• Published: January 2005
• Edition: 2nd
• Status: Current

The United Kingdom's offshore oil and gas exploration and production industry has a duty to ensure it designs, builds, operates and maintains the integrity of its facilities safely throughout their lifecycle, so far as is reasonably practicable. There is a wide range of informative guidance available to assist; however a concise catalogue of this key information had not been available to the UK industry and its regulatory organisations until publication of the first edition of IP Offshore technical guidance catalogue with specific relevance to major accident hazards.

The documents within the Catalogue are continuously changing as they are created, revised, superseded or withdrawn. Management, engineers and designers should be fully aware of their existence and also their latest revisions. The Catalogue offers a facility to search for relevant documents, but it also assists the user by providing suitable web-based sites that should include publication dates of latest revisions. In some cases, these sites will also give access to copies of the latest documents.

This is the second edition of the Catalogue, which was first published in February 2005. Major improvements have been made, such as:

• including many additional documents referenced in GASCET, which is an internal HSE document that provides a framework to assist its topic assessors when assessing safety cases. Although it does not purport to present definitive criteria, it offers guidance on the adequacy of the technical content for the major accident hazard aspects of offshore safety cases;
• including documents related to diving activities;
• including only those HSE OTO research reports specifically noted in Operations Notice 27. Whilst other HSE research reports might provide valuable insight or direction, they do not reflect HSE policy; therefore, their guidance is 'not approved' and their content shall not be considered as technical justification;
• replacing individual company documents that relate to classification of marine vessels by generic listings and a link to the IACS web site;
• including abstracts for documents within Levels 1 and 2;
• including key documents that are 'close to publication';
• updating details of many documents;
• identifying the relevant publisher's web site for each document to allow checking of the latest revision, or (in some cases) for electronic copies to be downloaded;
• expanding the listing of abbreviations;
• expanding the bibliography;
• improving the usability by incorporating advanced search capability.

The Catalogue comprises a searchable database and a user guide that explains:

• its purpose;
• the origin and nature of guidance;
• the classification of guidance into levels;
• the content of Catalogue records;
• how to search the Catalogue;
• annexes of abbreviations and web site addresses.

The catalogue is freely accessible to users online

Click here to access the catalogue.