The AS2885 approach to pipeline safety management (the “SMS”, the safety management study and its associated facilitated workshops) uses a tried-and-true methodology of focussing on cause-and-control. 

As a facilitator of the SMS workshops, I constantly ask people to think about why the pipeline would fail, what caused it, what is the failure mode. 

Because if we’ve identified failure modes, we can then design controls against those causes, and test whether the controls are effective. 

Simply saying ‘the pipeline is risky’ doesn’t do it for me (and spoiler alert: the risks can be managed.  Australia has never had a fatality related to a pipeline failure, ever).  And that simpe thinking (pipelines are risky) doesn’t help engineers solve it at all. 

I love the tangibility of Australia’s SMS approach: the realness of talking about actual failure modes, actual ways that the pipeline might leak or rupture.  Once we can define clearly the failure modes, then we’re in a better position to prevent them.

This week I’ve spent a terrific couple of days in the atmosphere of AS2885 SMS workshops.  On one day, I delivered a training course about SMS workshops to a fantastic group of about 18 pipeliners who were engaged, questioning, challenging and receptive to the content.  I was entirely fired up after that day, knowing that the industry is in good hands.

Then the next day, I facilitated one of those SMS Workshops for a pipeline, and that involved another set of about 15 pipeliners, and we talked about an actual pipeline and the actual possibilities of threats the pipeline might face, and how we were going to design in controls that work to prevent those threats from becoming hazards/incidents/failures. 

I thoroughly enjoyed both days – one teaching, one facilitating.

I’m also now thinking about the role of the Facilitator into the future, as the industry possibly adopts the usage of more AI in the meeting room with us. 

And so my question is to the users of facilitators out there:  what do you want in the Facilitator?  I’m wondering if we need to develop standardised approaches to the role, for AS2885 workshops, or more standardised reporting requirements.  Do we encourage the use of AI to summarise recorded meetings? 

If you hire facilitators for AS2885 workshops, and have thoughts about this, I’m interested. Contact me and let’s discuss.