RFID Zone Management and Barrier Control System
Brennan Flores · 2018
Abstract Throughout the last few decades, the oil and gas industry has made tremendous advancements in Safety. The number of safety incidents in the work place, especially fatalities, has significantly decreased. Industry leaders continue to strive to improve safety practices and procedures. Two of the largest threats facing personnel in the industry today are the exposure to "objects that drop from height "and "line of fire exposures". Targeted efforts such as Dropped object campaigns have been initiated to collectively address the dropped object exposure. Line of fire exposures associated with high-pressure temporary iron from piping and/or connection failures, exposing workers in the area have been managed through various methods. Although many efforts exist to mitigate these risks, none have been as effective as exclusion zones. Technical safety analysis often determines which areas pose threats to working personnel identified as an "exclusion zone", essentially mandating that an area be controlled by permit to work and stipulated by procedure. I have developed a real-time tracking and feedback system that is capable of geo-fencing exclusion zones and recording any barrier breaks allowing technical safety professionals, front line supervisors and company representatives the opportunity to address the issues first hand and amend procedures and policies to improve their safety performance altogether. The concept offers a software platform that tracks personnel in real-time within isolated zones and immediately alerts personnel if a restricted zone is breached through an architecture of RFID readers and tags. Finally, the data can be processed in a way to provide valuable feedback to move towards a safer work behavior. The software platform managed to successfully signal an alert and record the tag ID when a test subject crossed the RFID reader holding the RFID tag, proving the full-functionality of the barrier control system. The implementation of this system can be used to ultimately control the location and flow of personnel on platforms and rigs in order to make the oil and gas industry a safer environment.