The problem statement of this thesis focuses on the institutional and communicational challenges linked to a major project; the normalization of the operating procedures in the Total refineries between 1984 and 1986. The use of workforce know-how formalization is, in this oil company, at the origin of a strong risk prevention culture. Around 1500 worker focus groups have been settled in the four French refineries since 1976, aiming to set up common knowledge on operations and methods in safety management. It is this workforce knowledge management and its transcription into normalization documents that we invite the reader to discover. We emit the hypothesis of an objective united continuity between the workforces and the management in a world wide sociopolitical setting that we know structured by risk issues. We want to prove that the challenges of such an articulation are primarily communicational; particularly for the blue-collar workers who, instead of being considered as simple recipient of the information, became active participants of the construction of its signification. Form a methodological standpoint we will lean on our proper experience in the Total Group. Project manager, directly responding to the director, we have coordinated the worker focus groups which, inscribed in a rigorous and hierarchically respectful methodology. We will have made it possible to rewrite, of 1984 to 1986, some 150 operating procedures, which represented some 200 000 operations to be written, tested and builded up. This project called « ©Operguid » has been deployed in refineries and then in offshore platforms from the Total Group all around the world. ©Operguid, implemented by our team has also been sold about fifty of refinery petrochemical and fine chemistry clients. This method has become an international standard and is still up-to-date nowadays.
Communication challenges in the standardization of operating know-how for risk prevention : the case of OPERGUID method in Total’s refineries