Anyone who has ever been asked to explain the offside rule in football or tried to teach a child how to swim knows that often the best way of getting your message across is to get your hands dirty and lead by example.
Our industry is a hard nut to crack. With outdated stereotypes, misinformation and a lack of understanding about the wide variety of careers and opportunities it offers, on paper, oil&gas is a tough sell.
If getting your feet wet works when it comes to mastering the finer points of the butterfly stroke, why not apply the same logic to explaining what your company does, why it is dynamic and what skills you are looking for in future employees?
The industry is taking great strides in opening up avenues of communication with young people with the aim of demystifying oil&gas and redressing many of the common misconceptions about the sector.
The Oil & Gas Academy is leading the charge to bring the sector alive for the next generation through a series of interactive events which give young people the chance to use their existing skills and knowledge and apply it to practical challenges similar to those experienced by science, engineering and business professionals.
Young Engineers & Science Clubs give school pupils the chance to take what they learn in the classroom and use it as the basis for exciting projects and competitions. A good example is the recent ROV MATE Challenge, organised by The Robert Gordon University, in which students were tasked with designing and building an ROV capable of completing a series of tasks connected with a submarine rescue.
By engaging with these young people in an interactive way outwith the confines of standard lessons, we can open their eyes to the reality that oil&gas is much more than just getting hydrocarbons out of the ground.
We are working on similar hands-on projects in other energy hubs around the UK.
A key project for the academy this year is our involvement in the successful OilSim schools competition. Now renamed The Oil & Gas Academy PetroChallenge, the event is an online learning simulation that provides an overall understanding of oil&gas exploration.
Teams act as energy companies looking for oil&gas in a fictitious province.
They study seismic surveys, bid for licences, farm out shares of licences to other teams, compete to get rigs, contract service providers and choose where to drill wells.
In order to succeed, pupils need to acquire an understanding of the dynamics of the industry, have an ability to solve complex challenges and work together as a team.
For the hundreds of budding engineers, geo-scientists and OIMs of the future taking part, the interactive element of the PetroChallenge will open their eyes to the excitement and diversity of oil&gas in a way that other teaching methods simply can’t match.
The competition, run in partnership with Simprentis and The Robert Gordon University, will take place at Aberdeen Business School (Garthdee campus) on September 1-2, with the winners announced at Offshore Europe.
The industry is doing its bit to tackle the skills issue – but there’s always room for more companies to get involved and get interactive. Any organisation that wants to work with the academy to secure a better future for the industry as a whole should visit www.opito.com
David Doig is CEO of OPITO – The Oil & Gas Academy
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