When Anne Taylor was working as a nurse at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, she saw at first-hand the devastating consequences of the Piper Alpha disaster. After caring for some of the men who had been injured in the fire that followed the explosion on the oil platform in 1988, she decided to move into occupational health and safety and try to help prevent further such tragedies.

Anne did a degree in occupational health and a masters in ergonomics, and went on to work for the OMS (Offshore Medical Services) and Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology Occupational health, working both in onshore industrial sites and with the oil industry, advising on occupational health and safety.

Now Anne – who joined Healthy Working Lives as an adviser five years ago – spends much of her time working with both on and offshore employers in the oil industry, and regularly visits off-shore installations.

She currently has several clients who are signed up for the Healthy Working Lives Award Programme, and she visits oil installations to guide employers on meeting the health and safety criteria, and to assess them for the award.

Anne explains that the offshore visits can be time-consuming but are well worth the effort to help employers to improve health and safety and achieve an Award.

“You can be away two or three days, depending on the size of the platform and the level of award they are going for,” she says. “If they are going for Gold, they need to have a lot of things in place. Firstly, there needs to be a real focus on health promotion for workers, with initiatives such as workplace health checks, robust alcohol and drugs policies and support for mental health issues.

“Secondly, there must be a strong emphasis on ensuring safety at every level, with clear procedures for reporting on accidents and other incidents, and a willingness to act quickly to resolve issues.

“The Gold Award also asks for evidence of an awareness of the environmental impact of the platform, and a commitment to reducing as much as possible any waste or emissions which could help contribute to climate change.

“When I’m conducting an assessment, I speak to health and safety people, the engineers, the workers on the rig, and the medics. Because they are very busy working, I have got to slot this in, and I am usually there overnight and sometimes two nights.”

To prepare for her offshore trips, Anne has undergone survival training and she adds that even the hour-long helicopter trip out to the platform requires a lot of health and safety precautions.

“You have to wear three layers of your own clothing, and in winter time you get this padded thermal suit, almost like a romper suit, and then you put on a survival suit, because if you are ditched in the North Sea, it’s very cold,” she says.

“These survival suits have rubber seals and there’s no way of getting out of them until you get out to the rig, so you don’t drink too much tea or coffee because there’s no toilets on the helicopter!”

Over the last two decades since Piper Alpha, Anne has noticed real changes in the standards of safety in the oil industry. “There’s been a lot of improvements since then, and obviously there has been Lord Cullen’s report which highlighted all the problems and what had gone wrong with Piper Alpha,” she says.

“Now, because of cuts, people are beginning to worry that this will have an effect about safety or health issues offshore.

“However, I have tended to find that the health and safety in the oil industry is way above what any other industry does. They have meetings about safety every day, and everybody is trained really well now.

“Additionally there are great improvements in caring for the workers’ general health whilst offshore. This includes healthier options in the dining room and provision of gymnasiums.”

Even back on dry land, lots of Anne’s clients are connected to the oil industry, underlining its importance to the economy in the North-East and indeed the rest of Scotland.

“There are a lot of small service companies, like engineering shops and workshops, which are attached to the oil industry,” Anne says. “they often ask us for a visit and we advise them on health and safety or occupational health.”

Whilst Anne has a particularly strong commitment to working to improve the safety of the oil industry, she also enjoys the opportunity to support employers across a range of different sectors.

“I like my job because it is so different. One day you can be at a hairdressers, the next with the oil industry, the next at a farm – the next week you can be at a hotel or an engineering shop. The variety is what I like about it.”