NMM CEO Appointed as National Academies’ Committee Member on Offshore Operations Risk

Near-Miss Management (NMM) is pleased to announce that Dr. Ulku Oktem, Co-founder and CEO, has been appointed as a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Progress and Opportunities Toward Decreasing the Risk of Offshore Energy Operations.

The Committee will examine issues related to and assess progress toward decreasing the systemic risks of offshore oil and gas operations, keeping people and the environment safe as the Gulf of Mexico offshore energy industry evolves. In particular, the panel will define the current profile of systemic risks of offshore oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico that could lead to disasters and assess how various technological, regulatory, environmental, organizational, and process changes have contributed to increasing or decreasing these systemic risks since the release of the report Macondo Well Deepwater Horizon Blowout: Lessons for Improving Offshore Drilling Safety (2012) and other relevant reports. Because the offshore oil and gas industry is a high-hazard industry characterized by diverse and complex operations, the low-frequency and high-consequence events are visible while near-misses or minor infractions of process safety remain mostly unreported. As a result, information available for the panel to assess may be sparse. The panel will rely on data to the extent available, supplemented by the panel’s expertise.

Dr. Oktem, a globally recognized expert in the field of Near-Misses, holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware. Her pioneering work has received international recognition and coverage in scientific journals and has been heavily adopted by chemical companies and organizations such as CCPS, OSHA.

About the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine

The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine are the nation’s pre-eminent source of high-quality, objective advice on science, engineering, and health matters. Top experts participate in our projects, activities, and studies to examine and assemble evidence-based findings to address some of society’s greatest challenges. Their rigorous process for producing independent, objective reports that present the evidence-based consensus is considered by many as the gold standard. More information about the National Academies is available at https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work.