This paper describes the work undertaken by the United Kingdom Offshore Operators Association (UKOOA) to develop a framework to facilitate and guide the process of decision making. Within a risk based regulatory environment the oil and gas operators have had to state their own objectives and then demonstrate how they have achieved them, this framework provides a transparent protocol to facilitate that demonstration. The offshore safety regulations have required the UK Offshore Community to develop a series of approaches to managing major hazards within a risk based context and that community is legally bound to demonstrate the effectiveness of that management. This framework describes how prescriptive standards and goal setting can be mutually supportive and how the process of defining decision types and then resolving them can be described in this one framework thus facilitating the decision making process for all parties. The paper will describe the key drivers to that process and the related context of each decision and how the context will affect the decision process itself. It will also provide some of the background to the project, why it was necessary and who has contributed to it.
