Assessing Longford Gas Plant 1 Staffing Arrangements

In 2000, the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) Hazardous Installations Directorate commissioned a research project to develop a practical method that flags when staffing arrangements used to control a process are inadequate. The resultant method was published as Contract Research Report ‘Assessing the safety of staffing arrangements for process operations in the chemical and allied industries’ (Contract Research Report (CRR) 348/2001) (Brabazon and Conlin, 2001). The developed method concentrates on the staffing requirements for responding to hazardous incidents. Specifically, it is concerned with how staffing arrangements affect the reliability and timeliness of detecting incidents, diagnosing them, and recovering to a safe state. The method has been applied by many Major Hazard organizations with and without assistance from external consultants. The tool has been applied to assess current staffing arrangements, new staffing arrangements and to assess the impact of a planned organizational change. Its contribution to safety science has been recognized through two UK IChemE Awards for Safety and Loss Prevention.In 1998, a gas plant at Longford, Australia, suffered a major release and fire. Two employees were killed. Natural gas supply to the entire state of Victoria was cut for 2 weeks, causing disruption to domestic users and massive economic cost to industry and business. A Royal Commission (RC) was established to investigate the causes of the incident. The Commission took evidence from many plant personnel, exploring a wide range of operational and maintenance practices at the plant.This paper examines the application of the staffing arrangements assessment method (Method) to the Longford incident. Significant operational staffing changes had been made at the plant, and the personnel appearing before the Commission included those who would typically be included in the study team implementing the staffing method. The method's assessment techniques have been applied using the evidence of the personnel in a remote application.