Fire strikes Equinor plant in Norway that includes Europe’s largest ethanol facility
A fire broke out on Wednesday afternoon at An Equinor-operated industrial complex in Norway that includes Europe’s largest ethanol production facility.
The fire erupted at the Tjeldbergodden facility at 2.40pm local time time on Tuesday and, according to the state-controlled operator, was extinguished at 3:40pm.
According to the police department for the More and Romsdal district, there was much smoke associated with the fire. … The company’s statement on the fire, issued around 5pm local time on Wednesday, continued: “Equinor has clear priorities in a crisis. Our first priority is to attend to the people who are involved in the situation, then, the environment and our surroundings, and finally to protect the technical integrity of the plant and our industrial interests.”
Equinor recently experienced a serious fire at its Hammerfest LNG plant at Melkoya in Norway’s far north. That fire resulted in the facility being closed for at least a year.
The company has also been hit with some criticism over its safety culture in recent months.
Failures in following the SMS led to fatal accident
The MAIB has published the report into the Karina C accident which has found several contributing factors to the second officer’s death.
Ultimately it outlines the importance for shipping companies of ensuring all their vessels are compliant with their Safety Management System (SMS) at all times. It was found that there was a weak safety culture on board and that company procedures were not being followed, including the company’s drug and alcohol policy.
This is a pertinent reminder for all ship operators to ensure their SMS procedures are reviewed on a regular basis. It also outlines the importance of having an efficient employee confidential reporting system to enable crew to confidentially report problems on board and avoid the potential issues that may arise in the future.
Ep.55 Are injury rates statistically invalid?
Topics:
What it means when something isn’t peer-reviewed. Why statistics are ever popular. How many workers hours to decimal places. Using a model that weighs underlying variables and randomness. How this study is another nail in the coffin for this question. Practical takeaways.
Quotes:
“I’ve noticed in Australia, at least, there’s an increasing move to have safety statistics included in annual reports, at least for publicly traded companies.”
“And their conclusion was: Almost all of it was explained by randomness.”
“If recordable injury rates are used to record performance, then we’re actually rewarding random variation.”
New Zealand officials file charges over deadly White Island volcano eruption
New Zealand officials have filed charges against 13 parties that allegedly failed to meet their health and safety obligations when visiting an active volcano which killed 22 when it erupted last year.
White Island, which is also known by its Maori name Whakaari, is an active volcano off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island. It was a popular tourism destination before it erupted in December 2019, killing local guides and visitors.
The country’s workplace health and safety regulator, WorkSafe New Zealand, announced Monday that it had filed charges against 10 organizations and three individuals, alleging they did not do what was reasonably practicable to ensure the health and safety of workers and visitors to White Island.
The organizations each face a maximum fine of 1.5 million New Zealand dollars ($1.1 million), while the individuals face a maximum fine of 300,000 New Zealand dollars ($211,000).
“This was an unexpected event, but that does not mean it was unforeseeable and there is a duty on operators to protect those in their care,” said WorkSafe chief executive Phil Parkes.
In the weeks before the eruption, New Zealand volcano monitoring service GeoNet raised the alert level on White Island to Level 2 out of 5, meaning there was “moderate to heightened volcanic unrest.”
Forty-seven people were on the island at the time of the blast, including honeymooners and families, and Parkes said they had gone there with the expectation that systems were in place to make sure they made it home safely.
“That’s an expectation which goes to the heart of our health and safety culture,” he said. “As a nation we need to look at this tragedy and ask if we are truly doing enough to ensure our mothers, fathers, children and friends come home to us healthy and safe at the end of each day.”
How to build a safe environment when working with equipment rental
Cleanliness is an essential component to crafting a successful safety culture.
In the current public health environment, it is also the subject of numerous conversations and the emphasis of new protocols across industries – and the world. At United Rentals, safety is entrenched in the culture and the additional precautions on top of those foundational operating principles help ensure our teams and customers can continue to operate safely.
A safe equipment shop follows a set of standard principles. The foundational safety best practices that have been instituted regularly, even before COVID-19, are what we continue to encourage and emphasize.
As companies look to rent equipment to address their worksite needs, they need to have confidence the equipment rental provider adheres to best practices for disinfecting equipment touch points.
