application for research grant

UNIMAS/RIMC/ARG

UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SARAWAK

APPLICATION FOR RESEARCH GRANT

94300 Kota Samarahan, Sarawak Malaysia

1. 2. 3. 4.

Small Grant Scheme (SGS) Dana Principal Investigator (DPI) Dana Khas Inovasi (DI) Chair _________________(please specify)

(please tick at the appropriate box)

I.

APPLICANT(S) Name

Position

Faculty/Centre/Division/Institute

Lecturer

Faculty of Cognitive Sciences and Human Development, UNIMAS

Dean

Faculty of Engineering, UNIMAS

Project Leader: Abdul Halim Bin Hashim Researchers: Associate Professor Dr. Al-Khalid Bin Othman

II

PROPOSED RESEARCH TITLE Study On The Implementation Of Electronic Permit-To-Work Systems In The Upstream Oil & Gas Sector

III

CATEGORY OF RESEARCH a]

1 4 7

b]

c]

2

Sector (Choose One Code Only) Agro-Industry Services Social

2 5 8

Mineral & Energy Resources Economic Environmental/Conservation

Focus Area (Choose One Code Only)

Manufacturing Health Sciences

10

1

Aerospace, IT & Communications

2

4 7 10

Construction Environmental Technology Policy Studies, Technology Management, Economic & Social Development

5 8 11

Type Of Research (Choose One Code Only)

3 6 9

Automotive, Aeronautics & Marine Electronic Manufacturing & Machinery Science & Mathematics

3 6 9

Chemical & Biotechnology Energy Material & Adv. Material

1

1.

Scientific Research (Fundamental Research)

2.

3.

Technology Development (Applied Research)

4.

Product/Process Development (Design & Engineering) Social/Policy Research

1

UNIMAS/RIMC/ARG

IV

DESCRIPTION OF RESEARCH PROJECT A] Background/Introduction of Project Permit-To-Work system is globally accepted as one of the means to control hazardous activity especially during maintenance at high-risk facilities such as oil and gas platform or chemical processing plant. The permit-to-work is a documented procedure that authorises certain people to carry out specific work within a specified time frame. It sets out the precautions required to complete the work safely, based on a risk assessment. It describes what work will be done and how it will be done; the latter can be detailed in a ‘method statement' (HSE, 2005). Due to its popular nature amongst the industry players, many publications in the form of guidance and standards have been published by various agencies to assist the industry in implementing sound Permit-To-Work systems in the hope to prevent maintenance-related accidents that could cause injuries and even fatalities. Traditionally, the Permit-To-Work systems is a paper-based system whereby the person who requires the job to be done has to fill up form called ‘permits’ which includes planning information such as job description, the identification of hazards, special precautions requirements, protective equipment requirement and other safety critical information. This ‘permit’ will then be passed to the authorized person at the site, who then will take necessary actions to ensure the site is as safe as possible with reference to the job description as prescribed in the ‘permit’. This ‘permit’ works as a means of communication to enable parties at the job site to be aware of upcoming planned work. It is also used as a source of information to avoid any conflicting tasks that could give rise to hazardous situations when two tasks are conducted simultaneously. Although the intention of this Permit-To-Work system is to prevent accidents, nevertheless, there are many accidents, and disasters that happened due to the lapses that occurred within the systems, most notably, the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988 (Booth & Butler, 1992). Since then many improvements has been made following recommendations from the Cullen Report in the aftermath of the Piper Alpha disaster; and the Permit-To Work system had continued to be used and relied upon to control hazards, especially in process safety. Along with the rise of operations and maintenance activity especially in the Oil and Gas sector, the number of PermitTo-Work issued also rises. Qatargas reported that 36,000 permits are generated within a year that challenged the integrity of paper-based system and had resulted in serious accidents during major shutdown operations (Burrows, 2006). Hence, the company planned for a migration to an electronic Permit-To-Work system as a way forward in increasing the effectiveness of managing a great number of permits within short period of time. It is expected that this trend of migration will increase well over the years amongst key players in this sector and opportunities for research will be abundant to look for problems or challenges they may face in the implementation of electronic permit-to-work systems.

b] Objectives Of Project The objectives of this project is to: I.

