Crews, roles and new-worker programs

A drilling rig runs around the clock with a small crew on each shift, and every person on that crew has a defined place in a chain of command that has evolved over a century of rig work. Knowing who does what, who can stop the job and who is responsible for your orientation is part of staying safe. This lesson describes the crew structure on drilling and service rigs, the people from other companies who share the lease, the special risks faced by new and short-service workers, and the programs that bring a new hand up to speed.

The drilling crew

Job titles vary a little between companies and between Canada and the United States, but the structure is remarkably consistent. A land drilling rig usually works two 12-hour shifts, called tours (pronounced towers), with a crew of four or five on each tour, plus a rig manager who is on site for the whole hitch.

On the operator's side, a well site supervisor, often still called the company man or company representative, represents Larchwood on the lease. The well site supervisor directs the drilling program, makes decisions about the well, coordinates the many service companies that arrive and leave, and, under Canadian and US multi-employer rules, often carries significant responsibility for coordinating safety across the site. On a pad drilling sour wells there may be a day and a night supervisor, and a separate completions supervisor later in the life of the well.

Everyone else on the lease

A typical day on a drilling lease brings many other companies: a mud engineer or drilling fluids specialist, directional drillers and measurement-while-drilling (MWD) hands who steer the horizontal section, a mud logger or geologist who examines cuttings and monitors gas, cementing and casing crews, solids control technicians, trucking companies delivering pipe, fuel, water and chemicals, crane and picker truck operators, rental equipment technicians, vacuum truck operators and, on sour wells, an H2S safety services company providing detection, breathing air and safety watch personnel. Each of these workers belongs to a different employer with its own safety program, and all of them are exposed to the rig's hazards.

Coordinating so many employers is why the multi-employer rules discussed in HSE-330, Lesson 10, matter so much on a rig lease. Lesson 12 of this course returns to contractor management, bridging documents and the operator's role. For now, recognize that the person standing next to you on the floor may work for a different company, may have different training and may not know your rig's signals or rules unless someone has told them.

Communication on the floor

The rig floor is loud, the driller's view is partly blocked by equipment, and the crew often wears hearing protection. Clear communication is therefore a safety system in its own right. Crews use standard hand signals for hoisting and pipe handling, radios with headsets on many rigs, and a strict rule that only one designated person gives signals to the driller during a lift. Before any non-routine job, the driller or rig manager leads a pre-job safety meeting, often called a tailgate or toolbox meeting, that covers the task, the hazards, the controls, who does what and what to do if something changes.

Every crew member has the right and the duty to stop work that is unsafe. On a rig, stop-work authority means that a floorhand can raise a hand and stop the driller, and a service hand from another company can stop a rig crew, without fear of reprisal. Many drilling contractors and operators reinforce this with stop-work cards and by publicly recognizing people who use it. Stopping work early is almost always cheaper than finishing a job that goes wrong.

New workers and short-service employees

New workers are injured far more often than experienced ones, and the oil and gas industry has known this for decades. Rig work has a steep learning curve: a newcomer does not yet know where the line of fire is during a connection, which sounds signal trouble or what the driller is about to do. High turnover during booms and busts means that, at any time, a large share of the workforce may be new to the industry, to the company or to the rig.

Industry has responded with short-service employee (SSE) programs. A short-service employee is usually defined as a worker with less than six months in the same type of job or with the current employer. Typical program elements include: identifying SSEs visibly, often with a colored hard hat or a hard hat sticker; assigning each SSE a designated mentor; limiting the number of SSEs on a crew, often to one SSE per crew of five or a set percentage; restricting the tasks an SSE may do without direct supervision; and formally signing off the SSE when they have shown competence. Operators frequently require their contractors to run SSE programs and to report SSE numbers before a job starts.

In the United States, the International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC) sets training and accreditation programs for drilling crews, including its RigPass orientation for new rig workers and the WellSharp well control programs discussed in Lesson 3. API Recommended Practice 54 for occupational safety on drilling and servicing operations addresses training and supervision. Basic orientation programs such as SafeLandUSA give many oilfield workers a shared foundation, and OSHA expects employers to train workers on the hazards of their jobs, including new workers, under its training requirements and the general duty clause.

Mentoring is the part of SSE programs that makes the biggest difference. A good mentor explains why, not just what; shows the newcomer where to stand during each operation; watches and corrects; and gradually hands over tasks as competence grows. A poor mentor, or a mentor who is too busy with their own work, gives the newcomer a colored hard hat and little else. Rig managers should choose mentors deliberately and give them time to mentor.

The program below models a simple question that rig managers face: how many short-service employees can a rig take on without exceeding the operator's limit, given current crew experience? It uses an invented crew list for Rig 31.

# Invented crew list for Rig 31 (two tours plus rig manager).
# Months of experience in the same role with this employer.
crew = {
    "Day tour":   [("Driller", 96), ("Derrickhand", 30), ("Motorhand", 14),
                   ("Floorhand", 8), ("Leasehand", 2)],
    "Night tour": [("Driller", 60), ("Derrickhand", 5), ("Motorhand", 22),
                   ("Floorhand", 3), ("Floorhand", 4)],
}
SSE_MONTHS = 6          # short-service threshold
MAX_SSE_PER_TOUR = 1    # operator limit used in this example

for tour, people in crew.items():
    sse = [role for role, months in people if months < SSE_MONTHS]
    status = "OK" if len(sse) <= MAX_SSE_PER_TOUR else "OVER LIMIT"
    print(f"{tour}: {len(people)} crew, SSEs = {sse} -> {status}")
    mentors = [role for role, months in people if months >= 24]
    print(f"   possible mentors (24+ months): {mentors}")

Day tour: 5 crew, SSEs = ['Leasehand'] -> OK
   possible mentors (24+ months): ['Driller', 'Derrickhand']
Night tour: 5 crew, SSEs = ['Derrickhand', 'Floorhand', 'Floorhand'] -> OVER LIMIT
   possible mentors (24+ months): ['Driller']

The night tour has three short-service workers, including the derrickhand, which breaks the example limit and puts an inexperienced worker on the monkeyboard. The fix is not simply to swap names on paper. It might mean moving an experienced derrickhand from another rig, delaying a trip until a qualified derrickhand is on tour, or getting a variance approved by the operator with extra supervision. Lesson 5 explains why the derrickhand's job carries particular risk.

Fitness for duty, fatigue and camp life

Rig crews often work 14 days on and 7 or 14 days off, sometimes with long drives to and from remote leases at the start and end of each hitch. Twelve-hour tours, night work and shift changes all bring fatigue, and fatigue reduces attention exactly when attention matters most: during a trip, a connection or a well control drill. Many contractors and operators have fatigue management plans that limit consecutive shifts, require minimum rest periods, control overtime and set rules for driving after a night tour. HSE-330, Lesson 3, covers journey management, and HSE-252 covers defensive driving.

Fitness for duty also includes freedom from impairment by alcohol, cannabis and other drugs. Rig work is safety-sensitive by any definition, and both Canadian and US operators commonly require pre-access and post-incident testing. The law differs between the two countries. In Canada, recreational cannabis is legal, but employers can still prohibit impairment at work and must balance testing programs against human rights law and the duty to accommodate addiction as a disability. In the United States, drug testing rules depend on state law and, for some workers such as commercial drivers, on federal Department of Transportation requirements.

Many remote rigs house crews in a camp on or near the lease. Camps bring their own hazards: food safety, fire in sleeping quarters, carbon monoxide from heaters, wildlife around waste, and the social pressures of living and working with the same people for weeks. Camp rules, fire drills and good housekeeping are part of rig safety.