The business case for combining location awareness and enhanced personnel security
Dr Charlotte Richardson, Development Manager and Doug Woodbridge, Head of Sales & Marketing of S3 ID, consider how location awareness is now being used to provide enhanced personnel safety and security on the FPSO Bourgogne in a piracy and kidnap hotspot and consider how other new tracking technologies can provide innovative solutions in other situations enhancing both the safety and security of personnel and reducing an organizations potential exposure to risk.
Introduction
The Republic of Angola is located in southern Africa and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Namibia to the south and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the northeast. It is estimated that Petroleum production accounts for about 75% of Government revenue (International Monetary Fund, 2005, p. 5, 8), making it one of the largest oil producers in Southern Africa.
Companies operating within Angola and in its offshore waters are conscious of the need to protect their personnel from potential piracy and kidnap situations. Indeed, many Governments around the world advise against travel in certain parts of the country. It was against this background that BP Angola approached S3 ID when they were looking to implement an Access Control and Mustering System (ACMS) for its new FPSO, The Bourgogne, which will operate in Angolan waters.
BP has been involved in Angola for around 40 years and the number of people employed by it has increasing rapidly with the growth of the business. BP Angola aims to be involved in the community at every level and to bring real benefits to the country through engaging with key stakeholders Protecting its workforce is a central part if its operation, which is why it approached S3 ID to provide the required ACMS for the Bourgogne.
On-board Bourgogne
On the Bourgogne, The Access Control & Mustering System (ACMS) provides an automated ‘lockdown’ facility, a method of restricting access to sensitive parts of the vessel and, during a muster, a reliable means to register personnel arriving at the designated mustering locations.
The system is comprised of readers and other equipment at doorways and at the mustering locations as well as a system server and additional electronic equipment located in the Telecoms Equipment Room. The majority of the equipment is ATEX certified for use in Zone 1 hazardous areas.
All personnel are required to wear an individually Identifiable Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Intrinsically Safe (IS) active transponder. These transponders are used for identification at both access controlled doorways and at the vessels mustering points.
Transponders are allocated to individuals upon their arrival on the vessel. Relevant personnel information is stored in the system along with details of which controlled doorways may be accessed and which muster point the person is usually to be expected to arrive at in the event of a muster being called.
Personnel present their transponder at controlled doorway entry antenna and at the muster station antenna to indicate their presence to the system. At controlled doorways the system responds by granting access if the person is permitted. At muster stations the system gives feedback to the user via a display and list the person as mustered. An overview of the access control and mustering lists is available via screens in the office and control room and as printed reports. In a threat situation, the system can also be used to confirm all personnel are inside the vessel prior to an emergency lockdown being initiated whilst assistance is summoned
Working with our installation partner, Omega, we were able to fully meet the brief from BP in creating a completely integrated ACMS with the desired emergency ‘lockdown’ feature. Once the specification had been agreed, the units were built at our facility in the UK before being shopped to Omega, Singapore for installation on site. We have an excellent working relationship with Omega, who installed the equipment following extensive training in the UK with our technical engineers.
Technologies Available Today
Over the last few years the industry has responded to the need for location awareness and personnel tracking to provide enhance safety in emergency situations. In many cases this has been done using systems such as found in our S3 ID elocator™ and eMuster™ product families simply to facilitate the rapid and efficient evacuation of personnel. However, recently, as seen from the above example, this technology is also increasingly being used to mitigate other risks. In both these situations, knowing where your personnel are when it counts can make all the difference to the outcome.
In simple terms, location awareness of Oil & Gas personnel can be done in four main ways:
Swipe Cards
Swipe Cards are the most widely used location tool, requiring personnel to swipe ‘in’ and ‘out’ at Card Reader points. Many systems are available using swipe cards to create muster lists and provide access control. The main advantage of this technology is it is low cost to implement and to issue cards. However, the drawbacks of using this technology in safety applications are that it relies on human intervention, only one person can swipe in at a time (leading to possible delays in an emergency), the cards can quickly become worn, dirty and unreliable, and the direction of travel of an individual and his location can only be inferred from the last ‘read’.
RFID
Two types of RFID tag are in common use: Passive and Active. Passive tags operate contactlessly but require close proximity with the reader to be read and can only be read individually. Active RFID tags are different. Containing a battery they support increased functionality such as longer life, increased range, and crucially, provide the ability to read multiple tags at once and, using antenna pairs, determine the direction in which an individual is moving. Active RFID therefore provides perhaps the optimum solution for offshore Oil & Gas applications allowing tags to be read as personnel pass choke-point antennas on the platform, cross bridge links or arrive at muster points.
Ultra Wide Band (UWB)
Providing positional precision to ½ metre, UWB currently offers the best resolution in real-time location awareness.
In use, UWB appears similar to RFID with tags typically worn on a lanyard or chest-pocket.
Functionally UWB operates like Radar; with a network of sensors set up covering an area. UWB can overcome multi-path errors arising from reflected signals.
This technology therefore also works well indoors. Another advantage of UWB is that a person’s location can be monitored in 3D. Coupling this data with appropriate visualisation software can help emergency personnel understand a situation and find a safe route in a crisis. Typical applications for UWB can be found in refineries and compressor station sites.
