Diving Industry Injuries Drop to New Low
Lost time injury frequency rates (LTIFR) have dropped to the lowest figure since the International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA) started producing statistics.
The organization has just produced two sets of statistics – ‘Safety and Environment Statistics for IMCA Members (1 January -31 December 2013)’ and ‘World-wide Diving Personnel Statistics for IMCA Members (2012)’.
“Safety and environment statistics are a useful insight into the performance of a company and industry sector in the areas of health, safety and environment,” explains IMCA’s technical director, Jane Bugler. “And our diving statistic aim to give a global snapshot of how many people are active in the industry on three specific dates in the year.”
“The purpose of our safety and environment statistics, produced on an annual basis and covering fatalities, injuries and environmental indicators supplied by contractor members, is to record the safety and environment performance each year, and to enable IMCA members to benchmark their performances. This year a record number of companies took part in the survey which is based on over 1300 million man-hours of work overall.
“The main injury/incident figures continue to ‘flatline’ or improve only slowly,” she explains. “I am glad to report that there were fewer fatalities (9) in 2013 than in 2012 (14). Lost time incidents (LTIs) remain broadly constant.”
The highest number of LTI’s was caused by being struck by moving/falling objects (23 percent), falls on the same level (including slips and trips) accounted for 20 percent of LTIs; ‘struck against’ for 13 percent; falls from height 10 percent; muscle stress and repetitive movement accounted for 5 percent; entrapment for 4 percent, contact/exposure to heat/cold 2 percent; and both contact/exposure with hazardous substance and contact with electricity accounted for 1 percent of LTIs.
“Unfortunately there has been an increase in the number of LTIs reported without an immediate cause, which accounted for 21 percent of incidents, we will be urging our members to give more detail in future years. All facts and figures we receive are anonymized”
The statistics for 2013 were provided by a record number of 245 companies and organizations representing around 67 percent of the contractor membership. Fifty-nine contractors took part for the first time, but 35 contractors that took part in the 2012 exercise did not do so this year; the number of very large contractors (more than 30,000 employees based on man-hours) taking part continues to increase, from one last year, to four this year.
The 2013 dataset is based upon 1301 million man-hours of work overall (1008 million man-hours offshore) – again a record. Onshore data was provided by 191 of the 245 companies (78 percent); and environmental data was provided by 47 percent of members. IMCA uses one million, rather than 200,000 man-hours, as a basis for the calculation of lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) and total recordable injury frequency rate (TRIR). The offshore LTIFR for 2013 has improved to 0.35 from 0.57 in 2012, and the overall LTIFR has improved from 0.51 in 2012 to 0.37 this year – both figures are the lowest since IMCA began collecting data.
“The safety statistics recorded by IMCA members are consistent with those of other main global industry associations the International Association of oil & Gas Producers (OGP) and the International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC),” explains Bugler.
Environmental data
This is the second year that IMCA has collected information from contractor members on their environmental performance. The information sought has been broadly based on IMCA SEL 010 – Guidelines for the use of environmental performance indicators, so covers: number of spills and amount spilt; bunkers used (by volume or by weight); electricity consumed onshore; and non-hazardous and hazardous waste generated.
“As this is only the second year in which we have collected environmental data it is difficult to identify any trends,” explains Bugler. “We have now established a firm foundation for future years and will then be able to plot specific trends.”
Picture Credit: Alex Anderson