Following a difficult 2022 in terms of accidents rates across the offshore industry, the theme for this year’s edition of the CHC Safety & Quality Summit — the sector’s landmark safety conference — is “Reset 2024: Developing new safety mindsets.”
The event, returning to Vancouver at the Fairmont Hotel, runs from Nov. 14 to 16, and includes three days of workshops and plenary sessions led by key industry figures from around the world.
Jon Hopkinson, CHC’s VP of safety and flight standards, told Vertical that bookings are up and there will be good representation across the board — from customers to OEMs and operators — as the industry gathers to consider the sobering statistics from 2022.
From an all-time low in 2019/20, there were 12 fatal accidents and 18 lives lost in the offshore helicopter sector last year.
“It doesn’t matter which set of data you look at — the accidents, incidents, fatalities — you can look at it by sector/region, but across aviation, 2022 was a bad year,” Hopkinson said.
The focus over the past 12 months, he added, has been trying to verify and understand the data — and learn from it.
“Something has changed — and we’re still trying to work out what changed to drive this poor performance,” he said. “That conversation will carry on. [But to] look at the accident classifications, they really do follow the prime themes that the offshore industry has seen over the past few years: CFIT [controlled flight into terrain], loss of control, [and] significant component failure.”
The concept for the summit, he said, was to explore how the industry resets for 2024, bringing new mindsets and incorporating all that it has learned through 2023.
There are two particular areas of focus, the first of which is the safety mindset.
“As we — as an industry — have focused on systems, processes, SMS [safety management systems], [and] organizational structure, perhaps have we lost our sight on the focus on the people and the individual?” asked Hopkinson. “Safety is for people. Yes, organizations need to survive, but it’s about looking after your people. Those are the ones that will make your systems, processes and data analysis come to life and be effective.”
The second focus is on bringing the next generation of leaders into the industry. Hopkinson said the rotary-wing world is facing increasingly stiff competition in attracting those graduating school or college. On top of this, younger people tend to be more sensitive to aviation’s carbon footprint.
“Coming into a sector where we burn aviation fuel is not something that most school leavers are running toward,” said Hopkinson. “Our job is to explain the reason we’re here, why we’re important, and why working in our sector as a leader or safety leader is a fully valid and really important part of the economy . . . as we manage the energy transition.”
This year’s summit will see a new structure in place. On Nov. 13 — the day before the official start of the event — a full day of workshops and networking will take place for 20 high potential candidates who represent the next generation of industry leaders. These delegates will also attend the full summit program.
“They’re relatively new in the industry, but they might lack expertise, network exposure, confidence — and they wouldn’t necessarily be the typical invitees to our summit,” said Hopkinson. “We’re going to get some feedback from them into the plenary session and involve them in the conversation.”
Most of the workshops in the summit will be offered twice during the summit, to allow attendees the best opportunity to catch their choice of program.
New morning plenary sessions on the first two days of the summit aim to inform and inspire, while the keynote will be delivered at the end of the summit by resilience expert and world-class motivational speaker Ronan Harrington.
“We’re trying to end the summit on a real high point and make sure that we all go out going, ‘If there’s one thing we need to remember, it’s the human performance and our mindset is going to drive our own performance as an industry,’ ” said Hopkinson.
The last few years have brought a great deal of change in the offshore world, with energy prices collapsing and then spiking; customers deferring contracts and then quickly ramping up to match production; the challenges of a global pandemic; and the instability caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The latter two are contributing factors in the supply chain squeeze that continues to impact the global helicopter industry.
“There’s obviously challenges in the industry, of which the supply chain issue is still there, still having an impact,” said Hopkinson. “I was with most of our customers this week . . . and the stories are fairly consistent around the world with a few of the challenges they’re seeing.”
You can find out more about the CHC Safety & Quality Summit here.
