1. This guidance is for any duty holder, with an accepted safety case, who is proposing to carry out combined operations in UK waters after 6 October 2007. From this date it will no longer be possible to submit a combined operations safety case. In addition, existing combined operations safety cases will cease to be valid.
2. A revision to a current safety case to include generic aspects of combined operations requires HSE acceptance. Early submission of such revisions would help to avoid any potential for delay to planned combined operations.
3. Advice on submission timing, and the particulars to be contained in a combined operations revision were published in Operations Notice 69 2 (in November 2005) and Operations Notice 70 3 (in January 2006).
4. By 6 October 2007, duty holders will have had 18 months to prepare and submit such safety case revisions. HSE are concerned that only a few safety case revisions of this type have so far been submitted.
5. Concurrent submissions of large numbers of such revisions will present operational management problems for HSE. In this event it may not be possible to complete all the required assessments within the six week period. This could mean that some duty holders would not have an accepted safety case, and would not be able to carry out combined operations until after the case has been accepted.
6. For this reason, HSE wishes to remind duty holders of the requirements of SCR05, as described in references 1, 2 and 3. HSE urges duty holders to provide information, via their focal point inspection team, on the expected date of submission, and in any case to submit a safety case revision for combined operations well before October 2007.
1 A guide to the Offshore Installations (Safety Case) Regulations 2005 L30 Third edition HSE Books 2006 ISBN 0 7176 6184 9.
2 Revising an existing safety case to comply with the 2005 Safety Case Regulations Operations notice 69 HSE November 2005
3 Offshore installations (Safety Case) Regulations 2005 - Combined Operations- What particulars, relating to combined operations, should be provided in the safety case for an installation? Operations notice 70 HSE January 2006
Any queries relating to this notice should be addressed to:
Health and Safety Executive
Hazardous Installations Directorate
Offshore Division
Lord Cullen House
Fraser Place
Aberdeen
AB25 3UB
Tel 01224 252500
Fax 01224 252615
| This guidance is issued by the Health and Safety Executive. Following the guidance is not compulsory and you are free to take other action. But if you do follow the guidance you will normally be doing enough to comply with the law. Health and safety inspectors seek to secure compliance with the law and may refer to this guidance as illustrating good practice. |