EXTERNAL PUBLICATIONS

SUMMARY

To improve the management of risks associated with ageing and life extension (ALE) of the oil and gas infrastructure on the UK Continental Shelf, HSE launched the ‘Key Programme 4’ (KP4) of targeted inspections in 2010. Two key findings were that industry could make better use of data trending and had not identified leading key performance indicators (KPIs) suitable to support ALE decision making. Data trending is the tracking of changing trends through analysis of data on equipment, systems and people performance. KPIs that indicate the current condition of equipment and systems are lagging indicators with respect to ALE, which is focussed on their future condition. The trending of lagging KPIs enables the future condition of assets to be estimated, thus producing leading KPIs that can directly support ALE decision making.

This report describes research to identify the barriers to the take-up of data trending to support ALE decision making, in order to identify issues that industry could address. Findings include issues surrounding data collection, management and use of data. Additionally, potential problems with analysis methods are discussed, suggesting that while basic trending can be done by engineers, there are pitfalls associated with trending that need to be understood.

This Research Report and the work it describes were funded by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Its contents, including any opinions and/or conclusions expressed, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect HSE policy.