Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

All over the place this week as the title suggests.

Lifting Appreciation Training.  This course was an introduction to moving things offshore, and included LOLER standards, lift planning, rigging, and practical exercises; it’s easy to forget that in the offshore environment you can’t just drive forks everywhere and so rigging is used far more than I had imagined.  Indeed, for BP, a person is not allowed to lift anything above 20kg and so other means are standard practice.  The practical exercises included establishing rigging systems for moving things (in this case a dummy motor) through an area with beams and pipes in the way; and also playing with a 40 tonne pillar crane.

Figure 1. Operating the pillar crane.

Maximo Work Management One Day Essentials.  This was an essential course teaching me how to raise work orders and requisitions.  What I found interesting were the teaching methods; lots of magnetic labels to position in a team, and also good use of IT so we could all work on the software on a simulated database.  If only JPA was taught so well…  Oh, and the handouts were issued on a memory stick at the end of the course.  I love civvies!

Runcorn kick off meeting.  And the ETAP project is under Appraisal!  Finally held teh meeting so that the study can now get under way to estimate the costs of ALQ on ETAP.  What they can’t do, however, is work out the operating costs, so there’s still a lot of work for me to do on that.  Still fighting through the red tape to get my flight booked offshore, but that will happen with time. 

Design Work.  Had a good chat to some of our (WG PSN) engineers to see if I can get involved with some in-depth technical design, so I can be 100% sure to tick off competencies A and B.  The two lads there (the team should be six!) are both chartered through IMechE so know the score and it will be good to work with them.  Interestingly, Ish’s engineer for the LPBC exhausts has just been moved by WG PSN, so I might be filling in that role!

In other news.  Damaged my calf in a race, so resting that at the moment before the two marathonesque races that face me over the next month.  Open water swimming is still proving to be awesome although the most recent places were quite tame, taking the form of sheltered lochs; cycling is giving me some sharp tan lines, even this far North.  Liz is now fully trained as Adjt and looking forward to lead elements of 39 moving up in June.  The Waterbeach summer ball was good fun but not the epic that it was a few years back, where I first met Steve and Faye…