ABSTRACT
Most oil companies conduct safety audits on vessels working within the confines of their oilfields and in areas covered by the exploration licences granted to them. Paradoxically, site surveys often fall outside the normal safety rules operated by oil companies. In consequence they tend to be conducted without safety audits and with a minimum of attention paid to safety and safety-related matters. As a general rule it is strongly recommended that a full safety audit be conducted on a vessel that is newly mobilised for site survey work, particularly if the vessel in question has not performed site surveys before. Beyond this recommendation the decision to conduct a full safety audit lies with the oil company but regular safety audits are recommended. During the course of a survey the consultant engineer assigned to a particular survey will comment on safety and safety-related matters and this will form a separate part of his report. In its broadest sense the word safety covers all aspects of health and environmental matters, in addition to considerations of the survey ship and its equipment.
