Predictive site safety could cut accidents for oil sands operations

A Visser Deloitte report discusses data analysis, culture of safety

Although injuries to workers in the oil sands have been declining, Visser Deloitte has released a report on the use of data analysis tools and cultural shifts to help make them even safer.

The report — Predictive Site Safety: People and Culture For Life, the first of the Gaining Ground in the Sands 2015 series — says 2014 has been a difficult year for the mining and petroleum industry. Despite an overall 14 per cent decrease in accidents since 2009, Alberta Occupational Health and Safety's most recent study notes five mining and petroleum industry fatalities in the first nine months of this year.

The author of the report, Geoff Hill, Deloitte's National Oil and Gas Sector Leader in Canada, says site safety begins with building a culture of safety.

"At any industrial site, there's really no such thing as having too much safety training," he said. "As the labour crunch in the oil sands continues, you have more and more inexperienced people working with machines they might not have even heard of before they were hired."

The report goes on to discuss how new data analysis tools can be used to predict the most likely places for accidents to occur, and what can be done to prevent them.

"In the report, we emphasize the importance of building a culture of safety, but we also think operators should live that culture as well," Hill said. "Safety analytics – looking at and studying how accidents have happened in the past so they can be prevented in the future — is a critical new tool operators have at their disposal.

"Safety analytics can also be used to really sharpen and focus safety training. It's a cycle – the more we study accidents, the better we can become at predicting and preventing them."

Subsequent reports from the Gaining Ground in the Sands 2015 series will be released over the next few months.

Predictive Site Safety represents the first major undertaking of Visser Deloitte, which aims to bring safety in the oil sands to the forefront.

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