DROPS Forum - Aberdeen, 28th October 2025

DROPS Forum Aberdeen UK

28 October 2025

A well anticipated return to the Marcliffe Hotel providing opportunities to catch up with industry colleagues and share lessons learned.

DROPS Update

A brief summary of activities, including status of DROPS Zone Management guidelines revision. In conjunction with DROPS Asia an early draft has been developed with support from drilling contractor representatives who have experience of Red Zone Entry Management systems and technologies.

A Draft for Review will be published early 2026 at the latest.

Operator Perspective:

A summary of performance from major regional Operators.

SHELL UK (Brett Thomson).

Drops performance data across Shell UK Upstream shows that dropped objects are accounting for 70% of all High Potential Events. Around half of these can be described as Fail lucky, (where barriers or zoning is typically the last barrier).

Underlying causes are familiar including unsecured items whilst working at height / items left at height, environmental conditions, corrosion and fatigue, unsecured loads and loose items on loads.

Other contributing factors highlighted opportunities to support Drops Champion roles and improve awareness and understanding of the hazards and how to implement DROPS Best Practices.

A Stop the Drop campaign has reinvigorated awareness, identified improvement areas and encouraged greater understanding of Drops risks at the worksite (or at home) relating to both personal safety and process safety.

Case Study: A bolt failure due to dynamic forces that exceeded design tolerance resulted in a 36ft section of casing weighing over 3T dropping 31ft – penetrating a hydraulic workover unit power pack and continuing to have potential for process safety incident as the casing also struck process pipework. 

‘Strength of Controls Assessment’ method is a graphical representation of the Bow Tie approach. It offers a method of identifying specific hazards and threats (i.e. Equipment at Height failure due to Corrosion) and the opportunity to verify robustness and confirm responsibilities for implementing and managing Preventative Controls that address these threats and Recovery Controls that reduce the consequence.

BP Production and Operations (Nadia Graham)

A similar trend in dropped object performance, highlighting patterns that demonstrate positive effects of targeted and focused campaigns.

Key themes across BP Wells focus on Isolation of Personnel from dropped object hazards and include automation, red zone management and operating discipline.

BP Rig Requirements include Red Zone Entry Matrix or equivalent; documenting activity and rig specific entry requirements, verifying and tracking operations against the matrix and learning from the data.

For more detail please write to admin@dropsonline.org

Sharing Lessons Learned

Blank Flange Drops from Deluge System. Wayne Bradford (Dolphin Drilling) provided a detailed description of the underlying causal factors that led to the event. A summary can be downloaded here.

Q&A session highlighted challenges of working with legacy equipment, including the acceptance of aging assets in the current economic climate.

Wireline Mast Stopper Plate. Ross Caldwell (Baker Hughes) presented the recent shared learning which is available as a full presentation here (link to the existing Stop Plate fall from Wireline Mast Column › DROPSOnline)

Q&A session reiterated core learning relating to potential error traps such as poor design, lack of instructional detail and challenges for visual inspection.

Importance of Sharing. Lukasz Szadkowski (NOV) provided an overview of their Incident Handling Process of which a core element is the Customer Notification bulletin after the incident has been investigated and resolved.

Bi-weekly Newsletters for Rig Equipment distribute shared learnings (with direct reference to the learnings from the previous presentation) throughout the DROPS Community to share insights, mitigate recurrences, improve NOV Drops and enhance safety cultures.

Lukasz also advised wider distribution of NOV Safety Alerts and Product Information Bulletins. Whilst these may be specific to equipment, the learnings are valuable and apply across a variety of activities.

Download the presentation here.

Lukasz and the NOV Drops Team can be contacted at Lukasz.Szadkowski@nov.com

Marine Safety Forum

Due to poor DROPS Administration agenda management, the highly anticipated presentation from MSF was missed. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience.

DROPS Admin believe this presentation would have summarised the session, leaving us all in no doubt that the exposure to dropped objects across the supply chain remains tangible and has potential to affect personnel at each step of the lifecycle – including the general public.

With specific regard to the marine sector and the securing of materials and equipment for transit, are we learning from the published alerts and shared lessons? Do we assess the dropped object risks across this critical part of the industry with the same requirements, models and focus that we would around the Rig Floor?

Please visit https://www.marinesafetyforum.org/resources/page/2/

Ensure your teams involved with cargo packing and handling are aware of the content at https://www.marinesafetyforum.org/guideline/cargo-packing-and-safe-handling-guidelines-2015/

Explore the best practices presented in DROPS Reliable Securing and DROPS Backloading booklet.