union with head offices in Aberdeen has made available to us transcripts of workers testimonials regarding the reporting practices of safety relevant incidents as well as ongoing offshore safety practices. These testimonies take the form of typed or handwritten letters addressed to relevant union officials. The authors of these letters are skilled and/or semi-skilled manual workers who may be, but are not necessarily, members of that union. They also include safety representatives or individuals with designated safety responsibilities.

The transcripts of worker testimonials which we have collected identify the deliberate manipulation of safety records by management, the techniques involved in such manipulations, as well as, in some cases, the motives underlying these management practices. Our first testimony involves a worker who had suffered a neck injury and had obtained a medical certificate to stay off work. We have altered this, and all other, statements in order to protect the identity of the worker concerned:

My accident happened on the ‘A’ installation and resulted in my having ... to wear a surgical collar. On the ‘A’ (2 days later) the company phoned me up asking if I would come into the office when I was due to go offshore which I was due to ... (1 week later), and do some light duties. The company obviously tried to avoid a Lost Time Injury. I refused. A few days later X suggested to me about getting some letters and forms sent over to the house and to do some paper work with the help of my wife. Once again avoiding a Lost Time Injury. I agreed but only after speaking to Y first as we both said I’d get my full money and not the usual 80% sick pay. Although I don’t agree with this I do have to consider my family. Others have had similar experiences.

The following worker’s testimonial involved a Loss Time Incident (LTI) which the company ‘reclassified’ as an occupational injury. The difference between this case and the previous one is that the worker had already been sent onshore for medical reasons. When the worker failed to recover from his injury after two weeks, the company then attempted to assign light onshore duties to him, as this allowed them to classify his status as suffering from an occupational injury, rather than as a specific lost time incident:

While working for X Group Engineering an incident occurred whilst working night shift. Myself and a pipe fitter were trying to split two flanges which had not been opened since the 1970s. Because of the rust we had to use wedges and a sledgehammer. I worked approximately twelve hours on this project, resulting in a severely inflamed elbow. I saw the doctor on the accommodation barge, who bandaged it and gave me medication and ordered the next two shifts off to rest it. It was not better and the X Group manager suggested light duties. But the Doctor gave me a letter for my GP and insisted I went onshore. I was prescribed anti-inflammatories. After my two weeks shore leave, the company arranged for me to see another doctor. This doctor would not pass me as fit as my elbow was still swollen. I reported to the company office and was found office duties for the next two weeks, instead of returning for offshore duties or signing off on sick leave. When I eventually went back offshore, I was told this incident was being classed as an occupational injury and not as a Lost Time incident, even though I was sent off before my shift had ended.

This testimonial closely matches the experiences reported in BBC television’s Frontline Scotland by a Wood Group employee. Here an employee recounted being put up by the company in an expensive Aberdeen hotel, the Royal, being ‘treated like a king’, and being assigned light office duties. This was done in order to prevent a Lost Time Injury being recorded which would have allegedly threatened the company’s bonus of a quarter of a million pounds. To date there has been no response or denial from the company.

The degree to which the suppression of injury reporting and the manipulation of safety data is commonplace offshore, is perhaps best illustrated by the following testimony. This testimony was given by a safety representative who resigned from his duties ‘in disgust’ over his company’s conduct. He describes a situation where the non-reporting of incidents was an official and explicit company policy.

One major concern of many of the workforce and especially myself was not only the amount of incidents occurring, but the actual reporting and categorising of the incident, especially the dreaded Loss Time Injury, which the oil industry uses as a measurement of safety. On this contract men suffering an LTI were given ‘light duty’ in offices or classed as restricted work-case injuries in order to prevent the incident being reported as an LTI, and to reach the magical figure of one million man hours without an LTI. During the ‘new initiatives’ senior management and safety advisers admitted to me that incident statistics had been doctored. They suggested that the practice would stop forthwith, and so it did for a certain period of time. However, shortly after certain management were transferred from the project, the practice resurfaced and still flourishes today. I believe that statistics are doctored for financial gain, i.e. bonuses paid for a good safety performance and penalty clause payments imposed for poor safety performance. Therefore, I believe the oil industry’s methods of measuring safety by the use of LTIs are severely flawed and open to abuse. If the oil companies and the contracting companies insist on this method of measurement then they should stick to the rules and not move the goalposts when it suits them.

