Monthly Reflections April 2026
by Tom Frost, IOGP Health, Safety, Security & Wells Director
Monthly Reflections April 2026 – Learning is VItal
Dear Colleagues,
Thank you to everyone who has shown patience in supporting my onboarding and learning as I develop and grow into my new role. I have absorbed a lot of information, re-read a lot of IOGP publications, met a lot of people and yet have so much more to learn (always!). Learning is a good topic for this set of reflections. It is central to our ambition to eliminate fatalities, permanent impairments and catastrophic process safety events.
Learning is Vital
This is one of the five Human Performance Principles (LINK 810). Adopting a learning mindset helps organisations enhance safety and efficiency by identifying the underlying causes that lead to success and failure. It is impossible for us to expand our personal knowledge sufficiently to know what to do in the many challenging situations we face. Moving from ‘knowing’ to ‘learning’ is essential in today’s world of complexity and shifting context, perhaps best illustrated by aviation incidents that required aircrew to adapt & learn at pace beyond any checklist or simulation their extensive knowledge training had covered, saving lives in the process. Two examples are: flight UA232, full hydraulic failure, Sioux City US, 1989 LINK; flight US1549, bird strike, Hudson River US, 2009 LINK.
Process Safety
I joined the IOGP Process Safety Subcommittee a few days after the 40 year anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster (26 April 1986). I have a tendency to try to imagine what it must be like to be the victim of such incidents – which is of course both terrifying and motivating. It forces me to pause and reflect, to revisit what happened and, most importantly, to deepen my understanding of the inevitable wealth of learnings from all catastrophic process safety events. Learnings I believe we all have a responsibility to act on. It pains me to see so many recurring incidents that could have been avoided and reinforces my determination to act. The Process Safety Fundamentals (LINK) are the right place to start if you are looking for guidance in this field.
Safety Improvement Paradox
One of the paradoxes of improving safety performance is that fewer people have been close to tragic events such as fatalities, which can lead to a loss of chronic unease and an increase in complacency. A big part of our role is to maintain focus, and I am pleased to see work in progress on ‘control of work’ and ‘learning from normal work’ that will reinforce our ability to keep learning when things are going well and move further beyond only being reactive to fatal or inuring events. An example I heard of recently involved a heat exchanger core that was being pulled out for the 45th time and tragically crushed a person. The insight is that there were 44 opportunities to learn from normal work and potentially prevent the 45th activity’s outcome.
Final Reflection
Our strength comes from the power of collaboration and learning through the huge capability of IOGP with access to such breadth of activity and depth of experience and a willingness to share insights freely with all, including outside the IOGP membership. I encourage you all to keep sharing and to keep up your hunger to learn from each other to progress our ambition to eliminate fatalities, permanent impairments and catastrophic process safety events. We are stronger together
Best wishes,
Tom
