Assuring technical competence

With the forecasted skills shortages the energy industry faces, the need to build safety resilience, increase workforce transferability across sites and sectors and ensure workers are technically competent has never been more important. Workers are always required to undertake basic safety training before being deployed to hazardous sites, but they do not necessarily demonstrate ongoing technical competence.

Incidents such as Piper Alpha, Bacton Gas Terminal and Deepwater Horizon were all avoidable. Serious managerial failures were attributed to all these events, including the lack of diligence around the recognition and assurance of competence standards. One of the biggest drivers behind the industry-led Connected Competence initiative is to help avoid workplace incidents like this. Put simply, assuring a base level of ongoing technical competence for all workers creates a safer working environment for everyone.

By requiring workers to demonstrate their ongoing technical competence every three to four years, Connected Competence assures a common approach to base technical competence required of site-based craft and technician trades in the same way as sector-specific safety training is widely acknowledged. This helps build confidence that everyone is supporting a duty of care to their co-workers around them.

Supported and enabled by the ECITB, Connected Competence was developed in collaboration with some of the UK’s largest contracting companies. Each has committed to working together to use standardised testing to create a safer, more competent and transferable workforce. The initiative was formally adopted as an industry-wide framework in 2021, focused initially on aligning base technical competence standards among oil and gas workers.

The initiative reduces the duplication of assessments and costs, speeds up the deployment of competent personnel between sites, but most importantly, increases safety through the recognition and ongoing assurance of base technical competence. When the base standard has been achieved – either at site, as part of an employer’s competence management system or at a testing centre – candidates receive a digital badge. This gives them ownership of their skills, which is verifiable online and transferable across energy industry employers. By every site-based worker assuring their ongoing base technical skills, the industry is taking great strides towards a safer industry for everyone.

Why the initiative was needed

An investigation following an incident on an engineering construction site concluded that the employer could not prove the currency of technical competence of the workers concerned. Qualifications achieved many years ago or attendance certificates at training events do not prove workers’ current competence. Supply chain partners recognised they needed to address this. They also recognised the significant wastage and huge cost to industry in not recognising technical competence standards when workers transferred between organisations. The impact of this was that many workers were duplicating previous training and testing to demonstrate their technical competence to a new employer or to gain access to a new client site. Employers would often start competence profiles from scratch when workers transferred to different contracting organisations.

This created significant duplication of training at a huge cost. It also meant workers had to re-do assessments with a knock-on delay to onboarding. With an increased demand for skilled workers, particularly during busy periods such as maintenance shutdowns, employers needed a programme that harmonised assessments and made records accessible online so that workers could transfer easily between companies and sectors.

Mark Wilson, HSE and Operations Director at Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), said: “Failing to recruit, retain and attract the necessary capabilities and expertise into the industry will jeopardise the UK’s ability to meet its energy security and climate goals. Connected Competence needs to be part of that solution. Supporting a recognised, transferable base level of technical competence will increase our safety resilience, establish common competence and reduce costs.”

Industry support

Connected Competence employers have demonstrated outstanding commitment to safety in their collaborative actions to standardise a base level of technical competence for site-based trades.

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