The starting point includes operations that allow for and adhere to social distancing guidelines. Next, while personal protective equipment (PPE) has long been recognized as essential to a safe work environment, current conditions have led to rental companies providing additional gear to protect from health hazards, such as masks and gloves.
Made Safe NL created with contributions from Workplace NL
A new organization to address safety concerns in the provincial manufacturing and fish-processing sectors was formally launched on Tuesday.
Made Safe NL is a new safety sector council created through a $1.5-million commitment from Workplace NL that was first announced little over a year ago. The new organization will function as an offshoot of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters Newfoundland and Labrador Division (CME-NL).
According to a news release issued Tuesday, the organization will get employers, workers and stakeholders to collaborate on finding ways to improve health and safety outcomes and enhance safety culture in the work environment.
Some sobering data from 2019 suggests there is work to be done on that front. According to the release, the manufacturing and fish-processing sectors had lost-time incident rates due to workplace injury or illness of 2.9 and 2.8 per 100 workers respectively that year, well above the provincial average of 1.6.
Shipping company joins RSSB to benefit from rail’s safety culture
UK: DFDS Seaways Immingham has joined the Rail Safety & Standards Board as its first shipping company member.
This provides the freight shipping, warehousing and logistics operator with access to RSSB’s resource library and ‘world class’ training on human behaviour, safety culture developments and safety processes and practices.
‘DFDS has introduced a new safety management system and a safety culture programme across the business’, explained Managing Director Andrew Byrne. ’We considered which industry to use to benchmark ourselves against, and the rail industry is one that has many similarities to the port industries. RSSB can help us to create a wider safety network outside of our traditional industry partners which will help us to see different perspectives and share and learn best practices.
Ep.54 Do safety communication campaigns reduce injuries?
Topics:
What we mean by “safety communication campaigns”. Surveying the efficacy of communication campaigns. ‘70s-era seat belt campaigns. ‘80s-era home safety campaigns. The conclusions from the communication campaign studies. What makes a communication campaign successful. Why the best safety research is often outside the workplace. Message retention rates. Practical takeaways.
Quotes:
“It doesn’t have to be a poster, it could be broadcast communications, video clips, stuff on a website, even a podcast. But it’s a verbal or written message from the organization…”
“Most of this research is conducted on very large scale behaviors, which are things that people generally agree are bad behaviors. So, many of the campaigns that are most effective and are being studied are to do with things like drink driving or cigarette smoking.”
“There could well be some more diffuse, more long-term effect here on the climate that our measurements just aren’t capturing…”
The head of the Tennessee Valley Authority acknowledges that the commitment to excellence and safety by the managers and employees of the federal utility wasn’t what it should have been in the past, which contributed to TVA receiving record fines over the past year for previous safety violations at its nuclear plants.
But as a licensed nuclear engineer who has helped run three of North America’s biggest nuclear power programs, TVA President Jeff Lyash insists TVA can and is doing better today.
“TVA’s nuclear program in decades past was too accepting of mediocrity and just rising to the average,” Lyash said in an interview with the Times Free Press this week. “That’s not a nuclear program we want. We want a nuclear fleet that is best in the industry.”
Lyash said the penalties imposed against TVA earlier this month for regulatory violations five years ago during the restart of a Tennessee nuclear power plant underscore some of the deficiencies at TVA in the past. The NRC gave TVA three fines totaling $903,471 for providing inaccurate and insufficient information to regulators and violating proper procedures in November 2015 when pressurized water levels rose uncontrollably during the restart of the Unit 1 reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant.
Fleet safety culture depends on data — and the right benchmarks
The format of the data is changing, too, with the increasing popularity of video-based systems.
“Cameras are a part of our future,” Carver said.
Neither speaker presented that trend as a cause for concern.
Osiecki compared truck-based videos to game film, which is reviewed by coaches and players alike. Each person should be able to learn something from the data. When a safety culture is established, drivers can even use the video to self coach themselves up to a point, he added.
Such tools are voluntary for now.
Osiecki said he wouldn’t be surprised if the incoming Biden Administration will look at mandating cameras for trucks, but he believes other vehicle-focused systems would be considered first.
Fleet safety culture depends on data — and the right benchmarks
The format of the data is changing, too, with the increasing popularity of video-based systems.
“Cameras are a part of our future,” Carver said.
Neither speaker presented that trend as a cause for concern.
