HEALTH & SAFETY
Above: The Deepwater Horizon’s main floor. Left: Layout of the main deck, showing the location of the drilling side
THE UNKNOWN FACTORS Boebert’s book also highlights the point that as well as the facts we do know about, there were a number of unknowns at play in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. How can we learn how to prevent mistakes if we’re not entirely sure what all the mistakes were? Boebert states: “Tis is where systems engineering practices such as the Concept of Operations come in. Instead of trying to counter past mistakes one by one (a process known in computer security as ‘patch and pray’), you try and
build a sound structure that makes it hard to make a mistake. It would be interesting to try a ‘Drillship 2200’ project: start with a clean sheet of paper and design a hypothetical system using the top- down approach. And then compare and contrast with what’s being done now. I get the impression (possibly mistaken) that the industry just assumes that their traditional bottom-up approach will be adequate to handle the risks of ultra-deep HPHT wells. Tat could be a dangerous assumption.” l
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