Before subscribing to the services of STS service providers, oil companies will assess and review the safe management and operation of the STS transfers conducted by that provider.

Self assessment can be used by STS service providers to verify that their safety management systems (SMSs) are comprehensive and sufficiently robust to minimise all potential safety and environmental risk in the execution of their operations and to measure and continuously improve their management systems.

An effective management system has the following basic attributes:

• Management identifies the company’s values and aspirations in policy documents
• Procedures are developed to meet the objectives of these policies
• Competent personnel are employed to implement the procedures
• Adequate training is provided
• Adequate resources (personnel, time and equipment) are assigned
• Plant and equipment is properly maintained
• Incidents and near misses are investigated to determine root causes so that effective corrective actions can be implemented
• There are systems to identify and analyse risk so that risk control measures can be identified, adequately resourced and targeted most effectively
• There is a system to manage change effectively
• The system is auditable and quantifiable indicators are used to measure the system’s effectiveness and trends
• There is a culture of continuous improvement.