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Disastrous Decisions: The Human and Organisational Causes of the Gulf of Mexico Blowout

Disastrous Decisions: The Human and Organisational Causes of the Gulf of Mexico Blowout

Author: Andrew Hopkins
Publisher: CCH Australia
ISBN: 9781921948770
Published In: May 2012
Format: Paperback
Jurisdiction: Australia ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Disastrous Decisions: The Human and Organisational Causes of the Gulf of Mexico Blowout takes the reader into the realm of human and organisational factors that contributed to the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. This event resulted in the loss of 11 lives in the explosions and fire, the sinking of the rig and untold damage to the environment and to the livelihood of Gulf residents. It is important to know what people did, but even more important to know why they did it, so this book attempts to “get inside the heads” of decision-makers and understand how they themselves understood the situations they were in. It also seeks to discover what it was in their organisational environment that encouraged them to think and act as they did.

Features:

An essential reference for all work, health and safety professionals
Written by leading safety culture expert Professor Andrew Hopkins

Hopkins provides a sophisticated analysis of the accident that first identifies a series of critical defences that failed and then goes on to explain why they failed.

Disastrous Decisions: The Human and Organisational Causes of the Gulf of Mexico Blowout is an essential reference for all work, health and safety professionals, directors, officers, managers, safety regulators and engineers.

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Tunnel vision engineering
Chapter 3 Confirmation bias: the well integrity test
Chapter 4 Falling dominos: the failure of defence-in-depth
Chapter 5 The meaning of safety
Chapter 6 Choosing the right measures and making them matter
Chapter 7 Organisational structure
Chapter 8 Learning
Chapter 9 Management walk-arounds
Chapter 10 Regulation
Chapter 11 Some popular accounts of the Macondo accident
Chapter 12 Conclusion
Appendix 1 The decision tree
Appendix 2 The BP risk matrix
Bibliography
Index

Professor Andrew Hopkins is an internationally-renowned presenter, author and consultant in the field of industrial safety and accident analysis. Professor Hopkins has been awarded a prize by the European Process Safety Centre for “extraordinary contribution to process safety”, the first time this has been awarded outside of Europe.

Professor Hopkins has been involved in various government occupational health and safety (OHS) reviews and completed consultancy work for major companies in the resources sector, as well as speaking regularly to audiences around the world about the causes of major accidents.

He delivers presentations to organizations both within and outside Australia, and the topics include the BP Texas City Refinery Disaster, Mindful Leadership, Lessons from Longford (on the Esso Gas Plant Explosion) and Safe Behaviour Programs.

He is a recipient of the 2008 EPSC Process Safety award. Professor Hopkins was an expert witness at the Royal Commission into the causes of the Esso’s gas plant at Longford in Victoria in 1998.

More recently he was a consultant to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) during its investigation into the 2005 explosion at BP’s Texas City Refinery and was an expert commentator in the CSB film about the disaster.