Conducted from 28 September to 4 October 2018, the audit focused on management of the working environment risk and provision for worker participation on Safe Zephyrus.
The Safe Zephyrus mobile accommodation unit is owned and operated by Prosafe. It received an acknowledgement of compliance (AoC) from the PSA in July 2016.
Results
The audit of Safe Zephyrus identified extensive nonconformities related to the working environment. These included management of the working environment, involving such aspects as expertise, mapping and risk assessment, handling nonconformities, experience transfer and improvements.
A number of these nonconformities have been identified earlier at Prosafe.
Nonconformities and improvement point
The audit identified eight nonconformities from the regulatory requirements. These cover the following conditions:
- management of the working environment
- expertise and clarification of responsibilities
- noise injurious to hearing
- chemical health risk
- work-related musculoskeletal disorders
- the working environment committee (AMU) and safety delegate service
- provision for collaboration between company medical services
- the psychosocial working environment.
Furthermore, an improvement point was identified. This concerned ergonomic risk assessments.
Order
Pursuant to section 69 of the framework regulations on administrative decisions, see sections 6. 14, 18, 22 and 23 of the management regulations on management of health, safety and the environment, on manning and competence, on working environment analysis, on handling of nonconformities and on continuous improvement respectively, Prosafe is ordered to do the following.
1. Review the company’s management system for the working environment with associated work processes which are intended among other things to ensure expertise, mapping, risk assessments, correction of errors and deficiencies, and improvement. This work must include an analysis of why deficiencies associated with management of the working environment have not been identified and corrected on Safe Zephyrus.
2. Implement necessary improvement measures on Safe Zephyrus.
3. Ensure that results and lessons learnt (as a result of items 1 and 2) also cover other facilities with an AoC which come under Prosafe’s area of responsibility in Norway.
A scheduled plan for complying with the audit must be submitted to the PSA no later than 31 January 2019. The plan must describe how this work is to be carried out and followed up, and when the order will be complied with.
Explanation of the terms “order” and “notice of order”
An order is an administrative decision made pursuant to the regulations. Before the PSA issues an order, it generally sends a "notice of order" to the affected companies.
A notice of order is neither an instrument nor a notice of sanctions, but a step in the PSA’s administrative process in which it requests the party to assess the factual basis. The notice is only a first step before an administrative decision is made.
An order is a strongly preventive instrument which is legally binding on the recipient.