Management of Occupational Health & Safety Essay

Management of Occupational Health & Safety - Essay Example The incident was caused by the night crew putting a condensate injection pump into service, that earlier in the day had been taken out of service for maintenance. Additionally, the magnitude of the disaster was multiplied since a pressure safety valve had been removed for recertification. Such non-routine work increases risk of a catastrophic accident taking place (AICE, 2007: 287). Primarily, operator errors should have been prevented. Written, standardized procedures and permits applying to the entire facility or to the equipment, are a practical necessity for effectively and consistently controlling non-routine work related to high-risk activities. This includes two-way communication through checklists or permits to authorize the work, which highlight particular hazards that might be encountered and specify appropriate safeguards. Permits for non-routine work should be issued and reviewed by a trained person. Additionally, a preventive system of maintenance department locks should be in place (AICE, 2007: 293-295, 298). Further, the offshore installation manager (OIM) at the Piper Alpha was untrained to cope with the emergency. He did not communicate or take crucial decisions to cut off oil production, block supply of gas to the pipelines from the neighbouring facility, call for helicopters for rescue work, delegate authority or alleviate stress in the men (Flin et al, 1996: 262). Engineering design of the different components in the facility was faulty, such as interdependent couplings and linkages among the components of the facility, and with neighbouring installations. Hence, there was no provision for automatic shutdown of production, or for alarm, public address, and other critical systems. The mutual proximity of control room, radio room, electric generators, diesel room, with production modules caused a chain action of component failures due to fire propagation and explosions. The design of fire protection such as

Neorealist and Neoliberal Alternatives to U.S. - Russian Security Essay

Neorealist and Neoliberal Alternatives to U.S. - Russian Security Cooperation - Essay Example While neorealism essentially believes that international political situation is inherently anarchic and the only chance of survival a state has is through striking an acceptable balance of power, neoliberalism postulates the world is a community of nations where collective security should be the goal which can be attained through rational harmonization of sovereign interests of member nations (Calhoun 2002). So, it would be in the nature of things to briefly discuss these two apparently contradictory theories, more so the conflict between them, before one delves deeper into the intricacies of mutual relations between two United States and Russia. Anarchy has very often been the starting point of many theories of international relations and the first important point of difference between these two theories is how they perceive anarchy and how they draw their conclusions from such perceptions. The problem possibly lies in having implicit assumptions regarding strategic considerations of a state that are not clearly codified but clouds clarity in drawing rational inferences. The second point of difference is the issue of absolute and relative gains of states. The issue of absolute or relative gains is inextricably intertwined with strategic environment of a particular state and the extent of absolute or relative gains is measured by a particular state against the backdrop of the strategic environment in which it is located.