Atlantic LNG Wins Award for Its Fatigue Risk Management System (Trinidad)

For its pioneering work in managing the risk of fatigue to its employees and service providers, LNG producer Atlantic has copped the 2013 BG Chairman’s Awards in the Health Category.

The Atlantic Fatigue Risk Management System was developed in 2012 in preparation for the September 2012 maintenance outage of Train 2, the largest outage in Atlantic’s history. The Fatigue Risk Management System introduced new policies, procedures and practices designed to continuously monitor and improve the safety and health aspects related to employee fatigue.  These measures helped to make the service outage one of Atlantic’s safest ever.

Fatigue Risk Management also contributed to the company’s recent achievement of 20 million hours worked without a Lost Time Injury (LTI), the equivalent of over 5 years of continuous operations without major injuries.

Nigel Darlow, Atlantic’s CEO hailed the win as a tremendous achievement, especially considering the numerous entries received from BG Global’s subsidiaries all over the world.

“It’s an honour to receive this commendation from the BG Group Chairman,” Mr. Darlow said.  “This is a major endorsement of Atlantic’s hard work and of our deep commitment to ensuring the safety of our employees and service providers and the safety of our operations.”

Henley Harewood, Atlantic’s Vice President of Health/Safety/Security/Environment (HSSE) credited the win to the collaboration between the company’s HSSE, Procurement and Supply Chain Management (PSCM) and Maintenance Outage teams.

“We work hard to mitigate or eliminate every risk that can come from a process plant facility. Our objective is to make Atlantic one of the world’s leading facilities in the area of personal and process safety and asset integrity,” Mr. Harewood said.

Dr. Ishvan Ramcharitar, Atlantic’s Consultant Occupational Health Physician who guided the development of the Fatigue Risk Management System, explained that the System’s measures significantly reduce any potential negative impact that fatigue could have on the company’s maintenance outages and regular operations.

“In 2012, as part of its annual routine maintenance, Atlantic planned a 28 day shutdown of its Train 2 facility. Given the scope of works, some 3,000 persons were going to be brought onto the facility.  This was the largest shutdown ever undertaken in Atlantic’s history and fatigue was identified as a significant risk to the delivery of a safe outage,” Dr. Ramcharitar said. The System was subsequently developed to mitigate that risk.

Components of the Atlantic Fatigue Risk Management System include fatigue awareness sessions for all staff and a shuttle service to minimize the likelihood of fatigue-related incidents during the commute to and from the company’s Point Fortin facility.

Another core component is the Consecutive Working Period Policy. Under this Policy, employees who work during shutdowns are entitled to one (1) compensatory day off for every seven (7) consecutive days or nights worked.  Work in excess of 14 consecutive days or nights without having at least one (1) mandatory day off, is prohibited.  The company has also successfully encouraged some of its service provider firms to adopt this policy.

Atlantic also adopted the Occupational Fatigue Exhaustion Recovery (OFER) Scale, a tool used in an international industry to objectively measure and monitor work-related fatigue. This is the first time the OFER Scale is being used in Trinidad and Tobago.

The BG Group Chairman’s Awards were established by BG to showcase excellent performance in Health/Safety/Security/Environment (HSSE) and asset integrity in its worldwide operations.  This is the second time that Atlantic has copped the award.  In 2010, Atlantic won the Health category award for the Safety Village, an innovative safety induction process for its service providers.