Osiecki compared truck-based videos to game film, which is reviewed by coaches and players alike. Each person should be able to learn something from the data. When a safety culture is established, drivers can even use the video to self coach themselves up to a point, he added.
Such tools are voluntary for now.
Osiecki said he wouldn’t be surprised if the incoming Biden Administration will look at mandating cameras for trucks, but he believes other vehicle-focused systems would be considered first.
Newswise — Washington, DC (November 18, 2020) – The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) applauds Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Steve Dickson’s order that returns the Boeing 737 MAX to service following the fatal Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashes last year and the aircraft’s subsequent grounding.
The Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes were the latest in a long string of accidents caused by insufficient attention to automation reliability and pilot understanding of automated systems in aircraft system design. In December 2019, Dr. Mica Endsley, HFES’s Government Relations Committee Chair, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives in a hearing that examined the FAA’s oversight of the aircraft’s certification. Dr. Endsley’s testimony focused on how human factors engineering should be applied and prioritized in the design and development of all civilian and military aircraft systems and how those standards were not followed in the design and certification of the 737 MAX. Automation confusion and loss of situation awareness are common challenges brought on by the inherent brittleness of automation, lack of automation display transparency, and inadequate automated system training.
Accidents such as these, and their costly aftermaths, can be easily prevented. The Society is monitoring efforts by Congress that seek to restore FAA’s oversight mechanisms, require human factors design and testing throughout aircraft systems development and certification, and promote a strong safety culture at all aircraft manufacturers. HFES strongly supports legislation to address not only the specific failures associated with the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, but also other issues related to human use of automation.
NBAA Webinar Focuses On Saying ‘No’
One of the tenets of business aviation is its versatility and flexibility, but what happens when you can’t go? The owner or principal of business aviation aircraft are typically both “hard-chargers” and highly successful, so telling a passenger that the flight is delayed or canceled is difficult. To explore how best to break the difficult news, manage expectations, and explore sensible options, NBAA recently hosted a webinar entitled “Making Tough Calls in the Interest of Safety.”
Hosted by NBAA Western regional representative Phil Derner, the webinar touched on the need to “say no,” how best to communicate those options or decisions, and the need for a strong safety culture within a flight ops organization. Panelists included Wyvern CEO Sonnie Bates and Solarius captain Brad Lindow, both holding CAM certifications.
Common themes during the presentation were to present a unified message from the crew, supported by the organization; create a plan; and build upon an established safety culture.
Safety culture transformation—The impact of training on explicit and implicit safety attitudes
The present paper investigates the changeability of safety culture elements such as explicit and implicit safety attitudes by training. Therefore, three studies with different time frames, training durations, and settings will be presented. In the first study, the short‐term attitude change of students from an international environmental sciences study program was measured after safety training in a chemical laboratory. In the second study, the medium‐term attitude change was assessed after a Crew Resource Management training for German production workers in the automotive industry. In the third study, the long‐term attitude changes were measured after safety ethics training in a sample of German occupational psychology and business students. Different self‐report measures were used to evaluate the training effectiveness of explicit safety attitudes. The change of implicit safety attitudes was assessed by Implicit Association Tests. The results of all three studies revealed a significant training effect on the explicit safety attitudes, but not on the implicit ones. Besides the training effect on the explicit attitudes, there was no effect of time frame (short‐, medium‐, long‐term), training duration (2 h, 2 days, 12 weeks), and setting (chemical laboratory, automotive industry, safety ethics study program) on the attitude change. Based on the results, conceptual, methodological, and practical implications for training effectiveness and safety culture transformation are discussed.
House passes bill to reform plane certification process after two Boeing 737 Max crashes
The 737 Max has been grounded since March 2019 but the FAA is set on Wednesday to approve the plane’s return to service after a lengthy review, new software safeguards and training upgrades. The House bill, approved on a voice vote, requires an expert panel to evaluate Boeing’s safety culture and to recommend improvements. It also mandates that aircraft manufacturers adopt safety management systems and complete system safety assessments for significant design changes.
Why Would Uber Sell Its Autonomous Driving Group?
In November 2019, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a report on a March 2018 incident in which an Uber autonomous vehicle in Phoenix killed a pedestrian. Among the NTSB’s findings was this one: “The NTSB concludes that the Uber ATG did not adequately manage the anticipated safety risk of its automated driving system’s functional limitations, including the system’s inability in this crash to correctly classify and predict the path of the pedestrian crossing the road midblock.”
