Safety and Reliability: Methodology and Applications – Nowakowski et al.

(Eds)
© 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-02681-0

Developing a shared information surface for offshore work permits

S. Sarshar & G. Rindahl

Institute for Energy Technology, Center for Integrated Operations in the Petroleum Industry, Norway

C.S. Olsen, J.M. Røsok, M. Eskerud, O.G. Nedrebø, P.J. Berg & G. Misund
Østfold University College, Norway

ABSTRACT:  The work permit process offshore is established to maintain control of which activities
that are to be carried out on the installation and to manage their risk. This paper reports on the develop-
ment of a shared information surface which can support the assessment of work permits. Findings from
an initial usability study are provided.

1  introduction activities and what the participants understand to

A field study was conducted on an offshore instal-
lation with the aim of studying communication of
risk in the planning process and how technology
can better support mediation of this through the
planning process. The aspects of risk communica-
tion and management in the offshore work permit
system are reported in (Sarshar et  al., 2013) while
this paper reports on one application of the technol-
ogy aspects. The question is what information and
knowledge do we recommend to depict on a shared
surface to provide situation awareness at a glance.
This paper reports on the development of a concept
for providing overview of ongoing and planned
maintenance activities at an installation, based on
learnings from observations and interviews (Skjerve
et  al., 2011, Sarshar et  al., 2013) with personnel
involved in assessment of offshore work permits.
Integrated Operation (IO) in the petroleum
industry has for many years included distributed col-
laboration as a key support capability. The technol-
ogies used to enable distributed collaboration, e.g.
between onshore and offshore, have evolved from
phone calls and teleconference to video conferenc-
ing rooms, to desktop solutions and lately towards
more mobile solutions (Sarshar & Rindahl, 2014).
As described by Kaarstad and Rindahl (2011) IO
can improve access to information and provide a
shared awareness in decision-making. One impor-
tant feature is the increased availability of real-time
data that makes it possible for personnel at differ-
ent locations to cooperate based on a shared and
up-to-date description of the operational situation.
Another important enabler of improved decision-
making in IO is a shared collaboration surface.
A shared collaboration surface can provide a com-
mon and coherent representation of goals and
be the agreed decision. Further, using such a collab-
oration surface, the participants can give their con-
firmation of the understanding of the decision, and
it can be saved for future reference. This increases
understanding and commitment within the team,
and significantly reduces the risk of later, possibly
wrong or vague, interpretations.
Chapter  2 describes in brief the work permit
system followed by previous work in chapter  3.
The method and approach for the development
is described in chapter  4. Chapter  5 describes
the interactive surface developed and chapter  6
describes the initial usability study of the tool.
Chapter  7 discusses the results from the usability
study before conclusions are made in chapter 8.
2 the work permiT system
Planning of offshore activities can be divided in dif-
ferent time horizons: a main plan has the horizon
of several years, a yearly plan spans for one year,
operational plan for three months, work order plan
for one or two weeks and work permit plan which
has the horizon for the next 24 hours.
The work permit system is established to maintain
control of which activities are to be carried out on
the installation and to manage their risk. Activities
that typically require a work permit is maintenance
work be it on the process equipment, pipes or struc-
ture of the platform. There are two main catego-
ries; corrective or preventive maintenance. Work
permits are divided in two levels to differentiate
between their impacts on risk. High-risk jobs which
e.g. require welding are of level 1 while lower risk
jobs are of level 2. Jobs that have been identified
as no risk activities do not require a work permit

