Many incident reports and much research literature have concluded that incident rates in high-hazard industries can be reduced by enhancing the knowledge and information sources available to workers. However, a sparsity of published research reporting workers' perspectives on the value of information and knowledge sources in different operational situations potentially limits the effectiveness of interventions aimed at improving human responses to process safety performance. In response, this work seeks to understand how frontline oil and gas industry workers, responsible for managing process safety and other risks in their hazardous workplaces, rely on their own knowledge, the knowledge of others and information provided to manage different operating scenarios. A set of open and closed-ended survey questions were distributed to workers at several upstream and downstream oil and gas companies. Statistical analysis of 133 responses revealed interesting insights relating to participants’ experience levels, decision making practices and perceptions on the importance of various information and knowledge sources in different operating circumstances. The data revealed differences in the sources of knowledge relied upon by experienced and less experienced workers. Experienced workers rely on their own knowledge in both routine and potentially high-impact scenarios. Less experienced workers also rely on their own knowledge for routine decisions however they reported seeking out external knowledge and information in potentially high-impact scenarios. The data suggests that interventions to improve safety by enhancing the availability of knowledge and information sources are less likely to affect experienced workers and alternate strategies might be needed. However, such interventions might be effective if they are focused on supporting newer workers.

许多事故报告和大量研究文献得出的结论是，可以通过增加工人可用的知识和信息来源来降低高危险行业的事故发生率。但是，由于发表的研究报告工作者在不同操作情况下对信息和知识来源的价值的看法稀疏，因此潜在地限制了旨在改善人类对过程安全绩效反应的干预措施的有效性。作为回应，这项工作旨在了解负责管理危险工作场所中的过程安全和其他风险的一线石油和天然气行业工人如何依靠自己的知识，他人的知识以及所提供的信息来管理不同的操作方案。向一系列上游和下游石油和天然气公司的工人分发了一组开放式和不限成员名额的调查问题。对133个响应的统计分析显示了与参与者的经验水平，决策实践和对不同操作环境中各种信息和知识来源的重要性的看法有关的有趣见解。数据显示，经验丰富和经验不足的工人所依赖的知识来源存在差异。经验丰富的工人在例行和可能产生重大影响的情况下都依赖于自己的知识。经验不足的工人也依靠自己的知识来进行日常决策，但是他们报告说，在潜在的高影响场景中，他们正在寻找外部知识和信息。数据表明，通过提高知识和信息来源的可用性来提高安全性的干预措施不太可能影响有经验的工人，因此可能需要其他策略。但是，如果这些干预措施专注于支持新员工，则可能是有效的。