Last September, the International Well Control Forum (IWCF) took the wraps off “a raft of new measures” designed to improve the competence of people involved in well operations to prevent future major oil spill incidents such as Macondo in the US Gulf of Mexico and Montara in the Timor Sea.
IWCF, which sets international training standards for well control, had been working closely with the human factors task force of the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (OGP) prior to making its recommendations to enhance existing well control training, examination and certification.
Moreover, CEO Dave Price told Energy recently that he believes the recommendations will seed permanent change across the whole upstream oil and gas industry.
But to get to this still very fresh reboot of competency training standards necessitated a full-blown review of the syllabus that had served the industry for some considerable time and the launching of new subjects within key areas identified as root cause findings from major incidents.
Another outcome of the overhaul is that IWCF has also introduced role specific training so that learning would be rendered more relevant to individual roles rather than the generic approach that prevailed up to the point the new standards were introduced.
Not only that, refresher training every two years has become mandatory; a delegate cannot simply turn up for an examination.
“On that whole, that’s a great thing,” said Price.
“I started with IWCF in 2009. At that time we were really an examination board. The mentality was driving test; you would turn up on the day, sit your test, pass, get your certificate, then off you would go and somebody would pay the fee. There would be no refresher training, no renewal of the knowledge that you should have.
“To some extent driven by the Norwegians . . . something called the North Sea Offshore Authorities Forum . . . we set about changing that. This began way before Macondo or any recommendations made by OGP.
“We said that, from 2009, we’ll set up to accredit the whole package. We would visit the training schools wherever in the world they may be, assess the facilities, and accredit instructors and course materials to ensure that everything is fit for purpose.
“And having done all that, we would return in two years and run the audit process all over again. By setting up this rolling audit programme, we stopped being simply an examination board.”
In a nutshell, Price said it meant taking a fresh look at course materials, how they were delivered to delegates, how people in fact learned and what tools would be needed to assess and assure competence.
Price: “Following a number of commissioned reports to explore the implications and inform the forum’s response to the recommendations, we took an holistic, non-analytical approach to their implementation.”
He pointed out that IWCF is the only independent body in the industry that is wholly focused on well control training and accreditation.
Moreover, the organisation represents all stakeholders across the industry, taking guidance from the OGP.
The objective is simple, said Price: “The ultimate goal for everyone in the industry is to deliver a step-change in competence assurance of well control knowledge and understanding so that we can avoid another tragedy on the scale of Macondo.”
However, the new system is not perfect as a proportion of delegates baulk at the prospect of having to do a full week’s refresher training. After all, this does not happen with, for example, North Sea Bosiet safety training where refreshers are shorter than initial training, and for obvious reasons.
“It has and still is our intention to introduce shorter refresher training,” said Price.
“I wouldn’t want to be specific at this point. What I want to see is not the same training every two years; rather a delegate would sit what is called a Level 3 course . . . what used to be a driller’s or supervisor’s course.
“The first time around would be a week and it would cover the IWCF syllabus. Say you score 90% in all of the exams; on that basis in two years’ time you would be eligible for some other course. That would not mean rejoining the basic course half-way through or anything like that.
“What we want to do is set up a standalone renewal course where there is evolution in the training, for example, deepwater drilling and doing time on simulators, working up case studies and running scenarios.”
This sort of training would not be open to first timers and will be progressive in nature.
Price: “I stress, this is a personal vision of how we could perhaps make it better and more constructive for delegates . . . by advancing their knowledge and building that knowledge, not just rehashing the basics. OGP calls them enhanced renewal courses.”
And the timescale for implementation of enhanced renewals? By Q1 or Q2 this year is the expectation.
“Various changes have to be made to the basic courses first. The OGP recommendations and the changes and the five different levels are really what are driving us short-term. Once we’ve got that aspect settled, then the enhanced renewals will be rolled out.
“The recommendations and the courses represent the biggest change in well control training since IWCF and it wouldn’t be sensible for them not to be implemented.”
The review of IWCF’s syllabus and introduction of role specific training were started back in September. The new syllabus at operational level will be implemented this month.
