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§ 17 Duty to establish, follow up and further develop a management system

The responsible party shall establish, follow up and further develop a management system designed to ensure compliance with requirements in the health, safety and environment legislation.
The licensee and owner of an onshore facility shall establish, follow up and further develop a management system to ensure compliance with requirements in the health, safety and environment legislation directed toward licensees and owners of onshore facilities.
The employees shall contribute in the establishment, follow-up and further development of management systems.
Section last changed: 01 January 2011

The duty to establish, follow up and further develop management systems applies to the scope of the Working Environment Act, the Pollution Control Act (in Norwegian only), the Petroleum Act, the Product Control Act (in Norwegian only) and the Fire and Explosion Protection Act (in Norwegian only), cf. Section 2 of these regulations with Guidelines. For additional detail on the requirements in connection with management systems, reference is made to the supplementary Management Regulations.
In the first subsection, the operator and other participants in the activities are obligated parties. Management systems that the operator and other participants have established for their activities, should be further developed to include compliance with requirements stipulated in the health, safety and environment legislation. Such management systems can e.g. be established according to the previous Regulations relating to management systems in the petroleum activities, Regulations relating to systematic health, safety and environment work in enterprises or Regulations under maritime legislation.
For mobile facilities in the offshore petroleum activities, the responsible party can use the IMO resolution A.741 International Safety Management Code (the ISM code) as a basis for the part of the management system that applies to maritime operating conditions.

The need for this section
A duty to establish, follow up and further develop management systems follows from Section 10-6 of the Petroleum Act. There is also a management system duty according to Section 3-1 of the Working Environment Act. In the Pollution Control Act (in Norwegian only) and the Product Control Act (in Norwegian only), this duty does not directly follow from the acts, but the basis for requiring a such system is provided in Section 52b and Section 8, third subsection, respectively, in the mentioned acts. Therefore, requirements as mentioned are included in the first subsection.
The provision will be enforced in light of the activity it applies to, whether this is high-risk operations and activities with major accident potential, or whether this is construction assignments or the like of a lesser scope and with lower risk.

Details regarding the duty of the licensee and the owner of the onshore facility
The licensee and the owner of the onshore facility have a special duty to establish, follow up and further develop management systems, limited to those parts of the regulations directed towards them, cf. second subsection. This means that the licensee and the owner of the onshore facility shall have management systems to follow up their duty to see to it that the operator complies with its obligations, cf. Section 7, and to follow up those obligations that follow from individual provisions directed towards the licensee and the owner of the onshore facility. The management system shall naturally be adapted to the scope of the activity. It can be natural for the individual licensee or owner of the onshore facility's management systems to include all the production licenses it participates in, or onshore facilities it owns. Where there are multiple owners of the same onshore facility or a group of licensees, the duty to have management systems could entail a description of how the group will follow up its duties, in the form of e.g. the distribution of responsibility and tasks between the participants and between the group and the operator, or possibly a reference to documents where such a description can be found.

The duty is limited to the scope of these regulations
It is emphasised that the duty according to the provision, only applies to the part of the enterprise that is covered by the scope of these regulations. For example, companies that manufacture equipment on land will not be governed by the system duty in these regulations as regards working environment for its onshore employees. Relevant onshore regulations will apply for them.

The content of management systems
Management systems shall cover the organisation, processes, procedures and resources necessary to ensure compliance with requirements stipulated in the health, safety and environment legislation. More detailed provisions regarding management systems, including the content, are stated in the supplementary Management Regulations.
It follows from this provision cf. the definition of the health, safety and environment legislation in Section 6 regarding definitions, litera c, that the management system shall also include relevant provisions in the health acts applied through Section 5 regarding the application of certain health acts in the offshore petroleum activities, as well as in the Medicines Act (in Norwegian only) and other health acts that apply in the petroleum activities on the basis of Section 1-5 of the Petroleum Act.
The Act relating to government supervision of the health service (in Norwegian only) (the Supervision Act) also includes supervision of the health service in the petroleum activities, cf. Section 1-5 of the Petroleum Act. Section 3 of the Supervision Act (in Norwegian only) contains provisions regarding the duty for enterprises that provide health services, to carry out internal control in such a manner that this can prevent failures in the health service. To this end, the activities and the services shall be planned, executed and maintained in accordance with generally accepted professional standards and requirements stipulated in pursuance of acts or regulations. In consideration of the petroleum industry, it is important for the health authority to coordinate its supervision according to various regulations regarding the management system for the petroleum activities. Fulfilling the provisions in the Management Regulations is also considered to fulfil the requirements related to internal control in the Supervision Act (in Norwegian only).

The employees' duty to participate
The third subsection entails that the employees shall participate in establishing, following up and further developing management systems in the entire scope of the regulations, including management systems for following up requirements in the scope of the Pollution Control Act (in Norwegian only). The employees' experience and active participation is a significant precondition for a sound management system. The employees' rights in this connection are regulated in Section 13.
The employees' duty to participate in establishing, following up and further developing management systems in activities at onshore facilities is not new, but is correspondingly stated in the Regulations relating to systematic health, safety and environment work in enterprises (in Norwegian only).