Mark Green
Abstract
Recent years have seen fundamental changes in the way oil companies operate in the Norwegian sector. Increased data capacity and new technology are considered a means of increasing efficiency, safety and profitability through improved decision making and reduced offshore staffing. This change is blurring the traditional split between offshore and onshore functions and the impact on design and operation of control centres is receiving considerable attention - especially as many new projects and modifications aim to operate the platform either completely, or partially, from land.
The Norwegian Regulators require human factors to be addressed in the design and modification of control rooms, typically using ISO 11064. Changes in operating models will change the scope of the human factors work needed and present human factors practicioners with new challenges.
While the basic functions and tasks of controlling production remain the same, whether the control is from offshore or onshore, many companies want the flexibility either to do both or to hand some aspects of control and operation back and forth. This presents challenges not only in, e.g., process control interfaces and alarm systems, but may also be introducing an overly complex situation for control room operators, who's mental models of 'who controls what and from where' can alter on a daily basis.
This paper will discuss what these challenges are and together with examples show how they are or are not being dealt with in today´s designs.
Profile
Mark Green is cofounder of the Human Factors consultancy company Human Centred Design, and has been working as a Human Factors consultant for 20 years. He has worked internationally across a range of industries including Oil, Nuclear, Aviation, and Process Control, with the aim of ensuring the systematic and user-centred design of technical and organisational systems.
His background and qualifications covers the disciplines of engineering, psychology and human factors. Mr Green received his BSc in Psychology and MSc in Human Factors. For the past 15 years he has lived and worked in Norway.
Over the past 11 years he has lead the work on the design of control rooms and systems for some of Norway’s largest oil and gas developments including a number of oil platforms. He is currently leading the design work on the Control Room and Human Machine Interface for a new oil platform being built for the Norwegian sector.
Human Centred Design
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1784 Halden
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