The first official accident investigation report that was published on the Macondo disaster was from BP. One of the central findings of BP’s internal investigation report was that a lack of personnel competency was an important contributing cause of the Macondo disaster. To resolve this ‘lack of competence’, the report recommended to “Enhance competency
programs to deepen the capabilities of personnel in key operational and leadership positions”
(BP report, p. 183), by defining critical competencies and providing more technical and leadership training. The drilling community in the North Sea region embraced BP’s ‘lack of personnel competence’ account and call for more training. For instance, one of the workgroup leaders of a Macondo industry task force argued: “the competence of the
people was 80% of the failure” (Drilling engineer in major oil company). Almost completely
similar to BP, the task force’s call for action focused on establishing formal competencies and more training: “Leadership and Supervisory competencies should be established and
assessed for [key] positions” (OSPRAG report, p. 12), while an association argued “The
critical competencies identified comprise ‘technical’ and ‘leadership and supervisory’.” (OGUK
competency guidelines, p. 8).
We argue that the ‘lack of competence’ account and the call for more training are based a particular set of assumptions about how disasters caused and therefore should be prevented. The ‘lack of competence’ account seems to attribute accountability for the accident to the individual and the team. Hence, the drilling community’s learning initiatives aspired to achieve “a reduction in the frequency and consequence of well control incidents
caused by lack of individual or team competence” (OGP 476, p. 5). This quote indicates
the drilling community’s belief that a lack of individual or team competence is the root cause of accidents. In line with these beliefs, the call for action focused on limiting human fallibility and improving control over human behavior through strengthened training and competence management. Hence, call for action focused on ‘fixing the person’.
In contrast, the HF community has a radically different understanding of human error. From their perspective, human error cannot be wholly attributed to an individual, as human behavior is situated in contextual influences. Human error is thus not understood as a root cause of incidents, but a consequence of a complex interplay of organizational and contextual factors. HF consultant #1 emphasized the radical difference between these perspectives: “it is deeply fundamental whether you believe people behave in-context and
situational, or that [human behavior is] individually driven.” Hence, lack of competence
was not a satisfying explanation of the Macondo disaster for HF specialists, nor increased technical training an appropriate call for action:
“Improving human performance goes far beyond simply retraining individuals on the technical aspects of offshore operations […] The performance failures identified post-incident do not point to worker competency per se, but to a variety of situational, contextual, and organizational variables [that affected human behavior].” (CSB investigation report, p. 22-23).
Hence, we argue that the different beliefs about the notion ‘human error’ and corresponding calls for action reflect a semantic boundary between the two communities that drove the development of different calls for action. In contrast to the call for more training, the HF community proposed that more radical change was required to learn properly from the Macondo disaster. The majority of our interviewees argued for the importance of a deep cultural change in the drilling industry, driven by the implementation of HF knowledge in companies. For instance, one interviewee argued for the need to “get to that level
of cultural awareness where [HF knowledge] becomes part of the DNA of the industry”
(HSE manager in small company). Hence, the HF community’s call for action focused on the need for fundamental cultural change in the industry, to be achieved through the institutionalization of HF awareness, competence, and procedures in oil companies. Therefore, while semantic differences caused different calls for action, we also argue that this difference in understanding and meaning motivated the HF community to engage in a political struggle to further the HF discipline. Our analysis indicated that the HF community plays a relatively marginal role in the drilling industry, but they perceived themselves as having superior knowledge about human behavior. For instance, HF specialists discredited the drilling community’s ‘naïve’ understanding of human error:
“The majority of people [in the drilling industry] have engineering backgrounds. They apply engineering metaphors to managing people. So, for instance, in engineering you program machines to follow a sequence of steps. This analogy is then applied to people, because they expect people to behave in the same way as a machine does and follow all the steps. And we all know that it doesn’t work like that.” (HF specialist in major oil company #2).
The claim ‘we all know that it doesn’t work like that’ indicates that for the HF community the inadequacy of this ‘engineering perspective’ on human behavior and the call for more training was evident. However, our interviewees frequently portrayed the drilling community as just not able to grasp HF knowledge. For instance, an interviewee argued: “They don’t understand it. I have tried to explain it to engineers, but I just don’t get anywhere.
It is bizarre, because to me it is so simple, so straightforward” (HF specialist #4). Hence, we
argue that the HF community perceived themselves as having superior knowledge of human error and behavior, and therefore were convinced that their call for culture change should be respected. Despite being a marginal community, they believed that they should play a central role in learning from the Macondo disaster, as well as daily risk and safety management practices in oil companies. Therefore, they engaged in a political struggle for discipline recognition to increase their status and influence, thereby aiming to become an established community in the industry in the wake of the Macondo disaster. They aspired to raise the profile of the HF discipline by legitimating it as a distinct safety aspect. For instance, an HSE manager of a small oil company said: “[HF] is something that needs to
be debated and discussed much more coherently and consistently across the industry. As a discernable separate initiative.” Our analysis indicates that awareness of HFs increased in
the offshore industry as a consequence of the Macondo disaster. For instance, several major companies created a HF position in their safety department or contracted external
consultants for HF advice. However, we will show that their strategies to increase discipline recognition were ineffective, because they were self-referential – i.e. they were convincing from their own frame of reference, but did not connect to established discourses. This limited their ability to share HF knowledge with established communities in the industry and drive cultural change. We focus in particular on their practices to engage with two established communities: drilling personnel and senior management.