The end of this month will see the oil and gas industry presented with an opportunity to contribute to the continual evolution of world-class industry practices designed to protect our workforce as OPITO stages the first international conference focused on global safety and competency.
For an industry where such emphasis is placed on reaching and maintaining the highest possible levels of skills and safety, it amazes me that 40 years on from the discovery of oil, this is the first time that the worldwide energy sector has come together in this way.
The inaugural OPITO Safety and Competence Conference (OSCC) event, which will take place on November 25 in Abu Dhabi, will provide a forum for improving standards of safety and competency in the global workplace.
Set to become an annual occasion, it will draw together senior figures from national and multi-national oil and gas operators and contractors to share best practice, lessons learned and new ideas with training and education providers from the major oil and gas provinces.
Recent events are an on-going reminder that the oil and gas industry operates in some of the most challenging and hazardous environments. Safety is paramount and the industry has a fundamental duty to make sure that its people are competent and trained to the best possible standards.
There is currently no global platform to debate the issues around safety and competency standards. As part of OPITO’s drive to roll out common global standards, we are launching this event to kick-start a conversation about how we achieve standardisation of training around the world.
The one-day conference will include an introduction from Gordon Ballard, UK chairman of Schlumberger, a keynote presentation on global standards for a global industry from David Miller – deputy chief inspector of air accidents and deputy head of the Department for Transport’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch AAIB – and a case study from Brunei Shell Petroleum on building world-class emergency response training and development framework using OPITO standards.
There will also be a session for employers on the new OPITO technical standards and qualifications framework and another on how training providers from around the world can work collectively to deliver world-class common standards and be part of the design and review process
Better communication is vital if organisations are to improve safety in their workforce and this has to be driven from the top. My hope is that from this conference we will see new dialogue and conversation between trade bodies, national oil companies, majors and independents across the board.
Using OPITO International as the central point of connectivity all parties can better promote safety leadership and a culture of sharing on which the industry can continue to build in the future.
In the last five years we have succeeded in introducing OPITO standards to improve safety and competence of the indigenous and transient workforces in 30 countries. Currently 140,000 people around the world are trained to those standards. We want to double that by 2014 and believe a focused, annual event will help us achieve that ambition.
David Doig is chief executive of OPITO Group
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