Accident Narratives As Collective Resource for Operational Safety

In the oil and gas industry, there is a set of major or even minor accidents that serve as a baseline for understanding safety concepts and practices, particularly in offshore operations. These narratives frequently emerge in safety meetings, workshops, training courses, official investigation reports, books, academic papers, and also in everyday conversations among workers. This presentation is based on a reconstructive analysis of biographical interviews with offshore oil and gas workers and aims to answer the following questions: How do the narratives of accidents connect with the broader construction of the workers' biographical stories? And more specifically, how these narratives affect how discourse on safety and work performance is developed? The results highlight a strong connection between the retelling of accident narratives and their role as a key resource for learning and preventing future incidents, drawing valuable lessons from past events and improving safety practices in the offshore industry. Although the concept of collective memory is traditionally diffuse, it can be defined as a type of memory that transcends individuals and is shared by a group. In the case of acidentes, this investigations also shows that acidents can operate as a constantly changing tacit atifact within the formation of offshore workers as a specific social group.