A Human and Organizational Perspective on Interoperability in the Digitalization of Safety-Instrumented Systems

To ensure a safe, effective, and reliable process energy sector, it is necessary to accelerate the digital transformation and simultaneously ensure that health, safety, and environment (HSE) considerations are being accounted for. While Industry 4.0 has a vision to facilitate the intelligent networking of machines and processes focusing on the technological challenges of interoperability, Industry 5.0 focuses on understanding how digitalization efforts affect human and organizational aspects. As the process energy sector is a domain where loss of safety can lead to severe accidents, it is critical to understand how implementation of new technologies influences workflows and human-technology interactions in all phases of the lifecycle. This aligns with the sociotechnical perspective, which states that in order to understand safety as an outcome of operations, both technical and social aspects should be considered. A thorough understanding of human and organizational aspects is crucial when working with complex technological challenges related to interoperability. The ongoing research project on the digital lifecycle management of interoperable safety systems (APOS 2.0) with stakeholders in the Norwegian process energy sector seeks to increase interoperability from design to operation of safety systems, while also considering human and organizational aspects. Interviews were performed with 11 informants with different roles representing vendors, engineering companies, and operators within the Norwegian oil and gas industry. The aim of the interviews was to explore challenges and opportunities arising from a sociotechnical perspective, covering both human and organizational dimensions. The interview notes were subject to a thematic analysis, and the results point towards several challenges and opportunities arising from a human, organizational, as well as a life-cycle perspective. We suggest that by paying attention to these aspects early in digitalization efforts, stakeholders both within the process energy sector and other related industries might be better equipped to maintain and improve the overall HSE.

Keywords: Interoperability, Safety instrumented systems, Sociotechnical theory, Human factors, Industry 5.0, Process energy sector, Safety-critical systems.