Lessons could then be learnt, thus helping to prevent similar incidents in the future. Of course every man and his dog knew that the statistics had been fiddled. From that moment on the safety meetings went down hill. Arguments broke out as to why an accident was not classed as an LTI or why this incident had not been reported. It was getting so bad that the safety department was nicknamed the Bluff Department by a large number of regulars.

As this safety representative correctly emphasises, inaccurate incident reporting, in the long-run, is likely to encourage the industry to underestimate the real dangers of offshore work and, ultimately, to base its strategic decisions in safety matters on flawed information. In addition, there are important short-term implications. The above testimony describes how knowledge about the manipulation of injury reporting caused workers to cease supporting safety meetings. Any manipulation of injury reports, and especially one as blatant as that described in this testimony, is likely to undermine the safety culture of an organisation. Initial support for a safety agenda can be quickly replaced by cynicism, where line managers bent the rules to gain commercial advantages for their companies.

The previous testimony points to a basic contradiction which arises when the wishes of management conflict with the official company line of ‘safety first’. Such conflicts are well known to the offshore workforce. Offshore, workers are indoctrinated with a safety agenda, which stresses individual responsibility for a safe workplace, while being at the same time required to engage in risky, and sometimes unnecessarily risky, activities.

The following worker testimony recounts the case of scaffolders who were pressured into performing unsafe tasks at night, which could have been performed much more safely during daytime:

An example of safety being compromised was the case of scaffolders being pressured by Z’s supervision, to work ‘over the side’ in hours of darkness. In fact the scaffolders concerned were threatened with final warnings and dismissal if they failed to comply. It must be pointed out, that the dozen or so scaffs with years of experience behind them, had never worked or been asked to work under these conditions in the past. Myself and a scaff safety rep immediately approached the OIM and complained at the treatment and threats directed at the men. The OIM thought that this practice was a reasonable request. No one would be forced to work under such circumstances. However, he reserved the right to implement this practice if required. It should be noted that the scaffs had a test run prior to the meeting with the OIM in artificial light, and concluded this practice was deemed to be unsafe due to blind spots.

Eventually a number of scaffolders performed the task to the satisfaction of the OIM and without an incident occurring. This outcome may have been in the short-term interests of management. Yet, the long-term effects of this dispute are likely to be less than positive. In forcing employees to engage, against their will, in unsafe work practices, management undermined not only its own credibility as a safety-conscious leader, but also made it clear to the employees involved that their own knowledge of safe working practices was not valued; that their input towards creating and maintaining a safe workplace was not required.

Elsewhere in the North Sea, this conflict would have led to a very different outcome. In the Norwegian sector, the Work Environment Act permits safety representatives to overrule management and to stop work, if they feel that the workers are in danger (Ryggvik, 1998). The advantages of such a rule lie not only in its practical relevancy as a means of preventing incidents, but also in the psychological message which it sends; notable the idea that managerial authority stops, where there is a possibility of safety being jeopardised.

Perhaps most worryingly, the systematic policy of non-reporting of incidents also encompasses potentially safety critical events and even near-misses. Safety critical incidents and near-misses could, if properly documented and investigated, serve as important early warning signals for potentially serious future incidents. They can identify flaws and problems in equipment, labour processes and managerial decision making.

The following testimony is from an offshore worker who was involved in a potentially dangerous hydrocarbon release, that is an incident, which could have led to a conflagration:

I was personally involved in an oil mist release in one of the separator modules. I actually raised the alarm. Believe you me it was pretty scary. After questioning by the then offshore installation manager (OIM), I was praised for my prompt actions and rewarded with a £50 gift voucher. The very next trip at the safety meeting the usual statistics were read out by the safety officer. To my surprise no mention of the oil mist release was made. I raised this point with the safety officer as to why no incident report had been made. The safety officer denied all knowledge of the incident. He replied that the OIM had been fully briefed and he felt there was no need to report the incident, as there had been similar incidents in the past and there was nothing to gain by raising a report.

Uncontrolled hydrocarbon releases leading to possible conflagrations are perhaps still the great safety threat to any offshore platform. Knowing why such a release occurred and how it can be prevented, therefore, should be of the utmost importance to offshore installation managers.

Indifference to important warning signals, today, is part and parcel of the offshore management ethos. The following testimonial by a safety representative concerns a near-miss incident whose potential impact was talked down by management, even though experienced workers adopted a different view:

I was part of an investigation team which investigated an incident where a pipe of approximately 1.5 tons in weight was being carried by a crane over the pipedeck. Approximately six people where in the vicinity at the time.

