ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the issue of offshore health and safety from the perspective of a constructivist theory. Management, for example, has been concerned to minimise economic risk and has operated on the basis that rapid production minimises the impact of an uncertain future and increases the value of the income from the reservoir. The political recognition of a need for workforce involvement thus found legal expression. The 1992 Safety Case Regulations, made under the 1992 Act, set out the requirements for the fundamental part of the new regime. In this political context of the total acceptance of Lord Cullen's recommendations, especially with regard to the need for a focus on auditable Safety Management Systems and the use of Quantitative Risk Assessment all demonstrated in a Safety Case. Risk assessment has revealed further levels of complexity in structural issues, something which engineering has long concentrated on.
