Evaluation of risk factors in the interface between engineering and workshop

Abstract

IK Norway is a company that is supplying products and solutions for the pipe and pipelines for the oil and gas industry. This is a very conservative industry and IK is relying on good quality in their products and a good reputation to be able to compete. In 2008 IK was involved in an incident on SFA which increased the skepticism to these types of operations. To reassure the customer that their operations are safe IK is constantly trying to improve the processes to reduce risk and increase the quality. In this process they have identified the interface between the engineering department and their workshop as a source of potential risk factors. By improving this interface they believe that they can reduce the operational risk which will satisfy the customer, but also the financial risk by reducing the internal errors. On the basis of this the thesis will be an analysis of this interface to find improvement potential in regards to overall quality in IK's operation. This will be done by looking at a prior incident and the improvements that where made then, and compare them with a current project and their operation today. The thesis will then evaluate if the systems they are using today are working and if there should be made further improvements. As a result IK has initiated this master thesis to find improvement potential in this interface, to avoid similar incidents to happen in the future. The thesis will look at relevant literature in project and interface management and it will evaluate IK's work process, communication, documentation, and their contribution to the interface. The thesis will also follow an ongoing project on Statfjord A to evaluate the performance of the improvements made after the incident, to see if they have the expected effect or if they need further improvements. The thesis concludes that IK has had a major development since the accident in 2008 but there are still some improvements that can be made to better the interface and to reduce the coherent risk. The key factors that were used in the evaluation, proved to be relevant to the performance of the interface and the thesis provides 7 different suggestions for improving these factors. The largest improvement potential was identified within the work process where lack of definition was the main issue. The communication could also be improved by including the mechanics earlier in the project to reduce the probability of errors caused by misunderstanding and lack of information will be reduced.