Further, according to the NTSB, “The Uber ATG’s inadequate safety culture created conditions—including inadequate oversight of vehicle operators—that contributed to the circumstances of the crash and specifically to the vehicle operator’s extended distraction during the crash trip.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed Uber’s traditional ride-sharing business into the background and, had it not been for the company’s Uber Eats delivery service, the company’s results would have been much worse. Uber’s $2.65 billion acquisition of delivery service Postmates is expected to close this quarter.
How to build a stronger safety culture with your team
As Australia’s economy tries to adjust to a new normal after the emergence of Covid19, businesses are facing many new challenges. Our clients have seen that these changes have had both positive and negative impacts on the transport industry’s safety culture.
With no expectation that things will go back to the way they were, managing change and protecting your team will be continue to be critical to business success in coming months.
Below are some tips on how can leaders and managers take the good from this disruption to strengthen and build a stronger safety culture with their wider team.
Firstly, what is a strong safety culture?
If you think of safety culture as “what we do around here”, a strong safety culture is one which; • Teams take ownership and respectfully hold each other accountable • Clear policies and procedures are communicated, adhered to and regularly reviewed • Incidents and near misses are openly reported, discussed and learning implemented and shared • WHS is taken seriously, and prioritised
Ep.53 Do parachutes prevent injuries and deaths?
Topics:
Are parachutes for life-risking activities or a life-saving tool? Measuring the usefulness of parachutes. The arguments against evidence-based medicine. When and why you only need a small sample size. Why it’s hard to design an experiment to translate to real-world results. Why we need more experiments on events with direct causal mechanisms. Practical takeaways.
Quotes:
“…They hide a few key considerations. One of the big ones is, that it’s not really a choice between at the point you have to jump out of a plane, whether to wear a parachute or not; it’s things like, do we make laws that all planes should carry parachutes just in case?”
“So it’s not just that more research is needed, it’s that more research is almost guaranteed to reverse the result of this bad study.”
“Very often, when it’s come to the practicality of how do we investigate this within an organization, we’ve decided that an experiment is not the best use of our time and resources.”
A damning occupational health and safety report has revealed how a “lack of structure and systems poses risk of serious harm” for Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board staff.
The report, presented to the board’s meeting on Thursday, highlighted “serious concern over the management of key areas” concerning staff safety.
It said the failures have left the board open to “enforcement action, prosecution and fines for the most serious offences” and calls for a “fundamental shift in the safety culture”.
Despite a catalogue of faults in how it manages health and safety, violence on health board premises is following a worrying trend.
FDA Reviews Rollout of New Era of Smarter Food Safety Blueprint
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently provided a progress report on the rollout of the New Era of Smarter Food Safety Blueprint. FDA hosted a webinar in October to review the first 100 days of the Blueprint. The one-hour webinar highlighted the implementation work that has already been done as well as provide insight on future efforts. FDA Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response, Frank Yiannas said that the rollout is off to a great start, but COVID-19 has created some challenges.
Food Safety blueprint “FDA is committed to what I call a new level of transparency and accountability as we work to make the goals outlined in the Blueprint a reality. That work has continued through the unprecedented challenges that we’ve all faced as a result of COVID-19,” Yiannas noted. “Together I have no doubt that we will come through this crisis stronger and more resilient than ever. I believe that by embracing the New Era of Smarter Food Safety approach it will help us regain that strength. Not just the goals, but the foundational belief that we must take more modern, evolving, and smarter approaches to address and strengthen this ever-changing food safety system.”
The Blueprint is a framework to guide the FDA as it works to modernize food safety through a variety of methods. Yiannas described food safety as being “people-led, FSMA-based, and technology-enabled.” Four Core Elements of the Blueprint were highlighted during the webinar: tech-enabled traceability, smarter tools and approaches for prevention and outbreak response, new business models and retail modernization, and food safety culture. Leaders within each Core Element provided an account of the various actions taken to implement the New Era of Smarter Food Safety Blueprint.
Webinar: Can digital technology help embed a strong patient safety culture?
The issue of patient safety is – rightly – never far from the headlines, and that includes in the midst of a pandemic. Despite scandals over quality of care in recent years, it is clear that embedding a strong culture of safety throughout the health service is a constant and continuing mission.
