IADC Health, Safety, Environment & Training Conference & Exhibition

7:30 am Registration, Coffee Service & Exhibition Red Oak Ballroom AB

7:45 am Speaker Briefing (Speakers, Moderators & Session Chairs only) Magnolia

8:20 am Welcome & Introduction Magnolia

• Brooke Polk, Vice President – Accreditation Operations, IADC

8:30 am IADC Chairman Address: Chris Menefee, 2027 IADC Chair, IADC; EVP & Chief Business Officer, Cactus Drilling

8:50 am IADC HSET Committee Update: Brooke Polk, Vice President – Accreditation Operations, IADC

9:00 am The Critical Minutes Before 911 Arrives: Applying USAR Principles to Industrial Rescue Readiness: Matt Wherle, Rescue Instructor, USAR Lieutenant, TX-TF2 Squad Officer, Master Firefighter & Paramedic, Tech Safety Lines
When an incident occurs at height, in a confined space or another difficult-to-access location, the actions taken before municipal responders arrive can significantly affect the outcome. Drawing on the experience of first responders and Urban Search and Rescue leaders, this session examines common gaps between having rescue plans, training and equipment—and being truly prepared to respond. Attendees will learn how to evaluate rescue readiness, strengthen command responsibilities, validate site-specific plans and equipment, improve initial medical stabilization and coordinate effectively with external responders. Through field observations and case-based examples, the presenter will share practical strategies and leading indicators that drilling contractors, operators and service companies can use to build a more integrated and executable emergency response capability.

9:30 am Elevating Safety: Utilization of a New Rescue from Heights Kit: Dan Henn, Drilling Superintendent, Patterson-UTI Drilling Company LLC
Updates to the existing Rescue from Height program established a modern, standardized approach to rescuing downed workers at heights. Through the deployment of specialized equipment, redefining response procedures, and enhancing hands-on training, common delays were identified and eliminated, retrieval times were improved, and risk to workers reduced.

10:00 am Coffee Service & Exhibit Viewing 

10:30 am Occupational Health & Safety 

Fit for Duty, Not Just Cleared for Duty: Closing the Human Performance Gap in Fatigue Management: Keeley Bell, Founder, Silverback G.R.I.T.
Fatigue management and fitness-for-duty programs are built on compliance: hours-of-service limits, self-certification, and paperwork answering whether a worker is cleared to be on location. They rarely answer whether that worker is actually ready to perform under real pressure. Building on themes from IADC’s 2026 HSE&T session on mental performance, this presentation reframes fitness for duty as a performance issue, not just a compliance one. Drawing on 20 years of offshore drilling experience and certified mental performance coaching, it introduces a field-ready protocol covering sleep, hydration, and shift-readiness that supervisors can reinforce without adding complexity to existing safety systems.

An Overview of Mental Health in the Offshore Oil and Gas Workforce: Fernanda Sola Ramos, CEO / Head of Psychology, Josenildo Rodrigues Freire Filho, Caroline Aranha Kalil, CEPEM Business Psychology
This presentation offers a data-driven overview of mental health in the offshore oil and gas workforce, drawn from a continuous monitoring program of more than 200,000 attendances across Brazilian and expatriate workers. It maps the leading factors of emotional distress, benchmarks them against global evidence, and outlines practical, non-alarmist pathways for proactive psychosocial management and ISO 45003 alignment.

Workplace Wellness in Remote and High-Risk Operations: Louise Martin, CEO & Founder, Rigrun Ltd
Workplace wellness programmes are rarely designed for remote and isolated workforces, yet the health demands of extended tours, rotating shifts, and physical isolation are unlike any standard workplace. Drawing on one of the largest academic studies of RIW health globally, 5,835 workers across 15 drilling and production companies, this presentation makes the case that context-specific wellness design directly strengthens human performance and leading indicators of safety.

