Abstract
As a major oilfield services company with worldwide operations, transportation of our people and equipment is essential for conducting business. Our company employees drive more than 150 million miles per year during work-related activities. Driving, both on and off duty, is recognized as the greatest daily risk facing the employees. The driving environments are diverse, with the operating conditions being some of the most extreme that can be encountered. Our challenge was to craft a program that would address this diversity while transcending cultural variances both corporately and nationally.
Until 1998, Schlumberger Oilfield Services (OFS) comprised several entities that each had responsibility for driving safety. There was some collaboration, in some cases very extensive, but overall, each group had their own program. Internal incident rates were acceptable overall compared to industry at the time; however, they were not at a level that Schlumberger management found acceptable. Management determined that to truly have a global program the programs must be consolidated at a corporate level.
Effective communication with the various areas was required to identify the existing best practices as a cornerstone for development and to identify local versus regional practices. This communication was essential as the program developed and as part of the continuous improvement cycle. In 2000, a position of OFS driving manager was created at the global level to develop and maintain the program.
From 1998 to the end of 2002, the incident rate for a fleet of 12,700 vehicles traveling up to 170,000,000 mi/yr has dropped from 15.6 incidents per 1,000 drivers to 10 incidents per 1,000 drivers—a reduction of 36%.
A continued decrease has been seen year to date in 2003 (31October) to 6.3 incidents per 1,000 drivers. This represents an overall reduction in incident frequency of 60% since 1998.