OPITO and Atlas Interactive Achieve Significant Milestone in North Sea Oil and Gas Safety Training
27 June 2011
OPITO and Atlas Interactive announced today that over half of the UK’s experienced offshore workforce has now taken up MIST, the industry-recognised basic safety training course. Atlas, the Aberdeen-headquartered learning and skills provider, has exceeded 50,000 licences, with over 800 UK oil and gas companies having now embraced OPITO’s UK standard for Minimum Industry Safety Training (MIST) since it was introduced in April 2009.
David Doig
John Rowley, CEO of Atlas Interactive, said: “We are delighted to have reached this milestone helping oil and gas workers in the UK achieve MIST certification. While this represents more than half of the experienced workforce, we continue to receive demand for MIST as employers in the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) continue to firmly embrace the benefits of having their workforce trained to a common standard.
“The innovative technology we developed to implement MIST has proved highly effective in meeting the industry’s needs. Not only is it helping to bring consistency to the industry’s safety training, it is also generating significant savings in terms of the time and money companies spend on this training.”
Driven by the industry’s commitment to improve safety, MIST was introduced in the UK in April 2009 and continues to be rolled out across all disciplines of the oil and gas workforce with 47,192 experienced workers having completed the programme to date.
Developed by Step Change in Safety and OPITO, it is being supported by industry for the entire UKCS sector to embrace this initiative to increase safety awareness for offshore workers, making MIST one of the most successful safety initiatives deployed in the North Sea.
Atlas recently won the contract win to develop and deliver the international version of the programme and IMIST will be launched in the Middle East in July before being rolled out across global oil and gas provinces.
David Doig, group chief executive of OPITO, said: “The success of MIST to date in the UK is testament to the continued commitment within the industry towards ensuring the highest possible safety standards among its workforce and provides the industry with a solid platform on which to build its skills base further in the future.”
The course contains nine modules including topics like the risk assessment process, asset integrity, the use of hazardous substances, working at height and mechanical lifting activities. Training is undertaken via the internet, saving industry potential downtime and eliminating travel costs.
The technology underpinning MIST is Atlas FAST TRACK. An award winning diagnostic tool which works by assessing a learner’s knowledge during a pre-assessment, under time bound conditions. The course is delivered to the learner based on their personal knowledge gaps and use of a process that rebuilds the course size each time based on incorrect responses. This ensures an ultimate pass mark of 100%.
This approach has seen days of classroom based content cut down to two hours of e-learning which can be undertaken at any location at any time. The significant difference in the costs shows a return on investment for the industry of approximately £28.7million (GBP) to date.
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