Like all hazardous installations, inherently safer design (ISD) is one of the key tools in offshore oil and gas projects to minimize risks in offshore facilities. As the life cycle of offshore facilities is relatively short compared with onshore counterparts and there are many projects running every year, the potential is high for raising inherent safety standards and lowering safety risks throughout the offshore industry as old facilities are phased out. This paper gives an overview of offshore facilities and examples of implementation of ISD. Good examples of ISD are numerous. Industry guidance on ISD implementation abound. Yet, the systematic implementation of it in the industry is patchy. There are many reasons for factors which impede the effective, efficient and consistent implementation of ISD in projects. This paper describes some of them and proposes solution to address them. They include (a) the effective integration of ISD into hazard management systems with appropriate language to engage all disciplines in projects, (b) the phasing of resources to enable the project to capture ISD measures which are only available during early phases, (c) application of appropriate ISD goals and ISD performance metrics at various stages and (d) the appropriate use of quantified risk assessment to support ISD.

与所有危险设施一样，本质安全设计（ISD）是海上油气项目中将海上设施风险降至最低的关键工具之一。由于海上设施的生命周期比陆上设施的生命周期短，并且每年都有许多项目在运行，因此随着旧设施的逐步淘汰，提高固有安全标准并降低整个海上产业安全风险的潜力很大。本文概述了海上设施以及实施ISD的示例。ISD的好例子很多。关于ISD实施的行业指南比比皆是。但是，它在行业中的系统实施还很少。有许多原因会妨碍在项目中有效，高效和一致地实施ISD。本文介绍了其中一些，并提出了解决这些问题的解决方案。其中包括（a）以适当的语言将ISD有效地整合到灾害管理系统中，以使所有学科参与项目；（b）逐步分配资源，使项目能够捕获仅在早期阶段可用的ISD措施；（c）在各个阶段应用适当的ISD目标和ISD绩效指标，以及（d）适当使用量化风险评估来支持ISD。