(64y) Organizational MOC - Case Study at a Large Energy Company

Raimund Laqua, PMP, P.Eng.

Sr. Principal Consultant

Gateway Consulting Group, Inc.

Rainer Hoff, Ph.D., P.Eng.

President

Gateway Consulting Group, Inc.

Managing change to prevent harm to people, processes, and the environment is an essential part of everyone’s business today.      Changes may be in the form of physical changes to assets or facilities but can also be in the form of organizational changes to personnel or structural management processes both of which can have immediate and long term impacts that can lead to increased risk. 

Organizational Management of Change (OMOC) is attracting increasing scrutiny from regulators and corporate stakeholders, prompting the publication of the CCPS Guidelines for Managing Process Safety Risks During Organizational Change.

Personnel changes have been successfully managed using existing (facility) MOC processes, although they must be adapted (e.g. modified checklists) to suit the needs of personnel change.

Organizational change—hierarchy, management accountability, policies, support systems—has received less attention. Furthermore, the risk mitigation techniques used in facility change, such as hazard analysis and pre-startup safety reviews, do not have equivalents in managing organizational change. As companies continue to reorganize—particularly in light of wildly fluctuating commodity prices and other economic turmoil—an effective approach for organizational change is needed.

This paper presents how Organizational Management of Change approaches can be designed and implemented to meet the specific needs of managing the risks and impacts of either personnel or organizational change. Consideration is given to: risk identification, impact assessments, layers of protection, scoping the change, and the interface of existing internal processes and how they work together to support structural and personnel changes. 

A case study, from a Fortune 500 energy company showing how these approaches were implemented, will be presented, with the aim of providing “lessons learned” and identifying opportunities for future exploration.