Winter exposes the market to the cold, hard reality of Drops

Mike Rice, Dropsafe Commercial Director

Here we are in October 2020 – and for many key markets around the world, that signals harsher weather. There’s now a concerted effort to deliver crucial maintenance and upgrades before winter starts in earnest and logistics – on and offshore – become significantly more challenging. Having seen project schedules affected by the pandemic, this winter may be one of the busiest yet as critical industries look to take advantage of all available weather windows.

For offshore operators in the North Sea and Atlantic, winter brings sub-zero temperatures, heavy rains, and strong storms. Firms must heighten their vigilance against the risks this poses to safety. For example, Dropped Objects (Drops) risks typically rise in winter, increasing exposure to incidents affecting personnel, assets, finances, and reputation.

High winds batter structures and raise vibration levels, while disrupting cargo handling and increasing the likelihood of impacts. Tools and loose items fall more frequently due to harsh environmental conditions or other cold-weather factors.

To tackle these risks and ensure that operations continue safely throughout the winter months, it is crucial for companies to adopt a holistic Drops prevention programme. This includes training to identify risks and instill a culture of Drops awareness throughout the entire organization, communication between operators to share incident data, and ensuring that priority risk areas are protected by best practice Drops prevention solutions.

In this edition of the newsletter (which you can sign up to here), we focus on South East Asia, sharing a Dropsafe article featured in Oilfield Technology that outlines how the key challenges for companies operating in the region can be turned into opportunities.

We also share a question and answer session with Jonathan Chia, Business Development Manager at our Malaysian distributor Daya Singa. We sat down with Jonathan to discuss the current state of Drops prevention in South East Asia, and the history of collaboration between Daya Singa and Dropsafe.

Additionally, we include some exciting news about our new partnerships in global markets, looking at our distributor deals in the Caribbean with Jaguar Oilfield Services Guyana and Target Solutions Limited in Trinidad – and in Europe with Real Safety.

As ever, we’d love to hear from you about your challenges and successes implementing Drops prevention strategies. Please do feel free to get in touch with feedback or questions.

Enjoy the edition.

Mike Rice

Commercial Director, Dropsafe