Linking Well Control Incidents to Human Factors

A post was recently put up on LinkedIn in relation to a land-rig incident with emphasis on ‘the missed signals leading to a blowout that killed five’ in Jan. 2018.

Here’s a breakdown of where/how the human element influences well control incidents.  Just 8% (red slice) of incidents are attributed to hardware, (although this incident apparently saw software issues).  It may also be the case though that the software issue is related to Human Factors too – e.g. link to the SHELL model (software, hardware, environment, liveware).

Wells’ VPs and senior management are now beginning to understand that 92% of the incidents have human error as a casual factor – i.e. errors by technically competent teams or individuals.  Why wouldn’t one want to properly coach how to manage the threat of human error?  Let’s make Human Factors a way of working.