G  Wirtschaftsinformatik

Bea, Franz Xaver; Deininger, Marcus; Friedl, Birgit; Kessel, Thomas; Pilz, Gerald; Vogt, Marcus; Wöltje, Jörg

doi:10.24053/9783739803159-270

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…At the time of the Deepwater Horizon blowout, none of this had reached the BP’s contracted rigs as a standard for operation. In parallel, about half of the company’s leaders on shore in MIT attended an executive education program focused on high-reliability organizations, which, based on HRO theory, would have emphasized the importance of employee empowerment and organizational learning over strict rule-based safety systems of the past. However, low-level engineers, responsible for well design and well teams, and BP company men on the rigs did not get to attend these training events, and the principles of HROs were not implemented. , For example, in May 2008, a dramatic near miss, which could have become a second Piper Alpha accident, occurred, when an engineer did not complete a pipe reconfiguration.…”

Section: Communication Challenges In Context: the Case Of The Deepwat...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Local problems with reporting culture notwithstanding, they are thus empowered to stop accidents in their tracks. If disasters nevertheless happen, blame lies with the people on the “pointy end of the disaster spear”: engineers and drilling operators did not realize an impending problem, failed to report it with the necessary urgency, or did not communicate about necessary corrective action. , In short, individual human error is to blame. This perspective even shines through in the report by the National Commission, which investigated the Deepwater Horizon accident for the US President.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Listening to the Well, Listening to Each Other, and Listening to the Silence─New Safety Lessons from Deepwater Horizon

Espinoza-Gala

Jetter

Alibage

2021

ACS Chem. Health Saf.

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It is common for accident reports and the analysis of large-scale disasters, such as the Deepwater Horizon blowout, to point to communication failures. This narrow explanation implicitly assumes that accidents could be prevented if employees spoke up about safety. In contrast, the first author of this paper, whose professional experience is introduced in this Commentary to provide context, has frequently observed that there are, in fact, many cases when employees speak up but are not listened to. These patterns of communication (or lack thereof) occur at the intersection of personal, leadership, and organizational factors, which jointly affect how safety issues are recognized, communicated, and addressed. As such, communication problems are at "the tip of the iceberg" of safety problems, not at their root. In this paper, we review research on high-reliability organizations (HROs) with excellent safety records to identify their communication patterns and practices and how they contribute to the ability to enact five principles of HROs: preoccupation with failure, reluctance to simplify, deference to expertise, commitment to resilience, and sensitivity to operations. We then apply this lens to investigate the Deepwater Horizon disaster, based on court documents, expert reports, and personal interviews. Specifically, we investigate how the communication patterns between the onshore experts and the offshore crews compared to the recommendations of HRO theory and how existing discrepancies might help explain the accident. We found that many employees were aware of safety issues and communicated concerns openly, but there was little organizational response to the issues they raised. This failure to listen was largely owed to factors that were not directly related to communication, such as time pressure and lack of resources, and a culture that valued a "can do attitude" and getting things done so much that it got in the way of sensitivity to operations, expert-based guidance, and communication about problems. Moreover, the challenges of the project and its aggressive timeline created an extreme, almost toxic, commitment to resilience. Based on these findings, we discuss recommendations for improving safety in offshore oil and gas production.

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Section: Communication Challenges In Context: the Case Of The Deepwat...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%