--- title: Risk rarely looks the way we expect date: 2026-08-24T13:30:00+01:00 author: Sahar Mokhtari canonical_url: "https://kentplc.com/news-insights/risk-rarely-looks-the-way-we-expect" section: Blog --- 24 Aug 2026 Insights & Opinions # Risk rarely looks the way we expect Written by Blair Whibley ![TL Blair Whibley Web Banner]() I began my engineering career from home during the pandemic. Working on oil and gas projects across different clients and regions, I learned how to assess risk through drawings, datasheets, calculations and models. I understood the engineering principles used to predict consequences and the mathematics used to estimate likelihoods. I understood the safeguards available and was developing the experience needed to size and specify them. What I had yet to understand was how risk behaves when it leaves the page. In September 2024, I was seconded to Serica Energy’s Bruce platform in the North Sea. Alongside two colleagues, I took on a newly created offshore role as an Operations Process Safety Engineer. Serica deliberately chose process engineers who were relatively early in their careers, with the aim to develop their site experience and bring a different perspective and renewed focus to process safety on the platform. Although I had visited onshore and offshore worksites before, I had spent most of my career in an office. Bruce was my first sustained experience of working alongside the risks I had previously considered at a distance. Offshore, high-pressure hydrocarbons were no longer lines on a P&ID. The equipment was in front of me, as were the people whose decisions, experience and actions kept the plant operating safely. The potential consequences of engineering decisions felt immediate. While I became more comfortable being offshore, I never felt completely at ease. At the time I couldn’t quite decide what that meant for me, but I can now look back on it as healthy attitude to have in an environment like that. Process safety depends on maintaining a respect for what can happen when controls fail, assumptions prove incorrect or several seemingly minor problems occur at once. One responsibility of the new role was investigating safe operating limit excursions. These occur when the plant operates in a way that creates a demand on a safety instrumented system. We developed a tool to monitor plant performance and identify potential excursions for investigation. The purpose was to understand how the plant had moved towards an unsafe state and identify measures that could prevent it happening again. It was a proactive approach to investigating near miss events and developing solutions to prevent them becoming real incidents in the future. Through these investigations, my understanding of risk began to change. My previous mental model of plant operation had largely been two-dimensional: drawings, datasheets and operating trends. Offshore experience added a third dimension: people, asset integrity and the realities of day-to-day operation. I saw how gradual changes can accumulate without any single change appearing especially significant, and I saw how the same procedure could be interpreted differently by different people or shifts. I saw that equipment sometimes fails, and that failure rarely chooses a convenient moment. In other words, I saw how the holes in the Swiss cheese model can begin to align. This is where risk can become difficult to recognise. It may not present itself as a dramatic failure or an obviously unsafe decision. It can emerge through small deviations, local workarounds, changing operating conditions or assumptions that remain unchallenged because they have held true in the past. Each element may appear manageable in isolation. The danger lies in how they interact. Since returning onshore and beginning a second secondment within Serica’s engineering team, I have found myself looking differently at the work on my desk and asking questions that I would not previously have asked. What conditions sit behind this data? Does the drawing reflect how the plant is currently operated? How might the people carrying out the task interpret this instruction? What happens when equipment is degraded, time is limited or several safeguards are unavailable simultaneously? Engineering models are essential, but every model contains assumptions. The closer we are to those assumptions, the easier it can be to stop seeing them. That is why meaningful collaboration between engineering and operations matters. People working with the plant every day understand details that may never appear on a drawing. Engineers can bring structured analysis and a perspective that cuts across immediate operational pressures. Neither view is complete on its own. A strong process safety culture creates room for those perspectives to challenge each other constructively. It allows teams to ask how risk can be reduced, but it should also encourage more fundamental questions: Why are we exposing someone to this hazard at all? Is there a different way to perform the task? Are we continuing with an approach because it remains the best option, or because it is how the work has always been done? How wrong would our assumptions need to be before someone was placed in harm’s way? These questions can be uncomfortable. They are also where better decisions often begin. My time offshore has not given me a simple answer to the question “what does risk look like?”