The Golden Gate Bridge and Process Safety

00:00:03 Russell Stewart

This episode of the Energy Pipeline is sponsored by Caterpillar Oil and gas. Since the 1930s, Caterpillar has manufactured engines for drilling, production, well service and gas compression. With more than 2100 dealer locations worldwide, Caterpillar offers customers a dedicated support team to assist with their premier power solutions. Welcome to the Energy Pipeline Podcast. Your host, Russell Stewart. Tune in each week to learn more about industry issues, tools and resources to streamline and modernize the future of the industry. Whether you work in oil and gas or bring a unique perspective, this podcast is your knowledge transfer hub. Welcome to the Energy Pipeline. Hey everybody, thanks for listening. Today we're going across the pond, I believe. My guest today is David Jamison. David, thanks for coming on the show today. 

00:01:00 David Jamieson
Thank you very much for having me. 

00:01:02 Russell Stewart
Okay, so David, I'm not, I can tell already by what you just said, I'm not interviewing somebody from West Texas. Right? 

00:01:11 David Jamieson
That's exactly right. I'm based over in sunny Aberdeen in Scotland. 

00:01:15 Russell Stewart
Sunny Aberdeen in Scotland. Okay, so it is sunny in Aberdeen. It's not like London where it rains all the time. 

00:01:25 David Jamieson
It's sunny right now, but I suspect it'll rain very soon. Okay. 

00:01:29 Russell Stewart
All right. So David, you are the founder of a company called Salus Technical, is that right? 

00:01:38 David Jamieson
That's right, yeah. So we specialize in process safety. The name Salus, that's the Roman goddess of safety. So that's where that name comes from. 

00:01:45 Russell Stewart
Okay. All right, so David, you're the founder. So tell me a little bit about yourself. 

00:01:52 David Jamieson
I'm a process safety engineer by background and I've worked in that role for over 10 years now and, or 10 years before I started Salus. And what we tried to do was, yeah, we, we provide process safety expertise to high hazard industries and we, we do that through engineering training and software. So that's my background as I was an engineer and do a little bit on the software side and the training side. 

00:02:17 Russell Stewart
So yeah, okay, so I went to your salas-technical.com your website's folks, seriously. And I'm, I, I mean this, if you're listening, it's worth spending a few minutes just going to their website. It's actually, it's very impressive and also, in fact I was just going through it before we got on air here, trying to go back. You've got some, somewhere on this website, you've got some, an impressive amount of customers on here and it looks like you're primarily involved in, in the oil and gas industry as far as process safety goes. Is that right? 

00:03:10 David Jamieson
That's right. So my background was I spent 10 years working in oil and gas process safety. And when we started Salus, my thesis was that we could use a lot of the stuff that we learned and apply it to other industries so that they didn't have make the same mistakes that we did. So our business is around a 50, 50 split between engineering and between software. And our engineering is very much focused in the oil and gas industry over in Europe. But our software is quite the opposite. It's based in lots of different industries across the globe. I think we're in eight different time zones. So it's a really good mix of. It's a really good mix of companies that use our services. But yeah, we're absolutely. An oil and gas foundation was where it all began. Yeah. 

00:03:54 Russell Stewart
Okay. All right. Well, great. Okay. So David, you said you're a process safety engineer. And so that's actually what I wanted to talk to you about. You and I actually talked several months ago, and then I think we both got busy and I had intended to actually have you on the podcast earlier in the year, and now we're already halfway through the year, so time flies when you're having fun, I guess. I talked to you and actually based upon the little conversation we had and me going and looking at some of the things on your website and whatever, I actually did a little segment on process safety several months ago using some of your stuff. And one of the things that I used was your story. And it really. I got several comments from people. Everybody really enjoyed the story, and I'm going to get you to tell it, but it's something like, entitled, something along the lines of how the circus saved the Golden Gate Bridge. 

00:05:08 David Jamieson
That's right, yeah. 

00:05:10 Russell Stewart
So tell us that story. 

