This explored whether safety climate (SC) survey data can be used as a leading/lagging indicator in relation to hydrocarbon (HC) leaks in the oil & gas industry.
Survey data (n = 2188) was from offshore employees in an oil & gas company.
Two research hypotheses were posed:
1) SC indicator scores will be negatively correlated with HC leaks that occur after the climate assessment. This is SC as a leading indicator and implies that the more positive the SC is at one point in time, the fewer the HC leaks will be.
2) HC leaks occurring on installations prior to the SC assessment will be negatively correlated to SC scores – this is SC as a lagging indicator and implies that the greater the number of HC leaks prior to the reporting period, the more negative the SC score will be later on.
Results:
Statistically significant results were found such that SC acted as a leading indicator. SC scores from 2008 (time period 1) correlated negatively with HC leaks during the 12-month period after the SC survey. Thus, “More positive climate scores are thus associated with fewer leaks during the subsequent 12 months” (p408).
Further, data also confirmed SC also acts as a lagging indicator. A significant correlation was found between the number of HC leaks during the 12-month period before the survey and on the SC survey later on. Thus, “More leaks during this period are associated with worse safety climate scores” (p408).
Safety climate can thus act as both a leading and lagging indicator in this context.
Also found that HC leaks were more common on installations with higher technical complexity, eg older, larger and more complex installations.
Nevertheless, when SC was compared to other offshore installation factors (age, weight and the number of leakage sources on the installation), only the SC measure significantly accounted for variation in HC leaks over a 12 month period, “suggesting that the safety climate indicator is more important than [these] technical indicators included in the study” (p409).
However in stating this, they note that installation age isn’t necessarily a good indicator of technical condition since maintenance could account for wear and tear. They still note that it was somewhat surprising that things like the number of leakage sources didn’t significantly account for variance in data and that SC outperformed many of these indicators.
Authors: Trond Kongsvik, Svein Åge Kjøs Johnsen, Snorre Sklet, 2011, Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries.
Study link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jlp.2011.02.004
Link to the LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/safety-climate-hydrocarbon-leaks-empirical-ben-hutchinson
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