663
and typically include jobs inside the living quarter,
in office spaces or in workshops. We limit our scope
to tasks that require a work permit.
There are several technical disciplines offshore
including process technicians, instrument tech-
nicians, electrical technicians and mechanical
technicians. Each discipline goes through the work
orders which they are responsible for and divide
the task through the week with respect to their pri-
ority and available resources.
A work order describes a job package and can
normally be divided into subtasks that can be car-
ried out in sequence. Before any of these can be
performed, the personnel that shall execute a task
must apply for a work permit. The work permit
system is established to ensure scrutiny of factors
related to HSE (Health, Safety and Environment)
before job execution. The work permit for each
task is discussed between representatives from the
various disciplines in plenum and the job descrip-
tion and related safety measures are evaluated.
Examples of such are safety equipment needed to
perform the job safely. A general work permit flow
is described in (NOG, 2006). After job execution,
the job responsible logs feedback from the execu-
tion and closes the job in the maintenance manage-
ment system.
Figure 1.  The 2nd version of the IO-MAP tool (Braseth & Sarshar, 2012).
664
The management systems for work orders
and work permits are typically specialized enter-
prise resource planning ICT tools, like SAP
ERP. These are good at managing data related
to these activities, but are not normally regarded
as best in human-interaction in terms of sup-
porting decision making and providing a good
overview.
3  The IO-MAP PRototype
The IO-MAP prototype tool (Skjerve et al., 2011)
was developed to explore how future technology
could enhance collaboration between distributed
teams, e.g. onshore and offshore. It was developed
to visualize work permits and potential associ-
ated risk related to HSE using a graphical map
representation. The work permits were given a
geographical location and displayed in a map view.
The usability study from this prototype shows that
there is a huge potential in visualizing and present-
ing information this way. The project reported on
in this paper makes use of learnings from the IO-
MAP development and design (Braseth & Sarshar,
2012). Figure  1 illustrates the 2nd version of the
IO-MAP tool.
4  Method
4.1  Design rationale
The focus of the design process was to create a large
collaborative touch surface, which facilitated easier
collaboration and discussion between technicians
offshore. Design choices were therefore made on the
background of creating a clear visualization of the
current activity level on the installation to improve
the decision making process. The design also aimed
to create a means for accumulating different obser-
vations from different planners, further encouraging
a discussion regarding the planned work permits.
4.2  Iterative process
The prototype’s design was created through an
iterative process consisting of several workshops.
On two occasions expert evaluations with different
interaction designers were conducted. The design
phase spanned a total of eight iterations, where
each workshop or expert evaluation resulted in a
new iteration. After the final iteration, the result-
ing design was implemented in a high fidelity
prototype.
4.3  Implementation
The design was implemented using various web
technologies, namely JavaScript, SVG, and PHP.
The architecture is based on traditional client-server
Figure 2.  The interactive surface (HIØ, 2013).
665
architecture, with a database and client-side scripts
on the server side, and scripting on the client-side to
handle touch events, changes to the user interface,
and calls to the server. The prototype was organ-
ized into six modules: Map, legend, activities, news,
weather and info. The map module contains an
SVG map of a selected deck, and shows activities
based on location. Each activity on the map listens
to touch events that trigger an “information box”
to show and display information about the selected
activity. The activity module is implemented as a
bar chart using the JavaScript library d3.js, and
based on a sorting algorithm that decides the plac-
ing of the different activities.
5 the interactive surface
The interface design was based on a literature
research on visualization and interaction design.
Additionally, the design choices relied on IFE’s
(Institute for Energy Technology, Halden) exper-
tise and experience with designing user interfaces
for industrial control rooms. The design of the
IO-MAP tool is the closest project to ours. While
the focus when developing the IO-MAP tool was
on the planners onshore, the tool developed here
focuses on work permits planned to be carried out
or under execution on current day.
The developed interactive surface is illustrated
in Figure 2. The color scheme of the prototype is
muted, and strongly influenced by the IO-MAP
prototype. The muted background without hard
lines or borders is based on the design principles
of Edward Tufte (Tufte, 1990), a design choice also
used in several other interfaces created at IFE.
A grey color scheme was used for text and bor-
ders in order to avoid hard lines. Additionally,
strong colors were avoided, and used deliberately
only for warnings and potential hazards.
To maintain a user-friendly interface, the
Schneiderman’s principles (Schneiderman &
­Plaisant, 2010) were applied. The principle of con-
sistency was maintained by using the same selection
type for the corresponding elements in the prototype.
Example of this is selection of decks where selected
thumbnails in the map module were marked by a
grey frame. Furthermore, active work permits on
the map and selected work permits in the graph or
map were marked by the same white border.
The prototype consists of six modules: legend,
activity, info, weather, news and map. The map
module presents the deck of an offshore installa-
tion. Thumbnails representing other decks in the
installation can be used to change the deck dis-
played in the map module. An additional feature
provided by the map module is the possibility to
zoom in on the selected map. When zoomed in one
or more levels, the map offers a more detailed view
of the deck, displaying smaller equipment not pre-
sented in the previous zoom level. When zoomed
in, the map can also be “panned” using a drag
gesture. In order to maintain overview of the plat-
form, changing deck while zoomed in will retain
the zoom and pan placement of the map. This way,
looking for dangers in the levels above or below an
activity is easier and encouraged.
Work permits are classified using three different
colors. Level 1 work permits are colored yellow,
and work permits involving hot work are colored
red. Level 2 work permits are colored blue. Work
permits involving hazards will display warnings in
form of a yellow triangle next to the circled work
permit on the map. Activities, which are scheduled
but not started, are visualized as unfilled circles.
When a job is started, the circle is filled using the
