CMAS - An innovative approach to offshore worker training & competence management
Authors: Haddock Jack , Neill Michael 
Published: October 2008

A competent workforce is essential for maintaining the necessary integrity of offshore operations. Traditional methods for managing workers training and competence, however, do not reflect this importance and need redesigning to address some of the skills challenges facing the industry today and in the future. CMAS is one such redesigned process. It addresses the fundamental needs of role requirements, training, and assessment as well as more recent issues such as multiskilling, mobile workforces, team based working and workforce rationalization. Fundamentally it provides a means to demonstrate what a worker is competent to do and identifies the competence gaps allowing these gaps to be targeted with an appropriate method of training.

Introduction

Competence Management for offshore workers maybe a new term but is hardly a new concept. It has been common practice for generations that Supervisors and Managers have been responsible for ensuring that those charged with operating costly and hazardous plant and equipment were indeed competent to carry out that work. The methods used have typically been informal relying on observation, experience, familiarity, judgment and instinct. New employees would be hired on the strength of qualifications and / or experience gained elsewhere, there may be some training then a trial period to see whether they were indeed capable of performing the tasks required of them. In recent years, this management of this process has started to change for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the skills availability challenge facing the industry in the near future. This paper outlines the efforts being made by one Operator to adopt a new approach to managing the Competence of its offshore workforce.

Why Competence became an issue in the North Sea

In the mid 90's Competence Management became a compliance issue in the UKCS following regulations developed after the Piper Alpha incident. Safety Case Regulations issued by the Health & Safety Directorate (HSE) required operators to identify how they manage the competence and training of individuals and teams on their offshore installations. (Ref. 1) In practice, this law required operators to demonstrate how they would ensure their workforce was competent to carry out the tasks required of them. Many operators and contractors responded by introducing qualification based Competence systems. There had been some collaboration across the industry and national tandards developed to support Vocational Qualifications (VQ's) specifically for the discipline skills required offshore. OPITO (Offshore Petroleum Industry Training board) was established through this collaboration and currently holds these training standards.

The current state today is that a majority of UKCS operators use some form of qualification-based system with workers being assessed by certified assessors using the national standards developed in recent years. The effectiveness of this approach is being challenged in some areas as is evidenced by the number of Competence related improvement notices being issued by the HSE. Like many other operators, BP, initially followed many different routes, some VQ based, but made a conscious decision to change to a new approach that it felt better supported the integrity of all its operations.