AN INTEGRATED TRAINING PROGRAMME FOR THE OFFSHORE INDUSTRY

Referring to the recommendations of The Public Inquiry into the Piper Alpha Disaster, and drawing on experience of other industries with a process safety element, the relevance of training with regard to Offshore Process Safety Management will be examined. When applied without proper consideration, traditional training methods, such as Classroom based and Full Simulation, can leave gaps in the overall training strategies of offshore operators. These gaps can be closed by the application of appropriate training devices to correctly identified training needs. By this accurate application of training method, a versatile system readily adaptable to changes in control equipment, target population of trainees and even different installations can be developed; this helps to alleviate the all too frequent redundancy of full simulators once the initial installation and commissioning phase of control equipment has been completed. Examples of options for process safety training will be discussed.