Self-Regulating Organizations

When I think about "self-regulating organizations" I think of my own organization and those like it and the umbrella organization/system that we all adhere to. 

In the late 1980's there were several severe and devastating accidents in our industry that necessitated and showed that our industry needed better safety systems and training, especially the Phillips explosion in Pasadena. These accidents led to the creation of our organization, a non-profit, contractor training group whose mission is providing training for contractors. 

About the same time ARSC (Association of Reciprocal Safety Councils) was created to allow for standards of contractor training for all safety councils. This allows the refinery owners to propose standards that ARSC tries to fulfill through the safety councils. As new dangers are identified, the system adjusts and regulates the training standards to ensure the the contract workers are trained appropriately and workers are kept safe. 

One thing we see is that the bureaucracy that makes up ARSC is too slow to innovate and adopt to the changing nature, and effective and engaging training capabilities that are coming into the market. Instead of finding new ways to innovate and create effect training, ARSC has become an anchor that stops innovation. In some ways this is good in that they are ensuring standardization. In others they are slowing progress and making it harder to provide quality training. It reminds me of last weeks discussion on red-tape in bureaucracy. 

Regardless, ARSC, the non-profit safety councils, and the refineries have creating a self-regulating system that tries to stay in front of government regulation and ensure that safety training is provided and workers are kept as safe as possible. Although accidents still happen, and their is still more work to do to keep contractors, workers, and communities safe, this system of self-regulating organizations has taken safety training a long way toward a safer environment than what we see in many other industries, and since the late 1980's.

What we also see are other non-profit association with tangential connections to these safety councils that will spring up to enforce standards. One that is nascent in our industry and trying to create standards is the Water Jet Technology Association. They are creating standards of safety that refineries can enforce, and that contractors must train up to, to help ensure safety training standards are met for dangerous water blasting work within refineries and petrochemical plants. Just a few years into their mission they've already started to make inroads into what before was a hodge-podge mix of different standards within contracting groups.