Management of Organizational Change to Address HSE Risk – Effective Industry Practice

Many organizations operating hazardous facilities use management systems to effectively address Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) issues, including process safety. These systems typically include an element called management of change (MOC). MOC systems are designed to identify potential change situations and ensure that new hazards are not unknowingly created or that the risk of existing hazards are not inadvertently increased beyond acceptable levels.

Over the years, failure to properly manage change has been a common root cause of major accidents at industrial facilities - both onshore and offshore. More recently, industry has recognized that organizational changes have had significant, yet hard to see, effects on HSE performance that have contributed to major accidents.

Management of organizational change (MOOC) is a process to identify, evaluate, document and communicate any personnel and organizational changes that could result in an adverse impact on HSE. Organizational changes are varied, subtle, and can have substantial, but hidden impacts on HSE performance. Some examples of organizational change types are:

? Organizational reporting structure

? Adding, removing, or combining staff positions

? Modifying the location, communication, or time allocation for people

? Job competency changes

? Resource allocation

? Policies and systems

This paper will describe the essential features of an MOOC process.

? Recognizing MOOC Situations

? Types of organizational changes

? General MOOC hazard review approaches

Incidents resulting from lack of effective MOOC will be use to highlight lessons learned. Best practices from industry benchmarking will be described for companies wanting to implement MOOC at facilities and headquarters.