. If anything, it has taught me to be cautious of simple answers. Risk does not always look like the scenario we calculated. It can look like a small procedural variation, a slowly changing condition, an ageing item of equipment or an assumption that nobody has revisited. The most important lesson I brought back from the Bruce is that understanding risk requires us to keep testing our mental models against operational reality. We need the right information, the right people and a working environment in which challenge is welcomed. Because the risk in front of us may not look anything like the one we imagined. Share this story [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fkentplc.com%2Fnews-insights%2Frisk-rarely-looks-the-way-we-expect) [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://kentplc.com/news-insights/risk-rarely-looks-the-way-we-expect) [X](https://x.com/intent/tweet?url=https://kentplc.com/news-insights/risk-rarely-looks-the-way-we-expect&text=Risk%20rarely%20looks%20the%20way%20we%20expect) Related Blogs ## You might also like [![TL Padma Kumar Thumbnail]()](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/why-information-governance-has-become-critical-to-data-centre-delivery)Insights & Opinions [Why information governance has become critical to data centre delivery ](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/why-information-governance-has-become-critical-to-data-centre-delivery)Kent Data Centres' Padma Kumar explains how information governance can no longer be viewed as just an administrative function [Read article](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/why-information-governance-has-become-critical-to-data-centre-delivery) [![TL Dave Blackburn Thumbnail]()](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/the-human-cost-of-late-life-operations)Insights & Opinions [The human cost of late life operations ](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/the-human-cost-of-late-life-operations)Kent's SVP Global Late Life Assets & Decommissioning, Dave Blackburn, explores why the human side of late life operations is critical to workforce continuity, knowledge retention and safety [Read article](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/the-human-cost-of-late-life-operations) [![TL David Howie Offshore Wind Thumbnail]()](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/deepwater-offshore-wind-maximising-the-opportunity)Insights & Opinions [Deepwater Offshore Wind: Maximising the opportunity ](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/deepwater-offshore-wind-maximising-the-opportunity)Kent's Offshore Wind Technical Director, David Howie, mentions what the new dedicated Other Deep Offshore Wind category in AR8 means for the industry [Read article](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/deepwater-offshore-wind-maximising-the-opportunity) [![TL David Boland Offshore Maintenance Thumbnail]()](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/reducing-complexity-in-offshore-maintenance)Insights & Opinions [Reducing complexity in offshore maintenance ](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/reducing-complexity-in-offshore-maintenance)Kent's Operations Manager, David Boland, explores how integrated maintenance models improve reliability and reduce offshore complexity [Read article](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/reducing-complexity-in-offshore-maintenance) [![TL Dave Blackburn Strategies Thumbnail]()](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/where-late-life-strategies-break-down)Insights & Opinions [Where late life strategies break down ](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/where-late-life-strategies-break-down)Kent's SVP Global Late Life Assets & Decommissioning, Dave Blackburn, explores why the transition to decommissioning should begin while assets are still operating [Read article](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/where-late-life-strategies-break-down) [![TL Ian Long Thumbnail 1]()](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/as-oil-and-gas-developments-become-more-complex-why-early-technology-selection-matters)Insights & Opinions [As oil and gas developments become more complex, why early technology selection matters ](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/as-oil-and-gas-developments-become-more-complex-why-early-technology-selection-matters)Kent's Study Manager – APAC, Ian Long, explores why early technology selection matters as oil and gas developments become more complex [Read article](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/as-oil-and-gas-developments-become-more-complex-why-early-technology-selection-matters) [![TL Ferruh E web thumb]()](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/why-the-data-centre-conversation-now-starts-with-substations)Insights & Opinions [Why the data centre conversation now starts with substations ](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/why-the-data-centre-conversation-now-starts-with-substations)Kent Data Centres new VP of Design & Engineering, Ferruh Ertekin, details the increasing importance of substation design for future infrastructure expansion [Read article](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/why-the-data-centre-conversation-now-starts-with-substations) [![TL Carl Titchmarsh QGC Thumbnail]()](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/the-best-mtac-partners-never-stop-earning-their-place)Insights & Opinions [The best MTAC partners never stop earning their place ](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/the-best-mtac-partners-never-stop-earning-their-place)Kent’s SVP Operations – APAC, Carl Titchmarsh, explores why the best MTAC partnerships are built on continuous improvement, not longevity [Read article](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/the-best-mtac-partners-never-stop-earning-their-place) [![Thumbnail AUS 2026 Ad 63 C Brand]()](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/what-were-learning-about-ccus-technology-as-the-industry-matures)Insights & Opinions [What We’re Learning About CCUS Technology as the Industry Matures ](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/what-were-learning-about-ccus-technology-as-the-industry-matures)Kent’s Principal Process Engineer Chris Long details the innovations across Carbon Capture projects in the evolving market [Read article](https://kentplc.com/news-insights/what-were-learning-about-ccus-technology-as-the-industry-matures) [](#)[](#)