Wood Group Moves Ex Military Personnel to O&G Industry

Phase one of a training and recruitment programme developed by Wood Group PSN to migrate 11 skilled military personnel into the oil and gas industry has successfully been completed. Re-Engineer is a UK-based career conversion programme developed to provide ex military personnel with the opportunity to transfer their skills into the oil and gas sector.

Wood Group PSN’s latest recruits come from a range of military backgrounds with two candidates from the Army, four from the Royal Navy and five from the RAF. All 11 candidates achieved promoted ranks in their military careers.

The candidates, who graduated at a ceremony hosted by the company at The TTE Technical Training Group’s training centre in Middlesbrough recently, have successfully completed an eight week intensive training course. Developed in collaboration with the ECITB (Engineering & Construction Industry Training Board) and TTE International Ltd, the course prepared them with the necessary skills, knowledge and competency to work offshore safely and resulted in each of the candidates achieving Vocational Qualification (VQ) Level 2.

As part of the programme, the technicians also undertook training on TTE’s CompEX training facility. CompEx qualifications are mandatory for technicians and engineers working in hydrocarbon environments.

The group will now go on to complete 18 months of on the job training, assessment and verification, typically spending much of the time offshore on some of Wood Group PSN’s busiest North Sea projects following a curriculum to attain their NVQ Level 3. .

Ian McKay, global head of operations and maintenance at Wood Group PSN said:

“Completion of this first phase in the Re-Engineer programme is a milestone for the candidates and for Wood Group PSN. The course is a unique and structured approach to bridging the skills gap. It is an efficient way of bringing additional skilled technicians into the sector and the strength of our relationship with the ECITB and TTE International ensures the course delivers the right levels of training, competency and understanding to work safely offshore from day one.

“Re-Engineer is one of our most important people development initiatives. It represents our investment in the future of our workforce and our industry. We recognise that our success depends on our ability to attract, develop and retain the best people. One way in which we do this is to look at how we develop expert skills. We plan to run more Re-Engineer courses next year for maintenance technicians and production operations technicians, recruiting personnel from the armed forces as well as other continuous process industries such as the petro-chemical and manufacturing sectors. Our collaboration with the ECITB and TTE International has been critical to the success of this initiative and we look forward to working with them to continuously improve the training.”

Across the UK, Wood Group PSN has a workforce of almost 7,000 personnel. With offices in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Runcorn and Hull the company has over 2,900 onshore and approximately 4,000 offshore personnel.

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Offshore Nieuws Staff , December 27, 2011; Image: Wood Group