ABSTRACT
A New Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel is due to be commissioned off the coast of West Africa in 2007. Members of the project’s operations development team raised concerns over the proposed manning levels of the central control room. A change in manning levels has been identified two years prior to the commissioning of the new vessel proves the benefit of early human factors interventions. Commissioning and the first 12 to 18 months of operation is the busiest period during an FPSOs lifecycle. During this time the frequency of maintenance, equipment testing, equipment failure, new well commissioning and general “teething” problems are at their highest. At the time of the project the FPSO operations team was undertaking an alarms rationalization process to create an alarms system that will be optimised for the control room technician’s.