12:00 pm Luncheon & Exhibit Viewing Red Oak Ballroom AB

1:15 pm Keynote Presentation: Unfreezing the Frozen Middle: The Roadmap to Middle Manager Buy-In: Sharon Lipinski, CEO, Habit Mastery Consulting
Middle managers are essential to the success of any safety initiative, but too often, they’re left out or brought in too late. This session shares new research and a practical roadmap for gaining their buy-in through three key stages: preparing, marketing, and following up. Learn how to engage the “frozen middle” and turn them into safety champions.

1:45 pm The Executive’s Role in Preventing Serious Harm: Christina Sistrunk, Executive Consultant, DEKRA North America
Building on findings from the 2025 IADC SIF Study, this session explores how executive leaders influence serious injury and fatality prevention. While significant industry knowledge exists regarding SIF exposure and causation, organizations continue to struggle with translating these insights into sustained operational performance. Attendees will learn how executive decision-making, governance, resource allocation, and organizational learning directly impact the effectiveness of serious harm prevention efforts. 

2:15 pm Building Capacity Through Incremental Safety: Noble’s Human & Organizational Performance Journey: Darrell Lines, Human Reliability & Performance Manager, John Ellis, Noble Corporation
This presentation demonstrates how Noble embedded Incremental Safety into existing operational processes rather than launching a standalone initiative. By combining leader-worker engagement, operational learning, and learning from normal work, Noble created practical methods for identifying and implementing improvements that strengthen capacity and performance. Noble will share its journey building organizational capacity through Incremental Safety, operational learning, and HOP principles. By studying successful work, learning from frontline workers, and strengthening leader-worker engagement, Noble created a sustainable approach for capturing improvements that enhance safety, workforce engagement, and organizational resilience.

2:45 pm Coffee Service & Exhibit Viewing    

3:15 pm From Analysis to Augmentation: Scaling Human Performance in Drilling Operations Through AI Agents: Sandra Adkins, Human Performance & Safety Culture Manager, Curt Braun, Senior Advisor, Human Performance, bp
Human performance expertise is in high demand across drilling operations, yet resource rarely keeps pace. This presentation shows how AI agents can automate the structured, time-consuming stages of human performance work—reviewing procedures, spotting error traps, identifying critical tasks and deepening investigations—so specialists focus where they add most value. A practical look at scaling human performance without scaling headcount.

3:45 pm Intelligence in Action: How AI is Revolutionizing HSE, Risk, and Efficiency
Panelists will discuss who is adopting AI, how they are using it, and whether AI can be used to predict major failures.

• Craig McMillin, VP HSE and Carbon, BPX Energy
• Joseph Vaughan, Vice President – HSE, Patterson-UTI Drilling Company
• Peter Smith, Head of Process Safety and Environment, Seadrill

4:45 pm Welcoming Reception & Exhibit Viewing Red Oak Ballroom AB

7:30 am Registration, Coffee Service & Exhibition Red Oak Ballroom AB

8:20 am Welcome & Introduction Magnolia

• Thad Dunham, Vice President, Government & Industry Affairs – Onshore, IADC

8:30 am The Oil Field: Developing The Next Generation: Declan Wilson, Petroleum Engineering Student, Texas A&M University
Field experience is proving to be increasingly undervalued by engineering students, yet its importance to long-term success is unparalleled. Drawing from research conducted at Texas A&M, hiring trends, and personal experience as a Field Operations Engineering Intern, this presentation examines the gap regarding student career preferences and industry expectations while demonstrating that hands-on experience develops stronger, safer, and more effective leaders.

9:00 am Building a Total Talent Pipeline: Linking the Intern Experience to Early Career Development: Jared Jensen, Global Learning & Development Advisor, Chevron
In an evolving work environment, the speed at which new talent can be identified, onboarded, and then brought up to full capability is critical. This presentation explores Chevron Wells’ integrated talent approach, linking internships, early-career development, and structured learning within a single framework. Attendees will learn how connecting recruiting, internships, and workforce development can be aligned to support hiring confidence, strengthen workforce capability, and accelerate readiness in safety-critical operating environments. 

