5 tips to improve safety during offshore drilling

Making sure crews get home safely is the number 1 priority for offshore drilling companies, but maintaining high safety standards at rigs can be challenging. Heavy machinery, complex drilling operations, and the remoteness of rigs all increase the safety risk to crews working there. 

While it’s not possible to eliminate the risk of safety incidents, there are several best practices that offshore drilling companies can adopt to improve the safety of their operations now and in the future. 

Best practices to improve offshore drilling safety

To help you improve safety at your rigs, we’ve compiled a list of 5 best practices you can implement today.

1. Foster a safety-first culture 

Before implementing any other best practice, you first need to ensure that safety is at the heart of your company. This involves fostering a safety-first culture among all employees, from trainee crew members to admin staff to the CEO. 

Every single employee should understand the safety protocols relevant to their job, and feel empowered to identify, flag, and report a safety breach or close call. This should be facilitated by a digital system that is easy, quick, and transparent. 

By implementing a voluntary digital system for safety observation cards, Noble Drilling saw the first aid injury rate fall from 1.16 to 0.66, representing a 43% reduction. Source: World Oil

Of course, this is even more critical for crews working at offshore drilling rigs where there are far more safety protocols and the risk of incidents is much higher than other workplaces. 

Once you’ve created this safety-first culture, introducing new safety measures becomes a lot easier and more effective.  

2. Implement a robust HSE system 

Every offshore drilling company has a Health, Safety, Environment Management System (HSE) in place, but is your HSE system up to scratch?

At a minimum, your HSE system should comply with local and regional regulations, but you should also regularly review industry best practices and update your HSE system based on actual performance and feedback from employees. 

Your HSE system should include:  

• Roles and responsibilities related to HSE management
• Hazard identification and risk assessment processes
• Measurable objectives 
• Emergency preparedness and response plans
• Incident management and reporting 
• Supply chain management 
• Training and development 

EU organizations like EU-OSHA and EUOAG publish helpful guidance in this area, and the European Commission reports on the safety of offshore drilling operations annually to assess progress and trends in this area. 

“In 2022, national authorities kept up their efforts to ensure a high level of safety in offshore oil and gas operations by inspecting 485 installations (compared to 248 in 2021) [...] There were no major accidents in 2022. The total number of incidents increased from 26 in 2021 to 37 in 2022. No fatality was reported, 44 injuries and 4 serious injuries occurred.” Source: European Commission. 

3. Use digital safety solutions

The remoteness of offshoring drilling rigs has been a barrier to implementing digital safety solutions in the past, but this is no longer the case. 

Helin’s edge computing platform enables offshore drilling companies to easily integrate their data sources and overcome the common challenges of intermittent connectivity. This makes implementing advanced safety solutions like red zone monitoring and CCTV easy and hassle-free. 

Red Zone Manager is focused on increasing the safety of the highest-risk area of a rig, with an intuitive user interface that detects movement of people (without the need for wearable sensors) in or in the vicinity of the red zone. The operator uses this interface to monitor drilling activities and take action to avoid dangerous situations when needed.  

Remote CCTV Manager provides live video footage from the offshore drilling rig. This means that all areas can be monitored and accidents can be prevented. The tool stores recorded streams in a secure Azure cloud tenant for after-action reviews. It also gives the operator the capability to set up automated alerts when certain scenarios occur. 

With these modular, open systems you remain in control and can expand your solution with more data inputs to achieve even more visibility and control, while also being fully supported by Helin throughout. 

Many offshore drilling companies, like Maersk Drilling (now Noble), Seadrill, and Shelf Drilling, are already using these solutions to gain real-time visibility of potential safety issues, creating a safer working environment and reducing the risk of downtime.

4. Regularly review performance to support continuous improvement

It’s critical to regularly review your performance across a range of safety metrics and identify areas for improvement. 

Helin’s safety solutions provide access to historical data and reporting capabilities which enables HSE leaders to review the results in a standardized format. The results include operational metrics but also metrics related to human behavior such as the number of incidents or near misses.

This means companies can easily compare their performance to previous years' results and also to industry benchmarks, which helps identify areas for improvement which can then be prioritized. 

5. Apply the same standards to subcontractors and suppliers

No matter how robust an offshore drilling company’s safety policies and processes are, the actual safety level on the rig also depends on the behavior of its subcontractors and suppliers.

We recommend that you require all third parties who carry out work at your site to adhere to your safety protocols. While this will involve some extra effort and costs, such as providing training and access to reporting systems, it’s the only way to guarantee safety standards are upheld across your rigs. 

Anyone who has not received appropriate training should simply not be permitted entry to your drilling rig. It’s as simple as that. 

Example: how Noble is making remote operations visible

Noble Corporation operates 25 offshore drilling rigs so, as you can imagine, monitoring safety at each rig can get quite tricky. 

Noble decided to implement both the Red Zone Manager and the Remote CCTV Manager to increase visibility and enhance drilling safety across its fleet of rigs. 

Thanks to these solutions, Noble has 24/7 visibility and control of all its remote drilling rigs from any location, creating a safer work environment for its employees and reduced downtime for its machinery. 

Key takeaways for making offshore drilling operations safer

By implementing these five best practices, offshore drilling companies can enhance the safety of their rigs and benefit from:

• Greater awareness of safety issues among all employees
• Safer working environment for employees and contractors
• Improved decision-making and response to emergencies and other incidents 
• Reduced downtime due to avoided safety incidents
• Access to historical safety data to evaluate performance
• Insights into key areas for enhancing safety

This will enable offshore drilling companies to become a leader in their field, in terms of both the safety of their crews and their operational efficiency. 

Getting started with Helin’s safety solutions 

Are you ready to improve safety at your offshore drilling rigs? Are you looking for digital solutions that easily integrate with your existing equipment and systems? 

If so, you may be interested in Helin’s Red Zone Manager and Remote CCTV Manager, which provide real-time visibility of potential issues to help keep crews safe and also provide performance insights to support continuous improvement. 

Want to learn more? Make sure to get in touch for an introductory call to discuss the entire Helin platform for offshore and maritime industries, including Red Zone Manager and Remote CCTV Manager.