Leveraging Technology to Manage Health, Safety and Human RIghts Risks: A Differentiated Approach in Managing Fatigue

Abstract

Oil and gas employees working in tough working environments such as plants, turnarounds and offshore platforms have among the most gruelling work schedule in the industry. Despite having guidelines that prohibit long working hours, there are still cases of excessive working hours without rest days that may result in exhausted employees prone to mistakes and accidents. Analysis on accident investigations in the oil and gas industry revealed that fatigue is among the contributors towards significant number of incidents leading to fatality and loss time injury. PETRONAS has put in place a number of key controls such as PETRONAS Technical Standards on Management of Fatigue at Work Place, site procedures at plants, health promotion programmes and audit activities to ensure compliance to ensure fatigue risks are managed accordingly at the workplace. To further strengthen its compliance to related laws and standards, PETRONAS has developed a compliance-based digital system called PETRONAS Fatigue Management System (FMS) which tracks Hours of Service Limit (HSL) of working hours, days and rest period according to high risk work groups as required by company standards which imposes the intervention to block an employee who has breached the standard from entering their work place. The aim of FMS is to enhance effectiveness of fatigue management and compliances through proactive intervention, process standardisation, simplification and automation.