An ad hoc committee will conduct a public workshop and consensus study to address the offshore oil and gas industry's safety culture, focusing on the following six questions and three objectives:
1. What is the current status of safety culture in the offshore oil and gas industry?
2. How are offshore companies measuring the effectiveness of safety culture in their organization?
3. What are the key safety culture performance indicators?
4. What strategies could the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) utilize to increase offshore industry commitment to safety culture?
5. How can Safety and Environmental Management System (SEMS) effectiveness correlate, and assist, with safety culture enhancement?
6. Are there available “lessons learned” from other regulators, industries, and organizations that have faced similar high-risk circumstances?
The objectives of the project are to:
A. Compare how companies are measuring the effectiveness of safety culture in their organizations;
B. Collect “lessons learned” in implementing safety culture initiatives, and
C. Advise BSEE on how to foster safety culture initiatives in, and transfer lessons learned, to companies that have not started these initiatives.

Phase 1 of this project is intended to answer questions 2-6 and provide an overview of question 1. The committee would address BSEE's objectives through a public workshop that will feature invited presentations and discussions, a review of the literature covering U.S. and international practice and experience, and interactions via meetings to be held with offshore industry companies, companies from other sectors that have implemented safety culture, and experts in safety culture generally. It would subsequently prepare an interim report that would provide the committee’s findings drawing upon the workshop and other information gathering. In its Phase 1 final report the committee would address questions 2-6 more completely and also consider options for addressing the first question (assessing the status of safety culture in the offshore industry) in greater depth. It would also recommend an approach to assess industry safety culture in a second phase of the project to be conducted as a separate activity.