corresponding color. By selecting an activity on
the map using the tap gesture, the information box
module is invoked.
The information box module contains informa-
tion regarding the highlighted activity, in the form
of a transparent pop-up box. The information dis-
played is: Work Permit ID, Equipment ID, Work
Permit Level, start and end times, a textual descrip-
tion of the work permit, a hot work tag, discipline
tag and a hazard description. This box provides
contextual information regarding the selected work
permit and is displayed both when interacting with
the map module, as well as the activity module.
666
The activity module consists of work permits of
all types visualized as bars. Each work permit bar
has a start and stop time which is extracted from a
database. The work permits are placed in the graph
using a simple algorithm, sorting the jobs by length
and work permit type. The work permits, which
are not currently active, are displayed as grey.
A currently active work permit is displayed using
its corresponding color. These colors are explained
in the legend module.
Furthermore, the legend module explains the
color codes of the different map zones such as
“laydown area” as well as a count of currently
active and scheduled work permits. The legend
allows for filtering both active and scheduled work
permits by discipline such as “Mechanical” and
“Electrical”. These filters could help different plan-
ners focus on their discipline and its interaction
with others, as they have different backgrounds,
experiences and concerns when conducting their
planning. This filtering also affects the count of
current jobs, in order to allow the users to quickly
assess the current activity level on the platform for
the chosen discipline. As a final functionality, the
map can also be edited to different map classifica-
tions, highlighting noise levels, escape routes or the
default view presenting the different classification
zones of the deck.
The weather module provides the information
surface with valuable condition information such
as wind force and direction as well as wave and cur-
rent direction. This weather info may be relevant
to leaders and technicians before the work per-
mit is initiated. This module along with the news
module works in isolation from the other modules,
but serves the surface in providing a better over-
view of the platform. The news module displays
announcements and news, which may be relevant
to the execution of planned work permits.
6  usability study
The functional prototype was evaluated in a usabil-
ity test, by two participant groups. The first group
was students with previous IO backgrounds, and
the second group was employees at IFE with rel-
evant experience the field of IO or the petroleum
industry. The participants were not actual end
users.
The main purpose of the usability test was to
assess to what extent the prototype facilitates a
group of users to perceive an overview of the
activity level on a petroleum installation. Another
focus of the evaluation was to appraise if the pro-
totype visualizes risk and concurrency conflicts.
A final aspiration was to evaluate if the prototype
can be useful as a tool for a group of people to
collaborate and discuss the plan and ongoing
activities. The usability test was conducted at IFE’s
Future Laboratory, see Figure  3. Previously, the
prototype was prepared and tested to be working
on a large touch surface in the Future Laboratory.
Although, not all planned features were ready for
testing core functionality was implemented. At the
time of testing, area selection, equipment selection
and the weather module was not implemented, and
therefore not tested in the scenarios.
Zooming on the map for greater detail was
implemented, however, as there were issues with
this functionality; this was also omitted from the
scenarios.
The usability test consisted of five phases:
Introduction, training session, scenarios, question-
naire and interview. In the introduction the par-
ticipants were provided a small introduction of the
evaluation and the prototype, and were then asked
to sign a form of consent. In order to prepare the
users for the prototype, there was a small training
session in which the users were trained in the func-
tionality of the prototype. A technical assistant was
the tutor for this session, and helped the partici-
pants navigate and understand the functionality of
Figure 3. Illustration of the interactive surface in use on a large touch screen at IFE’s Future Laboratory.
667
the prototype. Following the training session, each
participant was assigned a fictive role for the sce-
narios. These roles were based on actual job descrip-
tions for onshore and offshore personnel. Each role
had different goals and responsibilities to keep in
mind during the testing. The roles included:
• Platform Manager
• Health, Safety and Environment Manager
• Maintenance and Operation Manager
• Leader of Mechanical technicians
• Leader of Electrical technicians
The scenarios were created to be as realistic as
possible, and were designed to enable the users to
test all the functionality in the prototype. There
were a total of six scenarios. The scenarios were
created to explore different possibilities of using
the prototype to evaluate the work permits of the
day plan. The intent of the scenarios was also to
find potential conflicting activities, consequences
of delayed activities or possible hazards. As each
participant had his or her own goals concerning
their role, the user test format facilitated discussion
surrounding the scenarios. In order to facilitate dis-
cussion, the scenarios were made to be approved
by one point of view, but not another. In addition Table 2. IFE employee’s results.
to the scenarios, there were hidden conflicting
work permits and problems in the schedule. These Question no Avg Min Max SD
“Easter eggs” were hazards, which would cause
Scenario evaluation
problems in carrying out the planned activities. 1 3.33 4 5 0.58
After the participants had completed the dif- 2 2.66 2 6 1.15
ferent scenarios, they were asked to fill out a 3 4 3 6 1.73
questionnaire. The questionnaire was based on 4.1 2.66 2 4 1.15
a questionnaire previously used in the usabil- 4.2 2 1 3 1
ity study to evaluate the IO-MAP (Skjerve et  al., 4.3 4 4 4 0
2011). The questionnaire was divided in three
parts: participant’s background, information— Prototype evaluation
and risk visualization, and usability. The usability 1 3.33 1 7 3.21
test was concluded with a semi-structured group 2 5.66 5 7 1.15
interview, designed to gain further understanding 3 3 2 4 1
4 5.66 4 7 1.58
of the participant’s experience of the prototype,
5 2.33 2 3 0.58
and to facilitate a group discussion concerning the
6 5.66 4 7 1.53
scenarios and the prototype. Most of the questions
7 1.66 1 3 1.15
in the interview were intended to give an answer to
8 4.33 3 6 1.53
whether or not the prototype fulfilled the research
9 2 1 3 1
questions. Additional questions were based on 10 6.33 6 7 0.58
observations from the solving of the scenarios. 11 1.66 1 2 0.58

