It is clear the petrochemical industry is in a significant downturn due to the low price of oil and a global drop in demand. This is resulting in cost cutting and redundancies across the industry. In these challenging times it is still critical to maintain safety standards given the nature of the hazard. In fact, if we learn from previous downturns, it is possible to improve safety performance while also reducing costs. This can be achieved by critically evaluating accepted safety practices and by working together to create efficiencies. In my nearly 30 years working with the offshore oil industry the most innovative time was when oil was $14 a barrel.

In this webinar I will evaluate the utility of widely accepted safety concepts (e.g. accident triangle) and objectives (e.g. zero injuries). In this time of economic uncertainty, I believe it is critical that safety professionals are making safety as efficient as possible. Additional safety improvements are only going to occur if we become more efficient with our safety resources, which requires better integration of safety into other activities, stopping things that do not reduce risk and focusing on improving safety intelligence.