00:05:12 David Jamieson
So I believe that a lot of people think that we figured out process safety and that there's not much more we can do. And one of the stories that I tell is about the making of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Joseph Strauss, who was the chief engineer. And if you think back to, you know, early 1930s, so I think, you know, that came in, that was constructed during the 1930s. If, if, if you think what's going on back then you had the Great Depression, which was obviously really impacting the, the, the United States. There was no accepted, like, safety practices or there was very little accepted safety practices. So Joseph Strauss, believe it or not, was the first site to have mandatory use of hard hats. He outlawed drinking alcohol at work, which surprisingly was quite common. Then he also like, fired anyone doing dangerous stunts and working Practices. And so there was lots of things that he did on that front. And one of the things he did in this story goes, I'm not sure if this part's true, but he was apparently at his local circus and one of the acrobats fell off the rope and landed on the safety net. And he had his eureka moment that we could use that in the construction industry. So his company patented that. They used it under the Golden Gate Bridge. And the standard for safety back then was that for every million dollars you spent on a construction project, you should expect to kill one people. And I believe back then, obviously, adjusted for inflation, it's far more. But he spent over £30 million, so he was expected to kill 30 people on that project. And he decided that he didn't want that. So all these changes that he made and those safety nets, what actually happened was, is that. I don't have the figures exactly. There was one big accident near the end of the project where a large steel structure fell onto the net. They're obviously meant for. It was meant for catching people. So there were some fatalities on the Golden Gate Bridge, but those nets directly saved the lives of 19 people. So there's 19 people that fell off that bridge, landed on a net, and they were all absolutely fine. And, and I believe that they were all called the Halfway to Hell gang or something like that. So that was one engineer, not a safety professional, that was one engineer who said, I'm going to raise the bar on my project and I'm not going to just go with the flow of everyone else. And, you know, there was at least 19 lives were saved as a result of something that, something that no one asked him to do, he chose to do it and the outcome was good. And I'm sure as, as you'll know on construction projects, even to this day, what are we, 90 plus years later, them, they're still being used. So I just get really inspired with stories like that, and especially in mature industries such as oil and gas, where, yeah, there can be this perception that, you know, that's process safety figured out. There's always things to learn, there's always new things to experiment with and to try and. Yeah, and I quite often tell that at the beginning of some workshops that we do or some training to really try and inspire people that they really can make an impact. 

00:08:13 Russell Stewart
And that's, that's actually what the Salus Technical is all about, is bringing that kind of, that kind of attitude to process safety. Right. 

00:08:23 David Jamieson
So our company motto is straightforward process safety. And it's all about, we see trying to make things as simple as we can to allow people to make the impact. And process safety is what we all do to prevent major accidents. Yes, there's process safety engineers like myself, but the real bang for your buck that you get is where the specialists in other fields, once they understand process safety and the role that they can play in process safety, they'll do far more to improve safety than people like. So that's really what we try and focus on with what we do is bringing everyone with us. So our software is all geared around ease of use and plugging into other software so as many people as possible can use it. We've got an on demand training course that's all about the basics of process safety and I actually wrote that for non safety people. So it's all about what can you do to impact this stuff. And obviously with our consulting as well, although we're brought in sometimes as the process safety specialists say again, we try and engage as many people people as we can and yeah, and that has far more of an impact than we expected. 

00:09:26 Russell Stewart
Okay. And so actually if you go on the website, you can actually, any, any company can actually I think sign up to three people for like an introductory course on process safety. Is that right? 

00:09:43 David Jamieson
That's right. So one of our flagship products, it's a, it's a paid for course and companies, you know, like sign up their workforce for it. That's the one that's aimed at non saf people. But we've made, you know, and again, you know, in, in line with our company ethos of trying to engage as many people as we can. We've made around half a dozen or so of these videos available completely free of charge. So there's some that are just on our YouTube channel that you can check out or anyone can sign up for the trial of that course where you'll get six videos completely free of charge, completely, no obligation. And we quite often get, you know, emails from people and from companies and things like that saying things like, you know, thanks very much. We've been using your videos at safety moments and things and things like that. And that's great and you know, and that's great to hear. We spent a lot of time on those scripts to try and make sure that they really resonated with, you know, with like non safety people, with other engineers. 

00:10:36 Russell Stewart
Actually you mentioned the YouTube channel and now that I think about it, that's actually where I went and heard you telling the story of the Golden Gate Bridge. Now that now that I remember where I got that from. And then the, the other thing that I got, and this was one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast, talk to me about what you call your ALARP principle. 

