The Company Man Programme

Abstract

The Company Man or Drilling Supervisor is one of the key personnel who can mitigate and minimize risk in drilling operations and ensure Non-Productive Time is kept to a minimum. Their technical competency is crucial to running safe and efficient drilling operations and industry generally ensures these key personnel have the knowledge and skills to do this. However equally or even more importantly, are those skills in the human factors sphere since these account for some 80% of the total causal factors for accidents and incidents offshore. This is especially pertinent for well control incidents but similarly true for all other events. The application of non-technical skills to safety and efficiency should be seen as crucial in all high-risk operations. This is well understood in the aviation and other industries where CRM (Crew Resource Management) has been practiced for some time. The oil and gas industry is starting to recognise the ever-increasing importance that psychological factors play in safe and efficient operations. Furthermore to make the step-change improvement needed in operational safety and efficiency requires all members of the well operations team to have effective development in the application of non-technical skills. Non-technical skills and human factors encompass many elements all of which influence our behaviour. In a work environment these include different areas; for example environmental and organisational components, the use of a variety of equipment, various processes and procedures and the characteristics of many different personnel along with their skills and competencies. It is widely acknowledged many of the world's worst oil field incidents are directly attributable to human error and decision-making. It is notable that some incidents may initially appear straightforward but are frequently exacerbated by human error. Risk and costs increase and in the worst cases results in blowouts or other major disasters. A new programme has been developed to address this and assist in embedding these non-technical skills. It is recognised this is a new area where traditionally industry has only trained in a technical manner and this will require commitment from all.