Past Presentation - OPERA Online Presentation - 'Piper Alpha and other accidents I have investigated'

Speaker:

Stephen Richardson - President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers

Presentation:

Over the course of my career, I have investigated a number of accidents, most notably Piper Alpha, for which I was a member of the Public Inquiry under Lord Cullen, and also Umm Said, Ocean Odyssey, Longford, P36 Roncador and several others. In this talk, I will mention some key features of those other accidents and will then concentrate on Piper, in which 167 men tragically died. Specifically, I will look at what went wrong on Piper, why it had such disastrous consequences and what lessons can (still) be learned.

Speaker Bio:

Stephen Richardson was an undergraduate In Chemical Engineering at Imperial College from 1969 to 1972 and a postgraduate there from 1972 to 1975. He was then a Research Assistant at Cambridge and was appointed as a Lecturer in Chemical Engineering back at Imperial College in 1978 and then promoted via Senior Lecturer and Reader to Professor in 1994. He was Head of Department from 2001 to 2008, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering from 2008 to 2010, Deputy Rector from 2009 to 2013 and Associate Provost from 2013 to his retirement in 2015. In 1996 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and in 2015 was made a CBE for his work on chemical engineering education and safety. He is currently President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers.

This presentation is available to download from the OPERA Members Area of the website for current members only.