Duty Holder Annual Reviews

SPC/Enforcement/142

Open government status:: Fully Open
Target audience:: All OSD Staff
Author unit / section:: HID/OSD 2.4

Summary

This SPC provides additional guidance to that in the Offshore Intervention Guide on the preparation and delivery of annual reviews.

Purpose

This SPC is intended to help maximise the benefits of dutyholder annual reviews.

Background

Dutyholder annual reviews are seen as a valuable intervention technique by both industry and OSD. They are an opportunity to engage with the dutyholder’s senior management and others to inform, to convince and to ask for further action.
OSD has agreed with the Step Change Leadership Team that:

Step Change will encourage managing directors of their member companies to attend annual reviews, and
OSD will ensure that such reviews are planned well in advance, attended by the appropriate OSD management, and follow a standardised agenda and presentation.

Purpose of annual reviews

The purpose of an annual review is to gain commitment to action from the dutyholder’s senior management to improve their management of major accident hazards and conventional safety. This is done using:

key messages from OSD to the industry as a whole, and
high-level findings synthesised from interventions with the particular dutyholder over the past year.

The review also provides an opportunity to inform the dutyholder of OSD’s general and specific plans, and of any other relevant information.

Timing of annual reviews

Annual reviews take place between January and April each year, with the date fixed early enough to ensure that all those expected to attend will be available. Wherever possible the IMT focal point inspector should meet with the dutyholder to ensure that the purpose and format of the review are fully understood and to agree the agenda.

Attendance and participation at annual reviews

OSD should ask that the following people attend the meeting:

the dutyholder managing director/chief executive,
dutyholder senior management,
safety representatives from the relevant installations. Consideration should be given to a live video link to offshore installations,
senior management of major contractors working on the installations,
representatives of independent competent persons involved in verification activities, and
for cross-border installations, representatives of foreign regulators.

OSD’s attendance will include an operations manager, the IMT principal inspector and the IMT focal point inspector. Specialist inspectors may attend if support for particular topics is required.

The operations manager coordinates the event and agrees the roles of the other OSD personnel. This should be discussed at a pre-meeting so that everyone understands their role and the extent of their participation. All OSD personnel will have the opportunity to participate in the review, for example to support a point challenged by the dutyholder.

Preparation for annual reviews

The key to a good annual review is preparation. This is not something that can be done the week before the event. It requires detailed analysis of all OSD interventions with the dutyholder over the past year, including:

reports of inspections, investigations or other interventions,
letters to the dutyholder and their responses,
safety case assessments, notifications and through reviews,
specialist inspector reports and perceptions,
the results of any projects or key programmes,
incident reports,
complaints,
employee or safety representative concerns,
the OSD traffic light system for the dutyholder,
commitments given by the dutyholder (at the last review and subsequently), and
enforcement undertaken on the dutyholder‘s installations.

All sources of reliable intelligence should be used in preparing the review, so that:

all the relevant issues are identified,
adequate evidence is available to justify their inclusion, and
they can be synthesised into appropriate high-level significant findings aimed at the most senior levels of dutyholder management.

Specialist inspectors should be consulted in this process.

The pre-meeting

The pre-meeting should consider the following matters:

the purpose and objectives of the review meeting,
how the objectives are to be achieved,
what dutyholder-specific information should be presented,
any amendments required to the standard presentation,
which OSD personnel should lead in presenting each section,
any specific information required from the dutyholder at the meeting,
any specific actions to seek agreement on, particularly regarding senior management commitment, and
how actions are to be recorded for follow-up.

The main purpose of the review will vary with the current performance of the dutyholder:

Dutyholder performance	Main purpose
Poor	To achieve significant action and commitment from senior management, beyond enforcement action already taken
Average	To convince senior management of the need to improve further
Above-average	To inform the dutyholder of OSD’s initiatives and generic messages, and identify how they can improve still further

The review should be tailored to match the specific dutyholder. For example, time may have to be spent telling a new dutyholder what HSE does.

Content of annual reviews

Annex 1 contains a framework agenda to be used as a basis for each review meeting.

During an annual review, OSD will present both generic and specific information.

OSD 2.4 will provide the generic information and the IMT will provide the specific information on the dutyholder and its installations.

The review is not merely an account of recent interventions and the issues arising. This tells them what they already know. Rather, the following approach is to be taken:

presentation of generic information, including:
- industry performance,
- OSD enforcement trends over the past year;
- any recent or planned legislative changes or key publications that may impact on the dutyholder,
- OSD current work programmes covering key programmes, projects, or other initiatives and general challenges to dutyholders that OSD wish to communicate, and
- generic key messages that OSD wants industry to receive;
presentation of dutyholder-specific information, including:
- synthesised significant findings arising from OSD’s regulatory interventions. The emphasis should be on the management of major hazards (e.g. integrity management and barrier integrity). However, conventional safety matters should also be included,
- key messages, derived from the findings, so that the dutyholder’s senior management have a clear understanding of what needs to be done to improve compliance with health and safety legislation and the management of major accident hazards, and
- broad indications of OSD’s intervention plans for the dutyholder, in particular any projects or key programmes that are to be pursued;
presentations by the dutyholder on the following topics:
- their perception of their health and safety performance,
- the leading indicators they use and their status. The duty holder should include actual examples of how they have monitored and responded to their KPIs and the resultant change in safety performance. This should demonstrate how they actively use KPIs and other intelligence to understand and improve their performance,
- what they are doing to improve, or their priorities for health and safety compliance, and
- plans for their installations, projects, material changes to safety cases, thorough reviews, combined operations notifications, etc.;
an opportunity for other participants, (safety representatives, contractors, ICPs, etc.) to contribute their views on installation performance;
discussion on what more needs to be done, by the dutyholder and where appropriate by HSE and the other attendees, to improve performance in the areas presented at the meeting. If the dutyholder senior management appears reluctant to make firm commitments in front of the other participants, a further separate meeting may be useful;
where appropriate, agreement on specific actions to be taken by particular parties.

If OSD believe there has been good performance or significant improvement, it is important that this is acknowledged in the meeting. The review should be constructive with a view to getting commitment for future work.

Annex 1 - framework agenda