How far has Non-Technical Skills training and implementation come in 30 years?

It's 30 years since the world looked on in horror as the terrible events of Piper Alpha unfolded. Many of us still have very close connections to the disaster. Since then the oil and gas industry has taken great strides in improving health and safety offshore. But how far have we come and how can we best continue to learn from it? This is the question being posed by the upcoming Safety 30 Piper Alpha's Legacy: Securing a Safer Future conference being held in Aberdeen on the 5-6 June 2018.

Poor communication, leadership and decision making were implicated in Lord Cullen’s examination of the Piper Alpha disaster. One outcome was the recognition and gradual introduction of non-technical skills: the key cognitive, social and personal resource skills that contribute to safe and effective performance. In a recent article, I discussed the introduction of non-technical skills in the oil and gas industry (read it here). The article got a great response and along with my colleagues – Scott Moffat and Margaret Crichton at PFC Ltd- we wondered how far we had come in the last 30 years in relation to training and implementing non-technical skills.

We will be addressing this question in our presentation at the upcoming Safety 30 conference. Data from our high-fidelity power distribution simulator, which is used as part of our role specific non-technical skills training package, and follow-up observations from the workplace will be used to examine the effectiveness of non-technical skills training. We will be discussing why these skills are as important now as they were then. As well as exploring the effectiveness of non-technical skills training within key safety critical roles and how we can best continue to learn from Piper Alpha.

You can find out more about the event here and hopefully we will see some of you there!