7 results
is ­positive, and the other negative. All statements
The results from the questionnaire are displayed are ranged from the scale of 1 (strongly disagree)
in Table  1 and Table  2, which are divided in two to 7 (strongly agree).
parts. The first part concerns the scenarios; how
easily they could identify risk, and how well the
prototype visualized information. The other 7.1  Interviews
part consists of statements based on the System What was your overall impression of the prototype?
­Usability Scale (SUS), where every other statement The participants agreed that the overall impression
was good. It was stated by one of the participants
that the prototype was intuitive and pleasant to use.
Table 1.  Student group results. Another participant stated that “The prototype is a
great discussion tool for gathering different domain
Question no Avg Min Max SD knowledge in a group”, and argued that this was
Scenario evaluation
probably the greatest strength of the prototype.
1 3.33 4 5 0.58
What do you feel worked well? What did not work
2 2.66 2 6 1.15 well? Why? The option to filter on disciplines was
3 4 3 6 1.73 regarded as a very useful function, and the fact
4.1 2.66 2 4 1.15 that all information was displayed in one page
4.2 2 1 3 1 was considered to be good, as it was easy to get
4.3 4 4 4 0 an overview of the situation without navigating to
different pages. The prototype received negative
Prototype evaluation feedback in regards to responsiveness, and the par-
1 3.33 1 7 3.21 ticipants felt the hardware did not respond well to
2 5.66 5 7 1.15 the touch gestures. Regarding visualization, it was
3 3 2 4 1
suggested to add arrows to escape routes. Some
4 5.66 4 7 1.58
participants also felt that it was difficult to locate
5 2.33 2 3 0.58
a specific activity, and suggested adding an ID in
6 5.66 4 7 1.53
addition to the circle representing an activity.
7 1.66 1 3 1.15
8 4.33 3 6 1.53
What were your thoughts on solving the different
9 2 1 3 1
scenarios? The participants thought the task of
10 6.33 6 7 0.58 solving the scenarios went very good, some also
11 1.66 1 2 0.58 said it was fun. The only scenario they agreed were
troublesome was the one where they had to find an