Earlier this year, for instance, it was announced that Bill Kirkup would be leading an inquiry into maternity services at East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust – five years after he investigated such services at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay FT.
What does continue to evolve, however, are digital solutions intended to bolster patient safety. Can such solutions help support a strong safety culture? What are the challenges in using technology in this context? How might they be overcome? In what specific ways can emerging digital solutions potentially help clinicians improve patient safety?
Why the right culture is an organisation’s greatest intangible asset
Eileen Doyle, a director of NEXTDC and Oil Search, says setting the right culture in an organisation is about finding a balance between co-operation and challenge.
“You have to work together to build that culture,” she says. “Someone at the right point has to be prepared to challenge somebody who’s not living up to it.”
Doyle has spent many years on board health and safety committees and applies what she has learnt about influencing a company’s safety culture to influencing the broader culture of the organisation.
The starting point for a board and management is to define the culture they want in the organisation.
Culture is a vibrant, dynamic ingredient into the business mix, says Peter Hearl. Chris Hyde
“First of all you set your culture, and that’ll be different for every organisation. Then you systematically define what’s important to reinforce or create that culture,” she says.
Directors need to ensure there is some sort of measurement system in place to track an organisation’s cultural performance, Doyle says.
Jeffaust William Finds Success In Safety
When St Lucian native Jeffaust William left his island home to spearhead a workplace safety-improvement programme at Red Stripe, he did not know that in just three years the company would become his extended family, and Jamaica his second home.
Now the safety, health and environment manager at the beer company, William is convinced that his ability to swiftly integrate into and impact this initially foreign space has been largely because of his deep appreciation for people.
“I am all about workplace safety, first and foremost, because I value people,” William noted. “I’ve experienced one too many times in the past where I had to accompany workers to the hospital because they fell victim to accidents that could have been easily avoided. Watching someone in pain, seeing the impact something like that has on his or her colleagues and their families, that’s not a position I want anyone to ever have to be in. For me, my work is all about getting employees to value their safety by seeing themselves as a vital and irreplaceable part of a larger organisation.”
In 2017, the HEINEKEN Company charged William with devising a novel strategy for bolstering Red Stripe’s culture around workplace safety. After delivering a thorough and insightful proposal at the end of what was to be a six-week initiative, he was promptly invited to also lead the strategy’s implementation phase – an offer he accepted with much confidence.
“I didn’t hesitate when the company asked me to stay on as part of the family. I am a people person, so as we were implementing the new safety culture, I liked that I got to work across multiple departments and really deepen relationships with my colleagues. I especially liked bringing out the innate competitiveness in most Jamaicans. Working closely with the total productivity management manager, our team created interdepartmental competitions to really get people accustomed to the new workplace culture. It was amazing to watch how that sent occupational health and safety compliance soaring,” noted William.
Ep.52 What is the relationship between safety climate and injuries?
We frame our conversation around the paper, Safety Climate and Injuries: An Examination of Theoretical and Empirical Relationships.
Tune in to hear us talk about retrospective studies, the perception of safety vs. actual safety, and the influence of injuries on safety climate.
Topics:
Retrospective studies. Organizational and psychological safety climates. Perception of safety and actual safety. Designing research to answer your question. Influence of injuries on safety climate. Contamination. Practical takeaways
WorkSafe shuts down 12 Throsby construction sites over safety concerns
Twelve residential construction sites were shut down in Throsby by WorkSafe ACT last week after a spate of prohibition notices were issued, predominately in relation to unsafe scaffolding.
WorkSafe also issued 42 improvement notices and four infringement notices for unsafe electrical and falling risks that came with an $11,000 price tag.
The infringements were handed out after an inspection blitz of 18 residential construction sites in Throsby on Wednesday (4 November) as part of Operation Safe Prospect, an ongoing campaign to improve industry safety.
Inspectors have been alarmed at the lack of workplace health and safety compliance on residential construction sites in greenfield suburbs, Work Health and Safety Commissioner Jacqueline Agius said.
READ ALSO: Scars of workplace motivate WorkSafe commissioner’s crackdown
“We continue to see the same issues on construction sites such as scaffolding safety and risk of falls from heights, poor site security, a lack of signage, electrical hazards, poor housekeeping, and a lack of basic facilities, like toilets, for workers,” she said.
“The safety culture needs to improve so workers in this industry can go home safely at the end of their shift.
“It is time to get real about safety in the ACT.”