Researchers from the University of Houston, Lamar University, and the American Bureau of Shipping, have been awarded $1,440,330 through the National Academies of Sciences Engineering Medicine Gulf Research Program. The project is one of eight winners of the Gulf research Program’s Safer Offshore Energy Systems (SOES) grants.
The team members have a long history of successful collaboration on maritime and offshore safety research, including principal investigator, Weihang Zhu, associate professor, mechanical engineering technology at the University of Houston College of Technology, along with colleagues from Lamar University, Brian Craig, dean of the College of Engineering and James Curry, associate professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering. They are working in partnership with project director, Kevin McSweeney, manager of advanced technology & research-human factors at the American Bureau of Shipping.
The project, “Developing an Integrated Offshore Energy Industry Safety Culture Evaluation, Benchmarking, and Improvement Toolbox,” is designed to improve the offshore industry’s understanding of the social and organizational factors that foster performance enhancements in routine safety measures and emergencies. The team will develop a safety culture evaluation toolkit and data analysis methods that the offshore energy industry will use to evaluate and define the actions required to improve organizational safety culture, reduce unsafe behaviors, improve individual performance, and reduce management system failures, near misses, and accidents.