668
activity with the only information given was the ID
and the discipline.
Were some of the scenarios more difficult to solve
than others? One of the groups had trouble with
the scenario where they had to find an activity with
crane work that could not be executed while the
helicopter was on deck. They explained that they
did not know about the expression “laydown-area”,
which was the clue to discovering this hazard.
How was it working collaboratively on the proto-
type? Several of the participants felt that this was
one of the strengths of the prototype, while one
of participant mentioned that while it was good
for discussion, simultaneous interaction was not
possible.
Do you have any suggestions for improving the
prototype? Many of the suggestions for improve-
ment were mentioned earlier in the interview, such
as adding IDs to the activities, and adding arrows
to the escape routes. Other improvements that had
been mentioned earlier were adding crane activities
as a discipline, and being able to drag the timeline
to a different time, or rearranging the activities.
Other suggestions were to visualize the number of
workers for each activity, and to display an indica-
tion of the duration of an activity on the map.
8 conclusions and further work
The primary objective of the project was to cre-
ate a prototype of a collaborative interactive sur-
face intended to facilitate discussions concerning
the day plan, and to give a clear visualization of the
amount of activities on a petroleum installation.
Based on the results from the initial usability tests
we can conclude that the prototype has achieved
the objectives of displaying a clear overview of the
activity level, and facilitated a group to collaborate
and discuss the day plan. The reason why the proto-
type could accommodate for such behavior is that
an interactive surface which gives a clear visualiza-
tion of the activities—their location and the sur-
rounding circumstances—allows for more accurate
discussion than without the use of visualization.
Consequently it is easier for the individuals within
the group to imagine the impact of each activ-
ity, and share this observation with the rest of
the group. By gathering these individuals in front
of the interactive surface it is likely that they will
identify more potential hazards, errors and incon-
sistencies of the day plan than they would alone,
or without the use of the tool. The systems they
have available today are mostly one user desktop
669
software solutions which do not support groups
collaborating.
Further work include to test the tool with off-
shore personnel and other end users to get input
for improvements and to better understand the
overall objective of how technology can better
mediate risk communication in IO.
acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the Center for Integrated
Operations in the Petroleum Industry and the
partners involved in this research.
References
Braseth. A.O. & Sarshar, S. 2012. Improving Oil &
Gas Installation Safety Through Visualization of
Risk Factors, in Proc. of the SPE Intelligent Energy
International, March 27–29, Utrecht, The Netherlands,
2012.
Kaarstad, M. & Rindahl, G. 2011. Shared Collaboration
Surfaces to Support Adequate Team Decision
Processes in an Integrated Operations Setting. In Proc.
of the ESREL 2011 Conference, Troyes, France, 18th-
22nd Sept. 2001. Advances in safety, reliability and
risk management/Bérenguer, Grall & Guedes Soares
(eds.). CRC Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-415-68379-1.
Norwegian Oil and Gas Association (NOG) 2006.
Recommended Guidelines for Common Model for Work
Permits (WP), rev. 2, 2006.
Østfold University College (HIØ), 2013. Online: http://
www.it-stud.hiof.no/h13d28.
Sarshar, S., Skjerve, A.B. & Haugen, S. 2013. Towards an
understanding of information needed when planning
offshore activities. In Proc. of Risk, Reliability and
Societal Safety, ESREL 2013, September 29th–­
October 2nd, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2013.
Sarshar, S. & Rindahl, G.: Integrated Operation
­Collaboration Technologies—Remaining Challenges
and Opportunities. In Proc. of the SPE Intelligent
Energy Conference and Exhibition held in Utrecht,
The Netherlands, 1–3 April 2014.
Schneiderman, B., & Plaisant, C. 2010. Designing the
User Interface. (M. Hirsch & S. Sellinger, Eds.)
(5th ed.). Pearson.
Skjerve, A.B., Sarshar, S., Rindahl, G., Braseth, A.O.,
Randem, H.O., Falmyr, O., Sand, T., & Tveiten, C.K.
2011. The Integrated Operations Maintenance and
Modification Planner (IO-MAP): The first ­usability
evaluation—study and first findings, Center for
­Integrated Operations in the Petroleum Industry,
Project 4.1: Future Collaboration Environments,
­Halden, Norway, 2011.
Tufte, E.R. 1990. Envisioning Information. Graphics Pr.
p. 82–83.