The wire sling failed and the pipe crashed down on the deck wrecking a stairway and narrowly missing a rack of gas bottles. The investigation was carried out very professionally until the decision on potential fatalities was discussed. Four of us in attendance agreed on the potential of more than one fatality. However, the team leader believed that a potential of one fatality at most was the way to go. When questioned as to his reasoning for this, his reply was that he was the team leader and what he says goes.

Again, this testimony is illustrative of the dilemma which arises in an authoritarian work environment in which safety concerns are only permitted to take the space allotted to them by management. What was at stake in the incident, however, was more than a disagreement over the potential harm which could have resulted from an incident. This particular testimony questions the integrity of near-miss investigations which are essential to safety related policy making. If the outcome of such investigations is subject to manipulation, the effort in conducting these investigations itself is wasted. Risk management then becomes a farcical sharade which is little more than a tick-boxing exercise.

In September 1997, the industry launched a new initiative, ‘Step Change’, in tacit recognition of the fact that workforce involvement in safety at platform level has continuing weaknesses. This initiative brought together three major sectors of the industry, the operators as represented by UKOOA (United Kingdom Offshore Operator’s Association), the exploration side as represented by the North Sea Chapter of the IADC (International Association of Drilling Contractors), and the contracting companies grouped together in the OCA (Offshore Contractors Association).

Step Change has three aims. First, to ‘deliver a 50% improvement in the whole industry’s safety performance over the next three years’. Second, it promises that, through ‘safety performance contracts’, Step Change ‘will demonstrate visibly our personal concern for safety as an equal to business performance’. Third, it promises that the industry will ‘work together to improve sharing of safety information and good practice across the whole industry, through the act of involvement of employees, service companies, operator, trade unions, regulators and representative bodies’.

For the first time, the trade unions are invited to play a direct role in the management of safety offshore. Potential union involvement is part of a ‘change of culture’ of the industry which aspires to ‘empower’ employees. It is accompanied by attempts to raise safety awareness through safety packs, common induction programmes, posters, the wearing of green hardhats for ‘newstarts’ and a safety video featuring a ‘Terminator lookalike’. The efficacy of these interventions is questionable. As the sociologist Nichols has argued earlier, safety campaigns which are contradicted by ‘day-to-day experience at the point of production’ are likely to make ‘workers sceptical of the propaganda’ (Nichols, 1997: 54).

Both managers and workers have voiced concerns over the goals advocated in the Step Change programme. One issue of concern is the attempt to deliver a ‘50% improvement’ in the safety performance of the industry over the next three years. The manifesto of the Step Change initiative concedes that the industry’s annual improvement in safety performance as measured by the all injury rate frequency, has slowed in the past two years’ and that fatalities and injuries remain a matter of concern (UKOOA, IADC, OCA, 1997: 5).

That the Step Change programme would face expressions of workforce scepticism was predictable. We have collected a number of critical statements from which we cite brief excerpts. Here is the voice of one highly committed safety representative:

You say you want workforce involvement in ‘Step Change’, but you have already set up the whole basis of the scheme. There is simply no mechanism for achieving involvement at a fundamental level. What you really want is workforce compliance, compliance with decisions already arrived at. What you want are people who will nod in agreement with these edicts you hand down to them. You want ‘Nodders’.

As with so many such top-down initiatives, exhortation by senior management has run into the sands of middle management obduracy, rather than ‘cascading’ down through the hierarchy. Offshore, most supervisors have retained an intractable focus on meeting production targets.

The failure of Step Change to ignite the imagination of the offshore workforce is evidenced by the low level of participation in the initiative, even by elected safety representatives (Shell Platform Safety Minutes, 19/4/1998). Recognition of this problem has led to the introduction of a ‘workforce involvement trial’ on the Brent Charlie installation (Shell Expro, Brent Charlie trial, 10/6/1998). In this trial, the dedicated presence of workforce representation was ‘seen as an essential element in making the Step Change a success’. Members of the platform crew are being seconded onshore for six months to take part in Step Change team meetings. A number of additional cross-industry workshops have been targeted at approximately 200 workers. When the workforce on the Brent Charlie were invited to put their names forward as volunteers, platform management selected the lucky individual not from the ranks of elected safety representatives, but from six names drawn out of a hat. Conduct of this kind, of course, is only likely to further undermine the credibility of the programme.