9:30 am Coffee Service & Exhibit Viewing

10:00 am E-learning Effectiveness in the Energy Industry
Moderator: Dave Massey, Chief Executive Officer, The REACH Group

• Martin Glenday, President, Moxie Media Inc
• Jared Jensen, Global Learning & Development Advisor, Chevron
• Rhett Stricker, Senior Manager, Training and Development, H&P

11:00 am From Safety-II and HOP to Incremental Safety Culture: Operationalizing Learning from Successful Work: Thomas Koester, Senior Human Factors Specialist, Mariam Mastour, Human Factors Specialist, Force Technology
How can organizations learn as effectively from success as they do from failure? This presentation introduces Incremental Safety Culture (ISC), a new safety concept building on Safety-II, HOP, and other New View approaches. Tracing the development from Learning from Normal Work and Human Performance to ISC, the presentation explores how organizations can strengthen resilience by studying successful everyday work. Participants will be introduced to the Learning from Positive Practice framework and practical examples showing how organizations can learn systematically from successful performance, support human adaptive capacity, and engage frontline workers as active co-creators of safety and operational performance. The presentation focuses on practical methods for operational learning and discusses how positive practice can be identified, reinforced, and translated into improvements that support safety, performance, resilience, and continuous learning.

11:30 am Building the Foundation: Earlier Well Control Education as a Barrier to Well Control Risk: Brandon Rosler, Director – Automation & Optimization, Nabors
Preventing well control incidents starts long before personnel attend Level 3 Driller or Level 4 Supervisory certification. It begins by building a strong foundation of well control knowledge across the workforce. Yet many employees reach advanced certification with little or no formal exposure to Level 1 Awareness or Level 2 Introductory Well Control training, despite Level 1 being freely available. This presentation explores how early competency development can improve threat response readiness and strengthen one of the industry’s most critical barriers – its people. It will demonstrate how a progressive learning pathway, from awareness through certification, improves knowledge retention, situational awareness, and decision-making while better preparing candidates for advanced certification. The session challenges the industry to view certification as the validation of competency – not the starting point for developing it.

12:00 am Luncheon & Exhibit Viewing 

1:15 pm The Hidden Signals of High-Performing Crews: What Millions of Pre-Job Conversations Reveal: Barry Nelson, Founder & CEO, FactorLab
Recent research confirms that stronger pre-job safety briefs are associated with better control of high-energy hazards and improved long-term SIF performance. Discover what millions of frontline planning conversations reveal about hazard recognition, psychological safety, leadership, and operational readiness—and how simple tools, field-ready feedback, and emerging AI capabilities can transform pre-work planning from a compliance activity into a powerful system for leadership development, learning, and serious injury prevention.

1:45 pm The Awakening of Safety: Operationalizing Conscious Safety in High-Risk Drilling Environments: Gerson Giovanni Sevilla Rodriguez, CEO | Principal QHSE Consultant, CISHAC QHSE Compliance Services; HSE Senior Officer, Fujairah Port Authority (FPA)
The drilling industry faces a paradox: rigid rules and advanced tech cannot prevent all high-potential incidents. This presentation introduces “The Awakening of Safety,” a field-tested methodology to combat “Routine Blindness” in high-tenure crews. Learn how to operationalize the “Four-Phase Awakening Sequence” to transform your workforce from passive compliance to active, conscious decision-making, ensuring mental engagement is treated as a critical technical barrier. 

2:15 pm Barrier Management: Driving Process Safety Improvement: James Sneddon, Director US, TUV Rheinland Solutions US
This presentation explores how barrier management can provide a practical, risk-informed view of the health of safeguards relied upon to prevent and mitigate major accident events. It considers how existing operational data can be used to identify barrier degradation, understand its impact on risk, and support timely, informed decision-making.

2:45 pm Adjournment