New subjects include:
- Assurance of well integrity throughout the lifecycle of the well
- Barrier management, casing and cementing
- Risk assessment, contingency management and implementation
As referred to above, the training programmes now have the five levels through which delegates must progress, ensuring the required level for each specific job with prevention as the primary objective.
Also, the first section to greet a course delegate is non-technical. It asks the basic question: “Why are you here?”
Price: “Everybody in that classroom’s likely to say: ‘I’m here to get my two years certificate to enable me to go back to work.’.
“But hopefully we can produce something that says: ‘No, that’s not why you’re here. You’re here because if there is a major incident, you might not be going home to your family, nor will your 100 or so mates on the rig.’.
“That’s going to take a bit of imagination on the part of instructors as to how they get the basic message across as to why you as a delegate are on a course. It’s not just about getting a certificate; it’s a whole lot more.”
Having gone through major overhaul, the ambition is to keep the syllabus under continuous review to enable seamless incorporation of the latest equipment, practices and incident data. Well operations crew resource management training will also be introduced to provide non-technical skills to all well operations teams.
While the changes to the basic course will not make a difference to IWCF’s income stream, expectation is that, with OGP recommendations opening the door to a more tailored approach, this will lead to many more people undergoing well control training. In turn, it would will deliver a lift to revenues, which will enable the Montrose-based, not-for-profit organisation to further develop its services including strengthening accreditations.
Price said one of the impacts is that there should indeed be well control training for anybody who has influence over or potential to change the design or operation of a well throughout its life-cycle. The Macondo disaster has acted as a catalyst to this thinking.
“What Macondo did was open a lot of eyes to the consequences of an incident,” said Price. “Following Macondo, the OGP decided that it had to respond with its global industry response groups. That in turn led to the writing of the recommendations that we at IWCF are working to.
“However, Macondo didn’t change a lot of what we were doing, but what it did was lend an urgency to strengthening the competency training offering.
“In fact, we helped to write those recommendations, along with the IADC (International Association of Drilling Contractors). It gave me the mandate to carry out changes; and that becomes a whole lot easier when you have a set of recommendations written by the Oil & Gas Producers’ Association that says: ‘This is what we want to see.’.”
In other words, there is nothing like a crisis to drive change. The pity of it is that it took Macondo to force the pace of a process that was, to be fair, already under way.
Longer term, IWCF is proposing the introduction of a fully modular approach to suit the global and geographical needs of the industry and regular role-based operational simulations.
It is a logical and sensible further step in an industry where distance learning has already been widely embraced, with learning centres like Aberdeen, especially Robert Gordon University, playing a leading role in pioneering this approach.
Thus far and for some time to come, the primary focus is and will remain on delegate knowledge. However, at some point in the future, Price expects to see human factors brought into play as this too is very much on the OGP’s agenda.
Moreover a draft syllabus based on purely behavioural aspects has been prepared by Dr Rhona Flin of Aberdeen University.
Expectation is that there will be more news about this initiative early year.
FACTFILE: IWCF
- Founded by the oil and gas operators in 1992, IWCF is an independent, not for profit organisation with elected representatives and a global network of branches, representing the entire industry.
- Headquartered in Montrose in the UK, the forum sets the international standard for well control training. It exists to improve well control competence and performance by developing and administering well control training, assessment and certification programmes for personnel employed in the well operations sector of the oil and gas industry.
- Since 1992, IWCF has certified over 160,000 people in almost every continent through 210 accredited training centres.
- IWCF is more than 90% funded by the registration fee paid by each candidate. When a candidate turns up at any training school anywhere in the world, the organisation receives a £100 registration fee.
- What is widely misunderstood is that a training school may charge £1,000 or £15,000 or some other figure for a course, of which IWCF gets £100 only to cover everything at its end. The balance of funding comes from IWCF membership fees.
- IWCF does not set the fees charged by the training providers; that is for them to decide.
- There are currently around 20 staff though the new standards mean that more jobs are being created to enable the organisation to cope. The biggest requirement for new people will be auditing compliance and accreditation.
- That especially means hiring in trained auditors and people who can do classroom observations of instructors.
- The initial vision is for a four-year audit programme of training, though Price sees this being reduced to two in line with the rigour being applied to actual training/refresher intervals.
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