The minutes of Shell’s internal quarterly safety representatives meetings, further signify the scepticism of the workforce towards the new initiative. We quote these minutes as they represent an important, though secondary, source of worker testimony:

The consensus was that a marked apathy has developed within the workforce with regard to ‘Step Change’. The programme is generally viewed as, ‘yet another management initiative on health and safety with no direct impact on the day-to-day life of the employee’.

A major part of the current level of ‘apathy’ and the general unsettled feelings … derives from the insecurity and the conflicting messages which are being received. This in particular related to changes to contract without any formal notification being received before its implementation. Also assurances of no imminent redundancies immediately followed within a week by this being applied to two long-term … employees.

A lack of feedback and information on actions or progress on the Step Change initiatives, within the stated policy of active employee involvement, made identification with the initiative difficult to maintain.

Indeed after the initial ‘star-spangled’ launch, the programme seems to have disappeared into limbo apart from the introduction of the ‘Green Hat’ campaign. (It was noted by the reps attending that this programme had already been in practice for some time).

It was agreed that the concern over conflicting information with regards to the workforce stability and its knock on effect in creating apathy with regard to Step Change be raised at the main meeting under ‘Representative’s Items’.

The representatives while identifying the level of concern also believed that the offshore personnel recognised that the problems were having to be tackled in a period of decline of production on older units, this aggravated further by rising unit costs and falling returns. Improved safety was a goal they all agreed with and would like to achieve. It was however difficult to relate to this while worries over their personal future was so much in the forefront of their minds. Both the long experience and goodwill of employees were being regularly jeopardised. Until a constructive approach in terms of the honest and consistent handling of this valuable and irreplaceable asset replace(s) what was often perceived as an insensitive and shortsighted style of management (nothing will change). A ‘Step Change’ in the real and perceived value placed on the on the workplace also has to be nurtured if we wish to achieve the 50% improvement in performance (Quarterly Safety Representative Meeting, 7/5/1998).

The meeting at which the above discussion of Step Change among safety reps took place is described in the minutes as a ‘pre-meeting’. The ‘main meeting’ which followed on later, included safety representatives, management and a representative from the Health and Safety Executive. The main meeting minutes do not record HSE reaction to the concerns of the workforce. The HSE official is reported as indicating that the ‘Safety Case Guidance’ is currently being reviewed ‘with the prime objectives of simplification and introducing more of a "goal setting approach"‘ (Blowout, 1998b: 15-6). The HSE official further advised that he felt ‘the current Safety Management System to be satisfactory and that, based on the assessed level of risk, he shall be reducing his scheduled offshore visits ‘from six-monthly to an annual programme, with an "open agenda" format rather than a "specific inspection" itinerary’.

In the largely self constructed dialogue between regulator and the industry, intentions and projections appear to bear greater weight than the views of workers or, indeed, facts. In part, this may be a reflection of some popular misinterpretations of risk management which attach great importance to programmatic statements and initiatives, while paying far less attention to the views of those involved and/or measurable outcomes.

Our previous analysis has described the offshore oil industry as an industry sector, in which the balance of power is shifted away from the workforce in favour of oil multinationals. This uneven balance of power has allowed the oil operators to manipulate the discourse on safety to their advantage, and ultimately to prevent a significant improvement of working conditions offshore. Following the Piper Alpha disaster, the language of risk management which accompanied the Piper Alpha enquiry, has served to re-legitimise the systematic exclusion of the workforce from safety management and safety auditing. These processes have been accompanied by a continuous attempt by industry to downplay the real safety record of the industry.

The worker testimonies discussed in this paper, highlight that the offshore industry, today, is far from possessing a functioning culture of risk management and risk prevention. Ultimately, the introduction of effective risk management offshore will depend on changes which will allow the voices of workers to be heard. These changes will have to encompass a broad spectrum of issues which include the nature of the incentives offered to managers and contractors, the attitude of line managers to their workforce, and lastly the system of auditing and control which the company core imposes on its installation managers.

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Blowout, (1998) ‘Rough 47/3B Friday 13–Lucky for some?’, Issue 54, April/May, pp. 15–16.

Carson, W.G., (1982) The Other Price of Britain’s Oil, Oxford: Martin Robinson.

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This document was added to the Education-line database on 14 April 2000