00:11:00 David Jamieson
So like many terminology, like many process safety term minologies, I think we try and make it quite complicated. The principle of alarp, it does subtly change in different countries because you know, with how the, like how the law changes. But really it boils down to follow good practice, write down everything that you're doing and justify, I'm sorry, write down everything that you're not doing that you could be doing and justify why you're not doing it. So it doesn't mean you have to add every single possible control under the sun. It's not as low as reasonably possible, it's as low as reasonably practicable. What are you not doing and why aren't you doing it? And certainly the law in the UK is for you need to justify why going as far as you can is the, is the, is the right thing to do. So follow good practice and justify what you're not what you're not doing. Now, lowering list risk to a LARP doesn't mean that it's impossible to have an incident, but it means that you've done everything that's reasonably practicable, everything that could be reasonably expected of you to reduce a risk. The like way I always think about it is there's, you know, there's two, you know, there's, there's a few different examples I give. You know, let's say that you, you know, own a golf driving range and you've got a big fence at this side. It's like, how high do you build that fence? You know, you know, you don't have to build an infinitely high fence when it's absolutely impossible for a golf ball to ever get over. That would be unreasonable and would cost a lot of money. But you do need to build at a, a reasonable height so that you've minimized the chance of a, of a, of a golf ball getting over. And the other one would be, you know, there is a risk that an asteroid could hit planet Earth. You know, it's a very low risk, so it's a very low likelihood, but it would be very high impact. So there's a, there is a credible risk that could happen and it's happened before and it'll happen again. But we don't all live in underground bunkers and never come up to see the like sun. You know, that just wouldn't be reasonably practical to do. So there is some time where you will have risk. There could be more that's possible to do but it's not reasonably practicable to do. And a lot of time we spend is in that shade of gray where it's not exactly clear how far we should go. And that's about good process safety principles following good practice and building that justification. And yeah, it's, it can be very easy to say with those two examples, but it can be very hard to do in practice sometimes and often and this is maybe the very difficult part is no. 1, it's for, it's for you to justify whether you've met a LARPER or not. And it's often not tested until unfortunately, until an instant happens. So it can be very difficult to do. But it's probably the most important fundamental part of process safety. How far should you go to reduce risk? 

00:13:47 Russell Stewart
So at the very least that's a, that's a standard to operate by or at least you're not if you, if you employ that principle, and let's say it again, it's, it's a L, A R, P and that's as low as reasonably practical. 

00:14:11 David Jamieson
Yep, that's right. ASLO is reasonably practicable and I think some people confuse that P. It's not possible. So you don't have to do everything you possibly could. It's what's reasonably practic, practicable when usually if you spend the time to understand what good practice is for the part of the world that you're working on for the type of job that you're doing, usually following good practice is sufficient. Again, you always have to check that there could be more that, that you can do. So understanding what good accepted engineering practice for what you're doing is as you know, is usually I'll take you 9, 10 of the way there. 

00:14:50 Russell Stewart
Okay. So you operate on the premise, you know, as far as being safe, I'm going to manage my risk as low as is reasonably practical. That's a larp. So that's my, that's my, I guess, mission statement or whatever. As far as, you know, if, if, if I'm talking about, or I'm thinking about safety, I'm thinking about everybody coming home safe. That's, that's my goal. And then it's, you can't just have the goal now how do I, how do I follow that goal? And that goal comes by looking at, at standard good practices for whatever industry I'm in. Maybe there might, there might be several other things that go beyond that. And that's actually what you help companies do, right? 

00:15:48 David Jamieson
That's right. I was just, I was recently speaking to an individual and a few years ago their company had had a process safety incident where four people unfortunately lost their life. And the more I learned about that incident, it's a very sad story and it unfortunately follows a very familiar story. So with process safety, it differs more from personal safety. Process safety is more looking at the prevention of major accidents and a lot of the barriers that you have in place are less visible. For personal safety, it's very easy to understand why you might wear ppe, why you might hold the handrail, why you might wear a hard hat. But in process safety, it can be very difficult sometimes to explain why, like that particular step in a procedure is very important or why doing that audit is very important. And every single process safety incident that I'm aware of or I've been involved in, there's two things that they've all got in common. Number one is that that's more than one barrier failed. There was more than one thing went wrong. And the second one is that these barriers didn't just fail on the day, they were actually weekend, often a long time in advance, but just nobody was focusing, nobody was paying attention, so. So they didn't know. And that's why it's very important. There's a philosophy in the UK and other countries as well called plan, do, check, act, and that's a cycle of continuous improvement. And unfortunately we're all very good at the planning and the doing, but we're not very good at the checking and then the acting on those results with things like audit and assurance and things like that. So quite often what happens is on day one, everything's perfectly safe and working well. And over time, as there's small changes, as there's budget cuts, as there's new people coming in, as equipment degrades, all these barriers start to weaken. And it's worth saying that that's not just equipment. That could be people, that could be processes as well. So that's what we really try and do, is make sure that we've got everything that we're supposed to have, but also that over time it still remains as healthy as, as it should. And a lot of those things, as I've said, are invisible. So it's very difficult to do, you know, in high hazard industries. 