Global Positioning Systems (GPS)
Most people are familiar with GPS, which provides positional accuracy of around 1 metre, calculated by triangulation using a constellation of satellites and highly accurate timing. However, GPS has limitations. It works well out of doors, but is restricted by tall buildings, dense foliage or when people are inside buildings.
GPS location awareness systems offer the advantage of tracking workers outside of pre-assigned zones. Accordingly GPS could be used to provide enhanced security of personnel on large sites or geographic areas. Consider pipeline workers in remote and troubled regions, where this option could offer peace of mind and a clear starting point for search and recovery, should the worst happen.
Technology Developments
Advances in detectors, antenna designs and protection techniques have increased the reliability, range and performance of RFID systems and, as the option to use computers and wireless technology in hazardous areas has become possible, information from location awareness systems can now be displayed locally on GUIs. Also, developments in electronics mean that circuits can be miniaturised, making equipment more portable and less intrusive.
Figure 4 shows a simplified representation of the Oil & Gas industry from off-shore platform to on-shore distribution and storage. As well as showing the continuum for Oil and Gas production, the sites shown are also, co-incidentally, where location awareness might be required and how it might be applied. What might be needed at each of these sites is shown in Table 1.
Considering each site type reveals the issues of scale that need to be considered. Off-shore, space is at a premium and freedom of personnel movement constrained, so choke-point monitoring across bridges to control POB and at mustering points may suffice. This issue is more complex where location awareness of personnel is required in relation to, say, a main transmission pipeline.
Advantages of electronic location awareness
The primary risks mitigated by location awareness are focused on removing human error and improving the speed and accuracy of information available in real-time. However, as seen above, in an increasingly violent world these systems can also be used to provide enhanced security against piracy, terrorism and even kidnap.
A classic example of the former is Statoil who also recently improved emergency preparedness across its Statfjord facilities. Key aspects they focused on were better ways to register personnel in an evacuation and keep their Emergency Preparedness Management Team fully updated regarding evacuation status in real-time.
Following evaluation of the conventional ‘paper’ based systems, it was realised that room for improvement existed and a sound business case for adopting an Electronic Personnel Registration System (PRS).
Whilst musters could be achieved in line with legislation using conventional techniques, it was clear this could be challenging in a crisis. Statoil & BP wanted to significantly improve on this and the behaviour of people in a crisis by removing, so far as possible, the human variable and risk of ‘human error’ from mustering. In the event of a crisis they wanted to ensure safety was not compromised through failing to properly account for personnel, so that searches for those missing could take place faster whilst preventing the risk of unnecessarily sending rescue teams into a danger zone to find those incorrectly marked as missing through human error. An electronic PRS, not being subject to human error under stress, would ensure reliable real-time data and counts.
Saving Time and Cost
Offshore the old adage that “time is money” is particularly true. As Statoil discovered, investing in safety provides business benefits. Manual ’paper-based’ mustering techniques can be time consuming both to administer and generate post-muster reports. An electronic PRS does this automatically providing measurable benefit in this area, with a full histories stored and reports automatically generated. In addition to providing clear advantages minimising the risk of human error and reducing muster times in a crisis, it was seen that the PRS would also streamline muster drills, reducing the time required to carry out these necessary exercises by over 50% and allowing personnel to get back to work more rapidly thereby reducing lost man-hours.
A further benefit seen was that the PRS could significantly reduce time – and hence lost production costs – associated with getting production up and running again following an ‘emergency muster’ which would mandatorily require all personnel to be fully accounted for before production could resume.
Using this same technology where the situation requires for access control and security can further streamline matters enhancing security and, of course, providing further added value from the existing infrastructure.
Conclusions
Should difficulties arise from either type of emergency, BP will now know in real-time the location of staff on-board their new FPSO and be able to either rapidly muster staff for an emergency evacuation or facility lock-down as required using our eLocator™ and eMuster™ systems. In both situations the ability to make a quick response is essential to ensure personnel safety.
There have been many advances in electronic location awareness in the last decade and they now provide enhanced levels of safety and security for personnel by tracking them between, and within facilities. As mustering systems, they remove the human risk element (as far as possible) and by improving communication lead to an enhanced probability of surviving a disaster or kidnap.
Investing in such technology can also make commercial sense on many levels, by controlling costs, through reducing downtime and lost production resulting from drills or false alarms and, by rapid facility lockdowns or tracking personnel movements to reduce the risk and associated cost of ransom demands. Such systems can also potentially mitigate the risk of litigation in a real incident through being seen to ‘have done the right thing’ and can enhance the ‘brand value’ of a business leading to enhanced shareholder value.
We strongly advise organizations that the best time to plan how you would manage your business in crisis is when you’re not in one. This is particularly important for the Oil & Gas and Energy industries, and perhaps especially so for this in troubled regions, such as Angola, which have to face these additional pressures. The risk of not being prepared to execute a well-planned, integrated response can directly impact on the bottom line of a business and result in damaging consequences to the reputation of the company involved and the industry as a whole. Conversely, well-managed pro-active planning and the appropriate use of location awareness and mustering technology can secure stakeholder confidence and protect your business’s reputation.
This article appeared in Oil Field Technology magazine August 2010
