Last year, one question was on my mind constantly; is our vocation, commercial diving, just a trade skill, just a job, or is it a life style? I have tried unsuccessfully to come to just one conclusion, and I still do not have the answer. Frankly, I’m sure that there is a certain culture that is specific just to the diving industry. That culture is a set of beliefs that only our industry group has. The culture is demonstrated and defined by the behaviors we exhibit daily. A good example of this is we challenge each other to perform better, to work harder.
We do that all the time. Another example is our “can do, will do” attitude. Also, how many times have we denied the weakness and pain in our right knee and converted it into tiredness or a pulled muscle? Nobody reports that kind of pain or “injury”.
Fortunately, our culture is getting better. Through the joint effort of the ADCI, ACDE and the majority of the Gulf Region Diving Contractors our industry group has become a legitimate business entity and a valuable asset to the Oil and Gas Industry. Finally, since we started reporting the “minor” incidents and near misses, our OSHA Logs seem to be bursting at the seams. This fact verifies the long lasting expectation of culture change. We accepted the incident reporting. We are proactive, we learn from our mistakes and we continuously educate each other for improvement. Bottom line, we are heading in the right direction.
IFO is a destination, it is where we want to be.Furthermore, I have a feeling that we have finally accepted the Incident Free Operations (IFO) concept. IFO is not perfection. If we define IFO like this, we will fail. Is IFO achievable? Absolutely. EPIC was IFO yesterday; we were IFO for the last 100 days. I do not see any reason why we cannot be IFO tomorrow.IFO is surprisingly easy to achieve and incredibly hard to maintain. EPIC Companies appreciates the benefits of this concept. As the first line of defense and enforcement, I do not have any doubts that IFO will be a question of survival in the turbulent oil and gas market. However, in the future, IFO will separate successful and competitive service providers for the Oil and Gas producers from the mediocre ones.It is absolutely up to us to determine where we want to be!
by: Safety Department
back to Past Events page