00:17:56 Russell Stewart
And, you know, you, you, you brought out a very good point there. Just because you. And I was just talking to somebody at a company that if I were to mention it, everybody would, would know and recognize. And they started, in fact, it was this week. They started out on Monday morning and they had, they had two incidents, like within, you know, less than two or three hours of, of each other. And the person who was, was talking to me said, oh, we hadn't had a, we hadn't had a, a reportable incident in, you know, a thousand days or whatever it was, I can't remember, you know, and, and, and, and then we get these two, you know. Right, right on the same day. And I said, you know, just because you haven't had a, a reportable incident in X amount of days doesn't mean you're safe. It just means you haven't had a reportable incident. Right. 

00:19:03 David Jamieson
And it's so true. And that's such a difficult concept to understand because not having an incident for a long time, of course, should be celebrated. That's fantastic. It means that we're not hurting anyone. But process safety for me is not about the absence of incidents. It's about being able to demonstrate that you've got effective barriers in place. So major accidents, thankfully, by definition, are very rare. A lot of things have to line up for a major accident to happen. But if you've got emergency shutdown valves that don't close, or deluge systems that are blocked because they're rooted, or emergency response procedures that you've never really tested before, you can't demonstrate that you've got effective barriers in place for, for the day that that incident comes. So it's, it's a very difficult thing to get across. But once companies and individuals understand that, they'll start to measure these things, put key performance indicators in place and dashboards and things like that, and then they can start to track their performance and make improvements. But when you've not had an instant for like one month, for one year, for five years, it's very hard to motivate people to make a change or see that they're actually at risk of these things happening. So, you know, the individuals and the organizations that are very proactive and they understand that are the ones, you know, that can have the biggest impact. But yeah, personal safety and process safety are similar, but they're not the same. And yeah, the absence of incidents is fantastic, but that's not a true measure of safety. It's the presence of effective barriers. 

00:20:34 Russell Stewart
Okay. All right. Okay. So I think this conversation has been very enlightening. And like I said, David, I've been waiting a long time to get you on here. And let's talk about this. I have one other question to ask you that I think is going to be really relevant. Everybody's going to want to hear the answer to it, and it has to do with what I saw on your website and your story about Blockbuster and AI. Before we, before I get you to comment on that. Anything else that we haven't touched on that, that we should. 

00:21:21 David Jamieson
No, I don't think so. You know, I would say process safety, it's a journey of continuous improvement. You've never achieved it. But, yeah, there's plenty of free resources on our website, from blog posts to videos to some templates that you can download. So. And yes, I would encourage anyone that's interested in anything I've said to check out our site. There's likely going to be some free resources for you there. 

00:21:42 Russell Stewart
Okay, so you, you said you're in eight different time zones. So are you guys, are you guys just in Europe? Are you here in North America or where are you? 

00:21:53 David Jamieson
Yeah, we're. We're here in North America. We've got customers in Canada and the US And Brazil, and we've also got people in Australia and New Zealand, too. So, yeah, no, we're spreads all over the. We're spreads all over our customer success. People are very used to having zoom calls at various times of day. 

00:22:16 Russell Stewart
Okay, well, you and I are doing that. It's kind of. Well, it's not real early, but it's, it's, it's morning for me right now, and I think it's later in the afternoon for you. Right now. 

00:22:29 David Jamieson
That's right. 

00:22:30 Russell Stewart
Yeah. So. Okay, so let's talk about. I mean, you know, you can't, Nobody, nobody can talk about anything anymore unless they're. They're talking about AI. But give me your perspective on the, on the AI and process safety. And you used, I love the way you use stories like the circus story. So you use Blockbuster, the Blockbuster story, as an example. Take me through that. 

00:23:05 David Jamieson
Well, the blockbuster Netflix story is very good, and it's a story that I think was slightly misunderstood. And I think it's really important with what's happening today. And really, in a nutshell, it was that, you know, some younger listeners of your podcast might not know, but you used to have. 

