Cullen Inquiry

It all started with the 1988 Piper Alpha North Sea Oil Platform accident, killing 167 people and causing over 3.6B in insurance claims. The subsequent Cullen Inquiry led to the development and promulgation in 1992 of the Offshore Installations (Safety Case) 1992, later updated in 2005 (United Kingdom, 2005). Now many industries (especially in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe), in addition to petroleum, use the safety case process including aviation, nuclear, rail, and military hardware. See Chapter 2 for more on ALARP. 

The following descriphon is taken from Appendix D of CCPS (1992a). (The results of the public inquiry on the disaster are in Cullen, 1990.)... 

Cullen, the Hon. Lord (1990). The Public Inquiry into the Piper Alpha Disaster. UK. Dept, of Energy. London Her Majesty s Stationery Office. 

Maitland, G. (2011) Offshore Oil and Gas in the UK An Independent Review of the Regulatory Regime. Report by Chairman Geoffrey Maitland, FREng, December 2011 (hereinafter, Maitland Review). Lord Cullen (1990) The Public Inquiry into the Piper Alpha Disaster. Report by the Chairman The Hon. Lord Cullen, Cm. 1310, 1990. HMSO London (hereinafter, Cullen Report). The events and responses surrounding the Piper Alpha disaster are beyond the scope of this work. For further discussion on this, see Chapter 6 in this volume. 

Scottish judge Lord Cullen. The inquiry conducted by Cullen was at the time the lengthiest and most comprehensive in UK history. It produced a comprehensive two-volume report which detailed the causes of the accident and made no fewer than 106 recommendations designed to ensure that there would be no repetition (Cullen 1990). 

Cullen, W.D. (1990). Ute public inquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster. London, HMSO. 

From a historical perspective, the following, fairly succinct, and certainly authoritative, statement on Safety Cases comes from Lord Justice Cullen s report on the Public Inquiry into the Piper Alpha Oil Platform Disaster (Cullen 1990) ... 

Cullen 1990 The Public Inquiry into the Piper Alpha Disa.ster, Volumes... 

In the accompanying letter to Lord Cullen, who was appointed to undertake the Ladbroke Grove Inquiry, the Chair of the Health and Safety Commission also noted We should not want you to feel constrained by. .. your broader terms of reference if you consider that other issues emerge which should be fully examined. .. (HSC press release C044 99). ... 

CAA (2003) CAP670 Air traffic services safety requirements. Civil Aviation Authority Cullen (1990) The public inquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster. HM Stationery Office, London Haddon-Cave C (2009) The Nimrod review. The Stationery Office, London lEC (2002) lEC 61508 Functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable electronic safety-related systems. Part 1. International Electrotechnical Commission Kuhn TS (1962) The structure of scientific revolutions. University of Chicago Press MoD (2007) Defence standard 00-56 Issue 4. Safety management requirements for defence systems part 1 requirements part 2 guidance on establishing a means of complying with part 1. Ministry of Defence... 

The long-term effects of the Piper Alpha event were profound. The formal investigation into the Piper Alpha tragedy was headed by Lord Cullen, a Scottish High Court judge. In 1990 his committee published the The Public Inquiry into the Piper Alpha Disaster, a document that is usually referred to simply as The Cullen Report. 

In his report on the Ladbroke Grove rail enquiry Lord Cullen stated A key factor in the industry is the prevailing culture, of which safety culture is an integral part. There is a clear link between good safety and good business . He then went on to quote in submission of the HSE ... the need for a positive safety culture is the most fundamental brought before the Inquiry . 

Cullen, W. 2001. The Ladbroke Grove Rail Inquiry Part 2 Report. London HSE Books. 

Cullen (1990) The public inquiry into the piper alpha disaster. HMSO Cm 1310 Emmet L, Cleland G (2002) Graphical notations, narratives and persuasion a pliant systems approach to hypertext tool design. In Proc ACM Hypertext, College Park, Maryland, USA Eurocontrol (2003) ESARR6 Software in ATM systems. 

---