About 15 years ago, when it became evident that a great bank of senior personnel in oil and gas production, refining, and petrochemicals would soon be nearing retirement age and exiting the industry, enlightened management initiated actions to forestall the approaching intelligence drain and employee shortage.
Some companies quickly developed programs to document and archive all procedures, methods, and specialty knowledge within their companies while their skilled experts were still on board.
Some cross-trained existing employees for competency in numerous areas, giving monetary incentives for the number of skills learned and amount of flexibility achieved.
Many created scholarships, offered internships, and developed more complete in-house training programs for interns and new hires.
Consultants became very popular.
All in this together
But more had to be done.
Because this was an industry-wide problem, it was clear that combining assets and working together to attract an army of talent to the industry would be needed over a period of time, especially as the industry would be competing for talent with other industries and also needed to enhance its image.
So industry partners formed associations to promote the more-widespread teaching of process technology and to recruit future skilled workers. These efforts are especially helpful for independents and small firms without the resources of larger companies.
The associations provided online web-based courses, job banks, and advice and assistance for students. They also supplied materials, direction, and company input for educators starting process technology (PTEC) programs and coordinated with industry to ensure internships and job placement on completion of the requisite programs.
CAPT—the Center for the Advancement of Process Technology (www.captech.org)—is the primary umbrella association comprised of regional associations and other partners in industry, educational institutions, and vendors such as consultants.
On its web site, CAPT lists 33 oil, gas, and chemical company partners; 9 regional associations; 28 associate members (vendors); and 49 educational partners—colleges and universities that offer 2-year PTEC degrees.
These educators work with member companies to place students upon successful completion of their programs.
At first, college-age or older recruits were targeted, and colleges across the US were approached about adding PTEC programs.
CAPT itself offers web-based courses covering Introduction to Process Operations, HS&E, Quality, Equipment, Systems, and Instrumentation.
Expanding the scope
It became evident that this was to be a long-term endeavor and that even students in high school and younger could be introduced to the industry to whet interest for future recruitment.
CAPT offers materials to high schools for forming “PTEC in High Schools” programming and provides a guide for forming a 1-week summer Science and Technology Preview Institute as a recruiting tool for high school females, as one of the organization’s goals is diversity.
ConocoPhillips has gone a step further, having just announced a partnership with the National Energy Education Development for 1-day workshops for K-12 teachers in 24 US cities. The workshops will equip teachers with tools and information to incorporate into daily classroom activities and “improve their students’ energy knowledge.” ConocoPhillips said it also will sponsor training for educators at national and regional educator conferences throughout 2008 with the same goal.
Diversity is also evident in a separate program that has a twofold goal: (1)to help solve the military’s problem with heavy unemployment of servicemen and women following their release from active duty and (2) to assist the oil industry with its need for intelligent, strong, and disciplined personnel.
In a sort of leathernecks-to-roughnecks program, Troop Transition Inc. (TTI) has just begun its first 10-week class in rig operations and safety (“Troops 2 Roughnecks”) at the Marine base at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Marines expecting to leave the service in 6-12 months can take the course at no personal cost, compliments of Uncle Sam’s tuition-assistance program.
TTI, which has had good success in Troops 2 Truckers, Teachers, Mechanics, etc., and its Direct 2 Management program for officers, hired International Association of Drilling Contractors-accredited Randy Smith Training Solutions to teach the course and is working with exploration companies to provide job opportunities and further training for these Marines upon successful course completion and receipt of their rig passes.