00:23:22 Russell Stewart
They may not. They may not. That's right. 

00:23:26 David Jamieson
And you used to have to get in your car and drive to a store and then look through mountains of videos or DVDs and pick one, rent it, go away, and then drive back two days later to, to hand it back. That's what used to, that's what used to happen. And Blockbuster certainly, you know, the biggest company on the planet that did that, but a quarter of their revenue came from just extra things like late fees or people buying food in their shop and things like that. So they were using technology to try and drive more people into their store, which they were doing by the way. Netflix, on the other hand, they were, they were a DVD postal service. So they just took the store out of it. But you still had to go to the, the post office. But they, as soon as broadband Internet became ubiquitous, realized that you didn't need a store and you didn't need a postbox. You could just get it directly to your computer or to your tv. And it was just the two different attitudes to technology. Blockbuster who almost got it right. They were like, how do we use this new tech to make what we're already doing even better? Whereas the Netflix philosophy was well, how can we do, how can we use this new tech to do something entirely different? And if you apply that to process, you know, and I suppose this, the like simple sign bite of that was Blockbuster was trying to get more people into their, into the store. Netflix saw that you didn't need a store at all. And if you apply that with any area, but especially with process safety, I'm seeing loads of people because I'm quite vocal on it. I'm skeptically optimistic about AI. I think it's brilliant if it's used right, but I think it's dangerous if it's used wrong. There's a lot of regulation over in Europe about the use of AI and a lot of people say no, we could use it to speed up hazards, we could use it to like automate the writing of, of these big safety case documents, etc. Etc. Which is fine, you know, good. I think anything we can do to streamline processes, cut out waste is good, provided humans are still in the loop and we're focusing on the risk. So I'm all for that, but, but I'm thinking, well, instead of using. I still feel that everyone's talking in the, in the Blockbuster mindset. I'm like, what about the Netflix mindset? What do we now not have to do at all? Or what could we do in an entirely different way? And you know, I'm still yet to hear that many ideas on that front. There's a few exciting ones. So we are really trying to look at both camps of can we use new technology, which obviously right now everyone's talking about AI. But what's next? Are there actually brand new opportunities that we could get out of this that could really raise the bar? So I would imagine that one day there'll be someone telling, instead of a Joseph Strife story from the 1930s, there might be a company from the 2000s that used something like AI in a massively different way to have a step change in safety. So it's hugely exciting. What I would say, though, is lots of companies in high hazard industries, certainly in the UK and Europe, you know, they've got lots of cost pressures, struggling to recruit people, struggling to retain people. So having this AI magic button that can suddenly do the work of two, three, four people is tempting to press? You know, I don't think the technology is quite there yet that you can take humans out of the loop, nor, I think, should you. So I am a bit nervous about the interim of will we see an increased risk of major accidents because it's been an AI that's done a risk assessment rather than a human being. And hopefully we can quickly get over that hump and that technology can be used to raise the bar, which is quite exciting. 

00:27:04 Russell Stewart
It is. And that's something that Salus Technical is all in the middle of. So, folks, I would, as I said earlier, I would, I would go to their website, as I said, it's very impressive and see all the things that they do. And you, you may want to reach out to David, or you may want to reach out to Salus Technical and get some, some more insight into how their services can possibly benefit you. David, again, appreciate you taking the time to come on and talk about this. We probably just scratched the surface, but maybe we'll do it again sometime. You ever get down to Houston? 

00:27:55 David Jamieson
I do sometimes, yeah. I'll hopefully come over sometime later this year or early next year. 

00:27:59 Russell Stewart
Yeah. Okay, well, great. Well, when you do, we'll definitely hook up and we may see if we can't hit the record button again for 30 minutes. 30 minutes. 

00:28:10 David Jamieson
Excellent. No, that'd be fantastic. Yeah, thanks. 

00:28:12 Russell Stewart
All right, well, again, thanks, David, and as always to everyone out there, we really appreciate you listening and supporting this show, if I do say so myself. According to the metrics, it is one of the top rated oil and gas shows as it relates to hse. And that's not due to the quality of the host, but it's due to the quality of the guests that the host has on, plus the quality of the audience. We really appreciate that. So post us on LinkedIn, tell your friends to listen to us leave reviews and we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to oggn, the world's largest and most listened to podcast network for the oil and energy industry. If you like this show, leave us a review and then go to oggn.com to learn about all our other shows. Don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. This show has been a production of the Oil and Gas Global Network.