ABOUT US
Pegasus Risk Management was founded in 2013 by Peter V. Bridle (former senior executive from the upstream oil and gas industry) and continues to grow into a group of dedicated, highly experienced consultants with wide and diverse backgrounds in the areas of Operational Risk and Organizational Transformation. We're here to help all of our clients and their unique needs achieve step changes in Operational Risk and HSE management and transform cultures of "casual compliance" into high reliability organizations.
No challenge is too big or too small for us. Our goal is simply to deliver
world-class, innovative solutions toward stubborn Human Performance challenges
related to the management of Operational Risk and HSE management.
In short, Pegasus picks up where most others leave off...
Is the Total Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) ever a good measure for Process Safety or the management of Major Operating Risks?
Probably not…. TRIR can sometimes be a useful measure of personal safety or occupational injuries and illnesses. Note though, when TRIR rates are high (e.g. > 3) they are a much better indicator of overall safety performance than when TRIR rates are relatively low (i.e. < 1), where they increasingly become subject to random variation and as a consequence, operating and HSE performance can be seriously misinterpreted. But in the management of Process Safety and Major Operating Risk, the focus is much more on the availability and integrity of key "barriers" to prevent or recover from a major event such as the loss of containment. Such barriers are designed, operated and maintained to ensure that they are always fit for purpose, fully functional and available. In other words, barrier integrity is linked to whether the work is performed correctly vs. whether it was executed without injury or incident (in terms of personal safety).
For example, in the case of a worker being injured while performing maintenance on a deluge system, TRIR would be a useful metric to record the seriousness of the actual injury. But when viewed through a Process Safety lens, the focus switches to whether the the work was performed to the correct standard such that the barrier (the deluge system) is available and functions as expected.
Applying Stop Work Authority (SWA): The Worksite vs. The Boardroom
Many companies maintain a Stop Work Authority (SWA) program. The idea being that rather than continuing on with something that doesn’t look or feel right, workers should stop the work.
However, if a supervisor is under pressure to get the job done, then having an employee(s) electing to
shut-in the work for what may be an extended period of time, is unlikely to be met very favorably. Consequently the effectiveness of Stop Work Authority (SWA) is often a product of the overall operating culture of the organization. But the operating culture is owned and shaped more by senior management than worksite supervisors. So for the SWA program to be effective at the sharp end, leaders need to "walk the talk". So this means it must equally be applied in the Boardroom when such things as budgets and resources are under scrutiny rather than predominantly being seen only as a tool for front-line workers.
Hazard Elimination? What Hazard?
Many organizations in high-risk industries utilize and routinely practice “Hazard Hunts”. The idea being to identify as many hazards as possible in a given amount of time and then decide what needs to be done to either eliminate or mitigate them. Sounds so simple and yet time and time again it invariably misses the point. Why?
Well, sadly this is often a classic case of doing without thinking. For example, take the oil and gas industry, the principal objective is to drill into, extract from and then produce pressurized, highly flammable liquids and gases. In other words, the oil and gas industry is in the business of looking for and producing something that is hazardous. So the whole concept of eliminating hazards from the worksite seems a little flawed when operations are purposely designed to either drill into or actually produce them. The same holds true for the mining industry. So in effect, not hazard elimination, but hazard generation. Furthermore, it is often that the basic definitions around hazards are not clear. Hazards are situation and context dependent, meaning where you are, what you’re doing and what you’re trying to prevent, changes how hazards are seen and assessed. For example, the hazards associated with a construction worker performing a welding job on a new pipe being laid in a remote location such as a desert, are very different from the hazards for the exact same type of job being performed on an offshore platform where the pipe may previously have contained flammable pressurized liquids.
Learn more about Pegasus
Download our latest brochure (using the link below) and learn a little more about how Pegasus delivers game changing solutions to a wide variety of industries including Manufacturing, Pharmaceutical, Chemical, Power and Utilities as well as more traditional high-risk industries such as Mining, Petrochemical, Oil and Gas.
