What SIMOPS Management Must Achieve

One purpose, stated precisely

Simultaneous operations (SIMOPS) management has one purpose: to make sure that the combined risk of activities running at the same time, in the same place, is identified, judged and controlled by someone who can see all of them. It is not a second permit system. It is not a meeting. It is the decision-making layer that sits above individual jobs and asks one question: what happens when these things meet?

At an advanced level, your job is not only to run that layer. You must design it, defend its decisions under schedule pressure, and recognise the cases where the normal rules do not fit. This course assumes you already know how a permit to work works, how a job safety analysis is written and how isolations are applied. It builds on that knowledge and does not re-teach it.

Worked example 1: the quiet dependency

A production team isolates a gas compressor so a maintenance crew can replace a valve. At the same time, a separate crew is flushing a nearby drain line. The flushing crew opens a drain valve that shares a header with the compressor’s vent. Gas that was trapped behind the isolation now has a route to the open drain. Each job had a correct permit. The matrix showed the two jobs as “permitted” because they were five metres apart. Nobody had asked whether the two systems were connected.

Worked example 2: the combined operation

A diving support vessel works beside a platform. The platform emergency plan says “all personnel muster at the lifeboats”. The divers in the water cannot do that, and the vessel cannot leave while divers are down. The two plans conflict. Only a combined plan, agreed in advance, tells everyone what really happens if the platform alarm sounds.