Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Week 4.  23^rd – 27^th April 2012

MIST – Minimum Industry Safety Training.  Two days of classroom health and safety training in the Oil & Gas Industry is very similar to H&S training in the RSME – lots of PowerPoint and a consultant charging megabucks to teach it!  The teaching was actually very good, with the presenter’s experience being passed on through some good anecdotes (crushing injuries, falling injuries) and a video about the Piper Alpha disaster to make us pay attention!  Lots of “as an employee, it’s your duty to…” made us realise that it really is up to individuals to make sure that things are being done correctly, and to report it otherwise.  They take this very seriously.

BOSIET – Basic Offshore Safety Induction and Emergency Training.  Following the MIST, we (my gang of ex-army mates from the MIST course comprising of an ex-sapper, ex-signaller and ex-South African Commando) had another three days of mandatory training before we were licenced to go offshore.  This course was a bit more fun though; still lots of PowerPoint but the banter increased as the lead-instruction dropped in quality.  Sadly, where we had the experience of an ex-rig worker turned consultant for the MIST training, we now had a little girl who used to volunteer for St John’s Ambulance, and whose experience came from her dad working offshore – and this was reflected in the standard of her lessons (and my Inval).  However, the other instructors were great, and before we knew it we were fighting fires and practicing helicopter evacuation from an upside-down, submerged simulator – lots of fun, and great for giving us confidence by practicing what we may need to do in the offshore environment.

Figure 1 – Helicopter Escape Training

Having passed a medical I am now ready to go offshore for a project recce (or similar excuse); can’t wait!

Oh, and my attempts at looking like a civvy are still failing; maybe it’s my chinos, highly polished shoes and pressed shirt that give me away each time?

Week 5.  30^th April – 4^th May 2012

ETAP CPF ALQ

Well, the ETAP CPF ALQ (or Additional Living Quarters on the Central Processing Facility of the Eastern Trough Area Project platform) is going to Appraise, and I’ve got £150k to spend on appraising it.  Easy enough, but tying down the right people to speak to is not so simple – I’ve been stood up once now by the APTL (Area Planning Team Leader, or SO1 ETAP Ops as I like to think of her) who is neither answering her calls, Outlook meeting requests or being at her desk when I pop round to visit; and I really need to speak to her about the business proposal and SOR!  Still, no worries just yet, but I’m going to call out the big guns when I get back from The South so I can move forwards. 

It’s pretty much as mentioned in the last blog, but with the installation looking to be around the £8-12m mark and the cost of an extra 30 POB being around £5m p.a. in wages alone, (plus increases in flights frequency, risk, evacuation procedures and all manner of other things) I have to get a good business case done to validate whether it’s financially viable or not.

But it’s a really good project to be moving forwards with and I’m genuinely excited about it!

Runcorn

Most of last week I was digging further into the spurious task from one of the Programme Managers, Peter Neilson of investigating where the issues lie (if there are any) between the PSN offices in Runcorn and here in Dyce.  This is boiling down to being a question of “what works and what doesn’t?”  So far I’ve interviewed a number of members of both BP and PSN staff here in Dyce: the BP members of staff find the engineers in Runcorn much better than the Dyce ones here, with the problems lying in PSN’s Cost Estimating and variation control mechanisms, that is, tying down the initial spec of a project at each stage before; the PSN Cost Engineer I spoke to says that everything is rosy.  Funny that.

Tomorrow (Tues 8^th May) I fly to The South (Manchester) to interview a number of Job Responsible Engineers (JREs – PSN’s title for Project Managers), Programme Managers and Delivery Focal Points to see what their views are in some closed-door interviews.  Having spoken to a JRE on the phone already, I expect that they are all ‘in the dark’ on what the delays are from, and as frustrated as the BP staff are, but I guess we shall see… Then, on Wednesday (as I found out this morning), I get to present my findings!  This will be in an open forum manner to those in Runcorn I’ve interviewed, plus Peter and a few other Programme managers from here.  The aim of this will be to see if there is a ‘best way forward’ if anything does need to change. 

So, here’s to hoping for some constructive criticism from the interviewees so that this can form the basis of a managerial TMR!