Introduction

Organisations often act in ways that seem irrational or contrary to their interests. In particular they sometimes fail to attend properly to hazards that lead predictably to disaster. A case in point is the petroleum company, BP, which has suffered catastrophic accidents: the Texas City refinery explosion in 2005, and the oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Since personal safety and process safety are concerned with different kinds of hazards, it is logically possible to focus on one type of hazard and not the other. This was the essence of the problem at Texas City and in the Gulf of Mexico accident: the focus was on personal safety hazards, not process safety hazards. Consider how BP’s incentive system worked at Texas City, and in the Gulf of Mexico. Bonuses were paid to people at all levels of the company largely on the basis of productivity and cost minimisation.