Maritime Commons attended the 2015 Offshore Technology Conference to provide you with a wrap-up of what was covered by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, or BSEE.

The assistant commandant for U.S. Coast Guard prevention policy, Rear Adm. Paul Thomas, and BSEE director, Brian Salerno, shared the stage on a speaking panel to provide their regulatory stance and joint agency initiatives for offshore safety. The panel was moderated by Charlie Williams, executive director for the Center for Offshore Safety– an industry sponsored organization focused exclusively on offshore safety on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf

For those of you who were unable to attend, Maritime Commons is providing a condensed version of Thomas and Salerno’s remarks in a six-part series. These remarks are not ‘as delivered’ but provide a condensed version of the panel highlights in the ‘panel-conversational’ style.

Risk-based inspections

Brian Salerno:

One of the areas that we’re pursuing within BSEE is risk-based inspections. It’s predicated on the idea that not all companies are the same. Not all operations are the same; some are more complex than others.

There are a number of variables we can look at to provide a sense of the risk-level a company might present. This is useful as a regulator because we don’t necessarily need to spend the same amount of time on every facility or company –not all facilities or companies need the same level of attention. That’s the whole concept behind a risk based approach. We want to spend more of our limited time and resources addressing the most significant risks.

Getting to the core of it, we will look at the extent to which a company is committed to its safety management plan. I know the Center for Offshore Safety has also done a lot in this area, so it’s possible we can come to a common framework for differentiating between those who are truly committed and those who just keep their plan on the shelf.

Salerno and Thomas want to continue the question. You can send your questions to them on Twitter using the #BSEEUSCG or write them here, on Maritime Commons.

In addition to this post, be sure to read the other posts from the 2015 Offshore Technology Conference.

Part 1: Progress since Deepwater Horizon
Part 2: Subsea containment issues
Part 3: Future challenges and opportunities
Part 4: Complexity of operations and cyber
Part 5: Risk-based operations
Part 6: Continuing the offshore safety discussion

This blog is not a replacement or substitute for the formal posting of regulations and updates or existing processes for receiving formal feedback of the same. Links provided on this blog will direct the reader to official source documents, such as the Federal Register, Homeport and the Code of Federal Regulations. These documents remain the official source for regulatory information published by the Coast Guard.