The category of lifting and hoisting is one of the major of the Oil&Gas industry area of operations encompassing high risk activities where many incidents and fatalities are recorded. Every year thousands of negative events populate HSE statistics and charts highlighting significant trends and Eni, as one of the major Oil&Gas companies, is not exempted from these numbers. During 2015, Eni launched a worldwide lifting assessment campaign to identify key causes generating internal HSE indicators.
The aim of this paper is to illustrate how Eni developed a set of rules and procedures and guidelines to regulate lifting operations, thus committing to reduce lifting related incidents and LTIs and promoting a safer working environment.
Eni recognizes the importance of safety in the workplace and highlights the significant role played by lifting operations, by strongly committing to engage in practices to address relevant technical and operational aspects.
Lifting operations are managed following many worldwide industry standards however, the set of documents and regulations available today are not a guarantee of safety in the operations and nevertheless incidents continue to occur. Eni decided to increase the focus and to commit in the development of a comprehensive approach for the correct execution of lifting operations aimed to reduce the associated incidents.
The recorded lifting incident statistic on 2015 and the dedicated lifting assessment campaign carried out in the same years contributed to identify key elements which laid the cornerstone for the definition of the lifting management process, focusing the attention on the following areas of improvement:
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Operations planning
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Personnel roles and responsibilities
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Competences and training
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Awareness on applicable lifting practices
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Lifting equipment and correct applications
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Personnel attitudes towards to risk management.
Following these outcomes, Eni renewed their lifting model and introduced an HQ-based Logistics Department Lifting Competence Center, with the purpose to establish a set of rules, guidelines and practices to address key lifting concerns by defining a customize model, namely Lifting Management System (LMS).
The model architecture was promptly cascaded to the Eni worldwide geographical Units (GUs) by introducing a dedicated professional family in order to develop local lifting procedures and operational instructions according with HQ standards to implement the defined practices among different sites and Contractors.
Further to the definition of the lifting professional family a functional organization scheme was reviewed to reinforce specific requirements to guarantee an adequate level of planning and correct execution of lifting activities.