(The audit report was first published on 18 May 2020. The order was notified on 15 July 2020 and issued on 28 July 2020.)

The audit was conducted from 4-17 March 2020.

Objective

The objective of the audit was to verify that Floatel’s management of working environment risk accorded with the regulatory requirements, while also verifying the company’s follow-up of nonconformities identified by earlier audits related to the working environment.

Result

A total of five nonconformities were identified by the audit, together with an improvement point.

The nonconformities related to:

  • management of the working environment
  • follow-up of the psychosocial working environment
  • management of ergonomic aspects
  • measures after mapping the physical and chemical working environment
  • the working environment committee (AMU) and worker participation.

The improvement point related to:

  • working environment expertise for personnel with special responsibility for following up chemicals.

Follow-up of earlier nonconformities

The PSA’s audit also investigated how Floatel had dealt with selected nonconformities identified earlier.

This established that the company had not dealt with the following nonconformities in line with earlier feedback to the PSA:

  • nonconformity on “management and follow-up of working environment risk” from section 5.1.1 in the audit report of 25 June 2019
  • nonconformity on “working environment committee” from section 5.1.2 in the audit report of 25 June 2019
  • nonconformity on “worker participation” from section 5.1.3 in the audit report of 25 June 2019.

Order

The PSA forwarded its audit report to Floatel on 6 May and requested an explanation of how the nonconformities would be dealt with and an assessment of the improvement point observed. A deadline of 5 June 2020 was set for the company’s response.

Following an inadequate response to the report, the company was called to a meeting on 23 June 2020.

Given the level of seriousness of the identified regulatory breaches and Floatel’s responses to the report and in the meeting respectively, Floatel are hereby given of the following order.

Pursuant to section 69 of the framework regulations on administrative decisions, see sections 6 and 18 of the management regulations on management of health, safety and the environment and on working environment analysis respectively, Floatel International is ordered to do the following.

  1. Review the company’s management system for the working environment with associated work processes intended among other objectives to ensure competence, mapping, risk assessment, correction of faults and deficiencies, and improvement. This work must include an analysis of why deficiencies related to managing the working environment have not been identified and corrected.
  2. Implement the necessary measures on Floatel Endurance.
  3. Ensure that results and lessons learnt (as a consequence of items 1 and 2) are also applied to other facilities with an AoC subject to Floatel International’s area of responsibility in Norway.

A scheduled plan for complying with the order must be submitted to the PSA no later than 18 September. The plan must specify how this work will be carried out and followed up, and when the order will be complied with. The PSA must be informed when the order has been complied with.