II.

III.

Study and investigate the experiences of permit-to-work system participants in the upstream Oil and Gas sector, particularly those who are working on an active production platform; in the operations of a matured electronic permit-to-work systems. Study and investigate the challenges the participants faced in completing and authorizing the permits, with special attention to the use, functionality, availability and reliability of permit-to-work software and/or other related information systems. Propose a model framework to increase the reliability of a permit-to-work systems in communicating and coordinating tasks for hazard control.

2

UNIMAS/RIMC/ARG

c] Statement of Problems/Hypotheses The upstream petroleum industry handles large quantities of flammable and toxic materials, so the potential for serious accidents is clear. Over the years, a plethora of technological, engineering and design improvements have improved process safety and reduced the rates of accidents (O’Dea & Flin, 2001) but permit-to-work system remains as an important safety practice at many offshore installations until now. Although a number of fatal and serious accidents in the past were due to faulty or weak permit-to-work systems operated on offshore installation but that did not stop the push of the industry to have better and more structured permit-to-work systems. Paper-based permit-to-work systems suffers from three general weaknesses: uninformative, lack of clarity and inflexible (Illife, Chung & Kletz, 1999). Current trends in the oil and gas industry have seen companies migrating from paper-based permit-to-work format to electronic form (e-PTW) using customized software, and this is seen as a response to the issues at hand (Burrows, 2006). Computerization of a paper-based system has always been thought as a cure for inconveniences, but question still remains whether the e-PTW on site do actually remove all the weaknesses of a paper-based system, hence, making permit-to-work more efficient. A study by Iliffe et al. (1999) explores the weaknesses of paper-based permit-to-work systems and suggests that computerization would offer a variety of theoretical benefits. Oliver (2010) studied the implementation and challenges of electronic permit-to-work at his own company seemed to support the theoretical benefits presented by Iliffe et al. but his observation lacked scientific approach and question of biasness may surface as he was the one responsible for the development and the deployment of the whole system. Saville, Garner & Rosamond (2008) reported the use of a customized e-PTW known as Sentinel Pro across BP Gulf of Mexico deepwater facilities has eliminated 10-15% of permit-to-work related rework and preplanning, thus freeing up time and allowing personnel to work more efficiently. Their conclusion was made after 12-months implementation period in which, during that time the authors played consultant role to these companies. There were also questions of methodology. In relation to the objective of this research, none of the literature searched examine the experiences of the participants of the e-PTW in great detail. In short, this research will be looking get answer to questions such as: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

How does the e-PTW performs and add value compared to the paper-based systems? How does the participants adopt to the changes in practice? What are the common problems participants have to face in using the e-PTW? Is there any barriers or limitations in the actual implementation of the e-PTW? How does the e-PTW improve the control of hazard and is it effective?

References 1.

Booth, M.,& Butler, J.D. (1992). A new approach to permit to work systems offshore. Safety Science, 15 (4-6), 309326.

2.

BP. (2014). HSE directive 1: work permits. Retrieved April 29, 2015 from http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bpcountry/en_no/PDF%20files/HSE/Directives/53076_HMS_Bok_2014_ENG_DIR1.pdf

3.

Burrows, R.I. (2006). Implementing an Electronic Permit to Work System in Qatargas, presented at the International Health, Safety & Environment Conference, Abu Dhabi, 2006. Society of Petroleum Engineers.

4.

Covil, M. (1999), Glossary of HSE terms (6.52/244). Retrieved from International Association of Oil & Gas Producers Website: http://www.ogp.org.uk/pubs/244.pdf

5.

