Shift Handover After Buncefield

Abstract

Post Piper Alpha, failures in shift communication, including shift handover, continue to be a significant contributor to industrial major accidents worldwide and are now increasingly recognised as critical in other domains such as patient safety. This paper uses the Buncefield oil storage depot explosion and fires as an exemplar incident, briefly reviews the current state of knowledge on handover against on and offshore major hazard sector needs and compares the two sectors’ needs. The review concludes that there has been little new original research on handover, although there has been some application to new domains such as patient safety. Going forward, the paper identifies the main gap for the on and offshore major hazard industries as being the application of existing knowledge about good practice in handover, and not in the underlying research. There is also an over-focus on shift-to-shift handover specifically and not on wider - but equally critical – within-shift and shift/days or shift/management communication issues. Finally, recommendations are made for the way forward for both the on and offshore sectors.