Risk and impact in marine ops – IMCA's safety and environment seminar heads to Rio

Published on 7 January 2012

The 2012 International Marine Contractors Association’s (IMCA) Safety and Environment Seminar, with its theme ‘Risk and impact in marine operations’ (Rio de Janeiro; 21-22 March) will focus to a large extent on process safety/asset integrity challenges in marine construction.

“It is a new step to move slightly away from occupational health risks and look at the impact of high risk / low probability issues – we believe the time is right for this sort of content in this annual event,” says IMCA’s Chief Executive, Hugh Williams. “We are, however, not totally ignoring occupational health as the presentation ‘Workforce involvement – the story of NINA (no injuries, no accidents)’ attests. The March event will look at the situation globally, but also home in on Brazilian activities – eight of our speakers are from Brazil and we will have Portuguese-English and English-Portuguese simultaneous translation.”

There will be keynote presentations from Raphael Neves Moura of the Brazilian regulator ANP, who will address the seminar’s theme; and Jane Cutler, CEO of the Australian oil and gas regulator NOPSA who will speak on ‘Design a facility rather than build a vessel’.

The programme also includes presentations on the legal consequences of a Macondo-style accident happening in Brazil, environmental compliance in Brazil, human reliability applied in emergency evacuation and management systems, and barrier failure root causes. The seminar is endorsed by IBP (Instituto Brasileiro de Petróleo).

As well as presentations, the seminar will include sessions on learning from incidents and round table discussions. And, as has become traditional it will feature a safety share fair. Delegates will be encouraged to bring a display of their company’s safety promotional materials to the event, enabling those present to review and discuss successful safety initiatives with each other.

Networking always plays a key role at IMCA events – there will be a registration drinks reception on 20 March between 18.00 and 21.00hrs and a seminar dinner on 21 March.

Further information on the Seminar and on membership of the association is available at www.imca-int.com; and from IMCA at 52 Grosvenor Gardens, London SW1W 0AU, UK. Tel: +44 (0)20 7824 5520; Fax: +44 (0)20 7824 5521; [email protected] and [email protected].