Day, A. (2004). Petrotechnics integrated safe system of work [Powerpoint slides]. Retrieved from file:///C:/Users/Admin/Downloads/Petrotechnics%20-%20Integrated%20Safe%20System%20Of%20Work.pdf

6.

Goetsch, D.L. (2011), Occupational safety and health for technologists, engineers, and managers (7th Ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

7.

Health & Safety Executive. (1999). Reducing error and influencing behaviour. Richmond, Surrey: HSE Books.

3

UNIMAS/RIMC/ARG

8.

Health & Safety Executive. (2005). Guidance on permit-to-work systems. Richmond, Surrey: HSE Books.

9.

Iliffe, R.E., Chung, P.W.H., & Kletz, T.A. (1999). More effective permit-to-work systems. Process Safety and Enviromental Protection, 77(2), 69-76.

10. Kjellen, U. (2000). Prevention of accidents through experience feedback. London: Taylor & Francis. 11. Kyle, S.R.,Al-Khashti, B.,Collard, T.S.,Maddox, K.H.,Striefel, J.E., Wallace, I.G., . . . Krahn, D. (1993), Guidelines on permit to work (P.T.W.) systems (6.29/189). Retrieved from International Association of Oil & Gas Producers Website: http://www.ogp.org.uk/pubs/189.pdf 12. O’Dea, A. & Flin, R. (2001). Site managers and safety leadership in the offshore oil and gas industry. Safety Science, 37, 39-57. 13. Oliver, A. (2010). Permit to work: the integrated safe system of work. APPEA Journal, 665-680. 14. Pate-Cornell, M.E. (1993). Learning from the Piper Alpha accident: a postmortem analysis of technical and organizational factors. Risk Analysis, 13(2), 215-233. 15. Saville, S.,Garner, S. & Rosamond, K.P. (2008). Software-supported process ensures safer work practices. Oil & Gas Journal, 42. d] Methodology The study population is workers on an offshore platform. Location of research is an offshore platform near the coast of Sarawak (installation that requires travel by boat is preferable, rather than helicopter travel for safety and cost-saving purposes). Phone calls are made to companies who operates these installations to get preliminary information such as whether they operate electronic permit-to-work and whether they have used any kind of e-PTW system for a minimum of 1 year. Permission to distribute questionnaire is solicited as well. This qualitative research uses purposive sampling. At a minimum, 20 workers will be interviewed for the purpose of this study. In order to get the best of samples, an initial questionnaire will be distributed to all persons on-board the selected offshore platform. The questionnaire will determine which workers to be selected as sample based on these criteria:  Designated permit issuer, permit coordinator, permit applicant and area authority.  Experience in using on site e-PTW system for a minimum of 1 year in any capacity.  Employed in the Oil & Gas industry for more than 2 years. Upon return of the initial questionnaire, analysis is conducted and if the result showed less than 20 workers meet the sample criteria, other offshore platform will be selected and a repeat of the initial questionnaire will be done until the required number of sample meeting the above criteria is found. Official request will then be sent to selected company to allow researcher to stay onboard their offshore platform for at least 1 week. It is important to note that the aim of this study is not to acquire a representative sample but to produce a deeper understanding of the reseach subject matter. Prior to conducting the research, pilot interviews are conducted with people outside the chosen sample. Due to cost and traveling constraint, two interviews are to be conducted amongst workers who meet the above sample criteria but located onshore and preferably the nearest to the researcher’s location. The two samples will be selected using the same filtering process as above. Data collection and analysis strategy includes:  Each selected worker is invited to participate in two in-depth interviews of approximately 1-1.5 hours in duration (depending on the shift of the worker) that is audio recorded.  The interviews are conducted in a language that is appropriate for the participant  The interviews are transcribed in the local language and, where possible, analysis is done in the local language.  Following this, data analysis is carried out in which the data is coded thematically, using standard qualitative analysis techniques and analysed using content analysis and analytic induction, preferably with the help of a qualitative research software such as Atlas.TI or NVivo10 or similar. 4

