Tisha_AH's Journal: BP safety program, a roadmap to disaster

BP, the main company behind the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had created a safety program that placed the emphasis on personal safety and not on process safety. This failure to recognize that it takes more than safety shoes, hard-hats and eyeglasses to function in a manner that minimizes the inherent dangers of the petrochemical industry was thoroughly documented in a previous disaster at the Texas City refinery in 2005.

Read the final investigation report at; http://www.csb.gov/investigations/detail.aspx?SID=20&Type=2&pg=1&F_All=y (Page 19)

The company safety program placed the emphasis upon the employee and the minimization of lost-time injuries and drivers safety while at the same time, cutting spending on essential repairs to instrumentation and corroded equipment. From the executive levels of BP the company continued to cut spending on preventative maintenance to reduce the operating costs of it's refineries. Executive management would slash spending related to equipment repairs and maintenance to improve short term profitability to its US operations.

In many organizations safety is considered the responsibility of the work force and little emphasis is placed upon designing and maintaining for safe and reliable operations. In the calculus of money spent vs. lives lost or environmental catastrophes we should expect that more incidents like the gulf oil spill will happen in the future.