Oil and Gas Exploration and Production activities are carried out in hazardous environments in ma... more Oil and Gas Exploration and Production activities are carried out in hazardous environments in many parts of the world. Recent events in the Gulf of Mexico highlight those risks and underline the importance of considering human factors during facility design. Ergonomic factors such as machinery design, facility and accommodation layout and the organization of work activities have been systematically considered over the past twenty years on a limited number of offshore facility design projects to a) minimize the occupational risks to personnel, b) support operations and maintenance tasks and c) improve personnel wellbeing. During this period, several regulators and industry bodies such as the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM), the UK's Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Oil and Gas Producers (OGP), and Norway's Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) have developed specific HFE design standards and guidance documents for the application of Human Factors Engineering (HFE) to the design and operation of Oil and Gas projects. However, despite the existence of these guidance and recommended design practise documents, and documented proof of their value in enhancing crew safety and efficiency, HFE is still not well understood across the industry and application across projects is inconsistent. This paper summarizes the key Oil and Gas industry bodies' HFE guidance documents, identifies recurring themes and current trends in the use of these standards, provides examples of where and how these HFE standards have been used on past major offshore facility design projects, and suggests criteria for selecting the appropriate HFE strategy and tasks for future major oil and gas projects. It also provides a short history of the application of HFE to the offshore industry, beginning with the use of ASTM F 1166 to a major operator's Deepwater Gulf of Mexico facility in 1990 and the application of HFE to diverse world regions. This latter point highlights the need to consider user populations when selecting HFE design criteria, an aspect strongly emphasized in current industry guidance.
This paper describes work in progress, which is attempting to measure long term vibration dose fo... more This paper describes work in progress, which is attempting to measure long term vibration dose for vehicle operators. Details are given of the first set of measurements carried out on three articulated heavy goods vehicles. Initial analyses showed extremely high magnitudes of vibration exposure on the seats of the vehicles. However, closer inspection of the data showed that peaks corresponded to times when the driver sat on the seat pad and when the driver left the seat. As such, the high vibration exposures were an artefact of the long-term logging process. Methods of filtering data to remove such artefacts are suggested and used to provide corrected vibration exposures for the drivers of the three trucks. General issues and implications of these findings on the Physical Agents (Vibration) Directive are discussed.
Oil and Gas Exploration and Production activities are carried out in hazardous environments in ma... more Oil and Gas Exploration and Production activities are carried out in hazardous environments in many parts of the world. Recent events in the Gulf of Mexico highlight those risks and underline the importance of considering human factors during facility design. Ergonomic factors such as machinery design, facility and accommodation layout and the organization of work activities have been systematically considered over the past twenty years on a limited number of offshore facility design projects to a) minimize the occupational risks to personnel, b) support operations and maintenance tasks and c) improve personnel wellbeing. During this period, several regulators and industry bodies such as the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM), the UK's Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Oil and Gas Producers (OGP), and Norway's Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) have developed specific HFE design standards and guidance documents for the application of Human Factors Engineering (HFE) to the design and operation of Oil and Gas projects. However, despite the existence of these guidance and recommended design practise documents, and documented proof of their value in enhancing crew safety and efficiency, HFE is still not well understood across the industry and application across projects is inconsistent. This paper summarizes the key Oil and Gas industry bodies' HFE guidance documents, identifies recurring themes and current trends in the use of these standards, provides examples of where and how these HFE standards have been used on past major offshore facility design projects, and suggests criteria for selecting the appropriate HFE strategy and tasks for future major oil and gas projects. It also provides a short history of the application of HFE to the offshore industry, beginning with the use of ASTM F 1166 to a major operator's Deepwater Gulf of Mexico facility in 1990 and the application of HFE to diverse world regions. This latter point highlights the need to consider user populations when selecting HFE design criteria, an aspect strongly emphasized in current industry guidance.
This paper describes work in progress, which is attempting to measure long term vibration dose fo... more This paper describes work in progress, which is attempting to measure long term vibration dose for vehicle operators. Details are given of the first set of measurements carried out on three articulated heavy goods vehicles. Initial analyses showed extremely high magnitudes of vibration exposure on the seats of the vehicles. However, closer inspection of the data showed that peaks corresponded to times when the driver sat on the seat pad and when the driver left the seat. As such, the high vibration exposures were an artefact of the long-term logging process. Methods of filtering data to remove such artefacts are suggested and used to provide corrected vibration exposures for the drivers of the three trucks. General issues and implications of these findings on the Physical Agents (Vibration) Directive are discussed.
Uploads
Papers by Martin Robb