UNIMAS/RIMC/ARG

To ensure the validity and reliability of data, verification techniques will be used, such as:  Peer interview  Cross-referencing with on-site documents  Observation of the sample in action while executing e-PTW procedures from start to finish, pictures are to be taken if permitted. The role of the principal investigator is primarily to execute and monitor the whole research process which includes sourcing location of offshore platform with the right criteria, conducting initial questionnaire, pilot interviews and actual interviews, reporting and publication; while the role of the co-investigator is to guide the research, presentation and publication process, as co-analyst of the raw data and as co-writer of the final report.

e] Expected Outcomes/Contribution To The Field i.

A model framework to increase the reliability of a permit-to-work systems in communicating and coordinating tasks for hazard control

ii.

Research Publication  Scopus  International Index

iii.

Specific or potential applications  Improvement to the current specification of permit-to-work software framework  Training input/improvements for workers managing safe work permits using electronic means

f] Schedule 1. 2. 3.

Flow Chart of Research Activities Gantt Chart of Research Activities Milestones and Dates

Tasks/Milestone

YEAR 1 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

YEAR 2 8

9

1 0

1 1

1 2

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1 0

1 1

1 2

Literature Review Secure research location & pilot test Data Collection Data Analyzing Dissemination of Findings

5

UNIMAS/RIMC/ARG

g] Deliverables Please tick () the relevant items below: Item Internal technical/serial papers Undergraduate final year report Student’s Masters thesis/dissertation Student’s PhD thesis  Local conference papers Lain-lain/others (sila nyatakan/please specify)

Item International conference papers Local journal papers International journal papers Book/monograph

  

h] Research Grants Received In The Past 3 Years Title

Leader or Co-investigator

Start Date

Status

Total Value Of Grant

Source Of The Grant

Nil

i] Previous UNIMAS Research Grant Received Nil Project Title Duration Amount & Grant Major Output

j]

Comments by the Dean/Director

__________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________ Date

____________________________________ Signature (Dean/Director)

6

UNIMAS/RIMC/ARG

V.

CURRICULUM VITAE a]

CV of Project Leader (1 page maximum)

1. Name: Abdul Halim Bin Hashim 2. Degree(s) (subjects, university, year):  Master in Industrial Safety Management, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, (2003)  Bachelor (Hons) of Business Administration, Universiti Utara Malaysia, (1998) 3. Present and most recent posts held (type of post, institution, dates)  Head, Occupational Safety And Health Unit, Chancellery, UNIMAS  Lecturer, Faculty of Cognitive Sciences and Human Development (FCSHD) UNIMAS  Lead of MSc OSH program development under FCSHD  Fellow of Bunga Raya College, UNIMAS 4. Recent publications/portfolios: List only the five most important and relevant over the last five years (papers in press or submitted for publication are also acceptable – state which journals these have been submitted to) Nil

Date:

b]

Signature:

CV of Major Team Members (1 page maximum, repeat for each member of team)

1. Name: Prof. Madya Dr. Al-khalid Bin Othman 2. Degree(s) (subjects, university, year):   

PhD (Digital Signal Processing - Underwater Acoustic Networks)(University of Newcastle, UK) MSc (Information Technology- Digital)(Nottingham University) BEng (Hons)(Electrical and Electronic Engineering)(Nottingham Trent University)

