DEPARTMENTS • DRILLING AHEAD
DRILLINGCONTRACTOR.ORG VIRTUAL PANEL DISCUSSIONS
VPDS “Optimizing Downhole
Drilling for Peak
Performance and
Reservoir Insight”
A IR DAT E: 24 AUGUS T 2 0 2 3
@ 9:00 HOUS T ON (GM T-5 )
Learn how SLB is leading the
performance assurance charge
— evolving drilling by combining
its latest drill bit technologies,
rotary steering systems and
autonomous controls. These are
crucial advances for building wells
in the most efficient and consistent
manner and enhancing real-time
reservoir characterization for more
precise trajectories that elevate well
performance. On 24 August 9:00 CDT, Drilling
Contractor will host a live Virtual
Panel Discussion, sponsored by SLB:
• Wiley Long, SLB Product
Champion PDC Bits, will discuss
the evolution of Smith Bits drill bits
• Roberta Santana, SLB Product
Champion PDC Bits, will
highlight the SnapScan app and
dull-grading digitalization
• Ziad Akkaoui, SLB Digital
Champion, will detail
autonomous downhole tools
• Stephen Whitfield, Drilling
Contractor Associate Editor
(moderator) Sponsored
by drillingcontractor.org/
vpd-registration- optimizing-downhole-
drilling 6
To bust the asymptote, industry may
have to fundamentally redefine safety
BY LINDA HSIEH, EDITOR & PUBLISHER
In a 2008 head-on collision between a
commuter train and a freight train in
California that resulted in mass casualties,
the ensuing NTSB investigation blamed
the incident on the commuter train’s oper-
ator. This individual caused the collision,
it was concluded, because he had been
distracted by text messages and missed
a red signal warning him from entering
a section of single track where the freight
train had been given the right of way.

That type of blame on the worker is
exactly what renowned organization-
al safety expert Todd Conklin preached
against in his talk at the recent IADC
HSE&T Conference in Houston. It was an
eye-opening speech that shed a lot of light
on the next steps that the upstream oil and
gas industry must take in order to “bust
that asymptote,” he said, quoting a former
boss at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The industry has put in significant
efforts over the past few decades to
improve safety, resulting in a dramatic
decline in injuries and fatalities. Yet, our
safety curve has plateaued. “This is your
story of safety. You’re in a classic asymp-
totic relationship,” Dr Conklin told the con-
ference attendees. “And doing more of the
same is not getting you better results.”
To move to the next stage of its safety
journey, companies will need to think
about safety differently. First, they must
accept that every accident is not prevent-
able. “This is something the automotive
industry figured out, and you guys haven’t
made the jump yet,” he said. Accidents are
unintentional deviations from an expected
outcome, which means they’re hard to pre-
dict and, therefore, hard to prevent.

“I don’t know how we drifted over time
into this perfection model,” he said, where
companies believe “there’s a perfect work
environment and, if the worker is obedi-
ent enough, problems will go away. That’s
attractive, but it’s just wrong.” That type of
thinking also leads companies to “focus
on investigating how we failed to prevent
the accident,” rather than investigating the
accident itself. This doesn’t mean preven-
tion isn’t important, but it’s not enough.

To make the next step change in safety,
he said, companies need to start defining
safety not as the absence of accidents but
as the presence of controls, or safeguards.

The primary safety function of seat belts
in a car, for example, is to position the
humans in “survivable space,” where all
the different safety systems of the car can
function more effectively in case of a crash
– and the automotive industry designs
their cars assuming a 100% chance they
will someday get into a crash. Similarly,
the drilling industry must adopt that kind
of mindset so that “when the system inevi-
tably fails,” there are multiple layers of
safeguards built in so it can fail safely.

“The most profound message I can give
you is never have a worker one safeguard
away from a failure. You have to have mul-
tiple controls in the system.”
Dr Conklin also encouraged companies
to adopt a “deliberate strategy” to improve.

When an incident happens, “you can
choose to either blame and punish, or learn
and improve, but you don’t get to do both,”
he said. “If you choose to blame, you’re
going to shut down learning. Absolutely,
I promise you. And if you choose to learn,
then you really can’t punish.”
When investigating incidents or any
kind of operational upset, start by asking
about the “what” instead of the “who,” he
urged. Stop trying to seek behavior that
can be labeled as somehow deficient and
the cause of the problem.

“Workers are really smart, and we have
to stop seeing them as the problem and
start seeing them as the solution to draw
from,” he said. “Don’t go out and look for
places where workers deviate, because you
will always find deviation in your indus-
try. Go out and look for places where con-
trols are effective, and repeat that every
chance you get.” DC
See Page 14 for a link to watch DC’s interview
with Dr Conklin.

J U LY/AU G U ST 2023 • D R I L L I N G C O N T R AC T O R