Special Interest Group: Oil and Gas

Hi,

I wanted to share the 2010 article from PE (the journal from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers) that refers to research from IDC (Institute of Document Control) that is of interest for those of us that need to make a business case for document and records management:

"Safety has been compromised in engineering projects including the building of a British-designed petrochemical plant overseas and a major civil engineering project due to lax document control, according to new research.

The Institute of Document Control (IDC) said a survey of 200 of its members revealed that most (62%) had worked on at least one project where there were safety critical failings because of poor control of documents over the course of their careers."

Full article here: Engineering project safety compromised by poor document control

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Dennie Heye
AIIM Oil & Gas SIG Leader

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Thanks Dennie,

That's a really good article. It's interesting how the artical highlights how companies focused on the importance of meeting deadlines and the associated finacial rewards  over producing the appropriate Document Control documents.

I guess the challenge is to see how technologies can make the Document Control process easier to adhere to (ie use of automated workflows for end use approvals).

What do you all think?

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Tita Atang
Senior Consultant
Venture Information Management
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Hi,

This story and others like it seem to go round and round as the issues don't go away. Central to this is what I believe is a lack of responsibility for asset lifecycle management, with too much responsibility spread around. This is both within operators and the wider supply chain. People are often not clear on standards and compliance requirements, responsibilities and have little control mechanisms to show where things are deviating from norms. Poor information control, poor management or action on sensor data, manual overrides and the 'normalisation of deviance' all contribute to great risk. Effective management has to start with visibility. Is the plant 'as built', are the controls in all the right places, how are deviations managed, etc? In our business we have process security and process safety folks who spend most of their time dealing with these issues. This does not appear to be a situation where internal policing alone will suffice. Industry self-regulation could be showing greater progress and effectiveness, after all the safety, cost and financial drivers are huge. Alternatively we will no doubt see greater regulatory intervention, which could differ greatly around the globe.

Regards,

Neale

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Neale Stidolph
Head of Information Management
Lockheed Martin
United Kingdom
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