3. Present and most recent posts held (type of post, institution, dates) 

Dean, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak

7

UNIMAS/RIMC/ARG

4. Recent publications/portfolios: List only the five most important and relevant over the last five years (papers in press or submitted for publication are also acceptable – state which journals these have been submitted to) A. Q. Jakhrani, A. K Othman, and A. R. H. Rigit, “Assessment of Solar and Wind Power Potential in Sarawak”, Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Advances in Renewable Energy Technologies, ICARET -2010, organized by Universiti Tenaga Nasional, 6th -7th July, 2010, at Cyberview Lodge Resort and SPA Cyberjaya, Malaysia. A. K. Othman, A. Q. Jakhrani, W. A. W. Zainal Abidin, H. Zen, and A. Baharun,“Malaysian Government Policy in Renewable Energy: Solar PV System”, Proceedings of Conference on Natural Resources and Green Technology by World Engineering Congress 2010, on 2nd – 5th August 2010, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. A. Q. Jakhrani, A. K. Othman, A. R. H. Rigit and S. R. Samo, “A simple method for the estimation of global solar radiation from sunshine hours and other meteorological parameters”, Proceedings of the Second IEEE International Conference on Sustainable Energy Technologies IEEE-ICSET 2010, 6th- 9th December, 2010, at the Mahaweli Reach Hotel, Kandy, Srilanka. A. Q. Jakhrani, A. K. Othman, and A. R. H. Rigit, “Estimation of global solar radiation from sunshine hours by empirical relationships at Sarawak State”, Proceedings of International conference on Environment 2010, green technologies for the benefits of Bottom Billions, organized by School of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 13th -15th December, 2010, Parkroyal Hotel, Penang, Malaysia.

Date:

Signature:

8

UNIMAS/RIMC/ARG

BUDGET Staff Category A. STAFF COSTS 1. Temporary And Contract Personnel (J 400)

0 0

0 0

RM 300 RM 800

800

Total RM 400 RM 200 RM 400 RM 1,000

800

1,000

1,000

Rentals (J 600) 1,000

Research Materials And Supplies (J 700) Research consumables (A4 papers, batteries, ink cartridge/toners, notebooks, stationeries, files etc.)

5.

0 0

RM 500

Boat Rental 4.

Total (RM)

Total

Flight tickets (return-trip)  1 pax x RM 500 Taxi fare  Unimas to Kuching Airport  Kuching Airport to Unimas  Miri airport to mobilization point  Mobilization point to Miri Airport TOTAL AMOUNT

International Conferences in Malaysia: Category Transportation (flight) Taxi Accommodation (lodging) TOTAL AMOUNT 3.

Year 2 (RM)



Sub-Total Staff Costs B. DIRECT PROJECT EXPENSES 2. Travel And Transportation (J 500) Fieldwork Travelling Cost Travel Detail Expenditure UNIMAS- Miri

Year 1 (RM)

200

Minor Modifications And Repairs (J 800) Not applicable

6.

7.



Special Services (J 900) Conference registration fees Minor Equipment And Accessories (J 1000) Personal protective equipment (safety hard hat, coverall, safety boots, safety glasses & gloves)

1000

1000

1000

The computation of salary for Research Assistant should be according to the following formula: Basic Salary + EPF ** + SOCSO** (Refer to Attachment A & B)

Note: ** Employer’s Contributions 9

UNIMAS/RIMC/ARG

Sub-Total Direct Expenses C. TOTAL COST (Please add the sub-totals of A and B)

VI(a).

4,000 Year 1 (RM) 4,000

1,000 Year 2 (RM) 1,000

5,000 Total (RM) 5,000

BUDGET JUSTIFICATIONS Temporary And Contract Personnel Not applicable

Travel And Transportation 1.

2.

Planned research location is onboard nearest active production platform off the coast of Miri. Travel requirements will include: a. Road transport from UNIMAS to an airport and back b. Air travel from Kuching to Miri and back Transportation and travel cost to present paper at selected conference in Malaysia

Rentals Boat need to be rented to ferry researcher to offshore platform and back Research Materials and Supplies Consumables needed to record and preserve data; and printing Minor Modifications And Repairs Not applicable Special Services Registration fees for conferences for the purpose of research paper presentation Minor Equipment And Accessories  Prepared by researcher – laptop, camera, voice recorder and video recorder  Personal protective equipment (PPE) is normally a mandatory requirement onboard an offshore production platform and bring your own PPE policy is enforced.

10