2011 was a hec­tic yet very pro­duc­tive year for the En­er­gy Cham­ber in its im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Safe To Work (STOW) pro­gramme. The suc­cess­es in­clude the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of over 40 con­tract­ing com­pa­nies, six ad­di­tion­al oil and gas op­er­at­ing com­pa­nies sign­ing the STOW Char­ter; and sev­er­al of the Char­ter sig­na­to­ries stick­ing to and com­mu­ni­cat­ing the De­cem­ber 31, 2011, dead­line for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to their con­trac­tors. The move to make STOW cer­ti­fi­ca­tion a manda­to­ry re­quire­ment for con­trac­tors to do busi­ness in the en­er­gy sec­tor, start­ed with the cre­ation of a STOW Char­ter in late 2009. Sev­en­teen of the ma­jor oil and gas com­pa­nies signed up to the char­ter in Feb­ru­ary 2010 and, in do­ing so, they agreed to use STOW for the pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion of their con­trac­tors and to set a dead­line for STOW cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

De­cem­ber 31, 2011, was sub­se­quent­ly agreed among the char­ter sig­na­to­ries as the dead­line for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of high risk, fre­quent­ly utilised con­trac­tors. The STOW Im­ple­men­ta­tion Board, there­fore, had one ma­jor ob­jec­tive for 2011: to have an es­ti­mat­ed 150 high risk con­trac­tors ready for the STOW cer­ti­fi­ca­tion au­dit by the end of the year. The fo­cus was then to put things in place to en­sure suc­cess.

In­de­pen­dent as­ses­sor train­ing

One of the first things that the STOW board recog­nised as a crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tor was the avail­abil­i­ty of se­nior as­ses­sors. There was an ur­gent need to aug­ment the ex­ist­ing pool of 14 se­nior as­ses­sors since some of them were not al­ways im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able to con­duct STOW cer­ti­fi­ca­tion au­dits due to oth­er com­mit­ments. The cham­ber or­gan­ised for Det Norske Ver­i­tas to con­duct an­oth­er one week in­de­pen­dent as­ses­sor train­ing pro­gramme in Feb­ru­ary 2011. The cham­ber al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­duct a re­fresh­er ses­sion for all ex­ist­ing as­ses­sors. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the train­ing ses­sion did not achieve the ob­jec­tive as planned and STOW end­ed up with on­ly four ad­di­tion­al se­nior as­ses­sors to con­duct au­dits on high risk com­pa­nies. There are now 18 se­nior as­ses­sors with the STOW pro­gramme. Eight per­sons from the train­ing were au­tho­rised as as­ses­sors (who can au­dit low risk com­pa­nies), now mak­ing a to­tal of 26 as­ses­sors as­signed to the pro­gramme. The re­fresh­er ses­sion, how­ev­er, was ex­cel­lent. It pro­vid­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for as­ses­sors to up­date their skills, clar­i­fy in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the STOW re­quire­ments and share lessons learnt while con­duct­ing STOW cer­ti­fi­ca­tion au­dits. The as­ses­sors were in a bet­ter po­si­tion af­ter the ses­sion and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed that such ses­sions be a fre­quent fea­ture of STOW.

En­gage­ment of char­ter sig­na­to­ries

An­oth­er crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tor for the board to achieve its ob­jec­tive was the con­stant en­gag­ing of oil, gas and petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies. The En­er­gy Cham­ber and mem­bers of the STOW Im­ple­men­ta­tion Board con­tin­ued to lob­by oil, gas and petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies that had not signed the STOW Char­ter and got six more com­pa­nies to pub­li­cal­ly sign the STOW Char­ter. Five com­pa­nies signed on Feb­ru­ary 8, 2011, at the gala din­ner of the En­er­gy Cham­ber's an­nu­al pre­mier event, the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, and one com­pa­ny signed on Oc­to­ber 5, 2011, at a con­trac­tor ses­sion host­ed by the En­er­gy Cham­ber. A to­tal of 23 com­pa­nies have now signed the STOW Char­ter and have agreed to make STOW a manda­to­ry re­quire­ment for their con­trac­tors. The work did not stop there with the char­ter sig­na­to­ries. The STOW board kept up the rap­port with sig­na­to­ries, en­cour­ag­ing those who had not yet com­mu­ni­cat­ed with their con­trac­tors on the dead­line to do so. The ef­fort re­sult­ed in ac­tion from most of the sig­na­to­ries. How­ev­er, a few sig­na­to­ries are still work­ing out the de­tails of in­te­grat­ing STOW in­to their pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion process and have not yet com­mu­ni­cat­ed the dead­line to their con­trac­tors. The STOW im­ple­men­ta­tion board is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a strat­e­gy to get these sig­na­to­ries ful­ly on board.

Con­trac­tor en­gage­ment

The STOW board's work with the sig­na­to­ry com­pa­nies re­sult­ed in sev­er­al con­trac­tor en­gage­ment ses­sions which were key to achiev­ing the board's ob­jec­tive. The STOW project co-or­di­na­tor and the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the En­er­gy Cham­ber/chair­man of the STOW im­ple­men­ta­tion board were present at sev­er­al con­trac­tor ses­sions dur­ing the year, in­clud­ing those host­ed by BHP Bil­li­ton, In­dus­tri­al Plant Ser­vices Ltd, Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd, At­lantic and The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny. The En­er­gy Cham­ber al­so host­ed a con­trac­tor ses­sion for the board to di­rect­ly in­ter­face with con­trac­tors. These ses­sions were used to com­mu­ni­cate plans re­gard­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of con­trac­tors by the dead­line and pro­vid­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­sem­i­nate in­for­ma­tion and up­dates on STOW and to an­swer ques­tions on the pro­gramme. The most valu­able out­come from the ses­sions though, was the feed­back from con­trac­tors on STOW and the prob­lems that they were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing get­ting ready for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Two things stood out from all the ses­sions. One was that con­trac­tors mis­guid­ed­ly be­lieved that STOW was sole­ly an ini­tia­tive of the En­er­gy Cham­ber.

In ac­tu­al fact, STOW is an ini­tia­tive de­vel­oped in con­junc­tion with the main cus­tomer com­pa­nies in the en­er­gy sec­tor. These com­pa­nies have re­spond­ed to com­plaints from their con­trac­tors about the oner­ous pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise and have agreed, through STOW, on a con­sis­tent way of eval­u­at­ing con­trac­tors on health, safe­ty and the en­vi­ron­ment (HSE). The En­er­gy Cham­ber ad­min­is­ters the pro­gramme on be­half of the in­dus­try while the STOW im­ple­men­ta­tion board en­sures trans­paren­cy and good gov­er­nance. The sec­ond thing is that some con­trac­tors view STOW as a puni­tive mea­sure, rather than some­thing that the En­er­gy Cham­ber has de­vel­oped to help the in­dus­try. The En­er­gy Cham­ber has high­light­ed that STOW saves time and mon­ey in the pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion ef­fort, since on­ly the STOW cer­tifi­cate is re­quired to pre-qual­i­fy. We al­so need to high­light the pos­i­tive feed­back re­ceived from client com­pa­nies and from con­trac­tors who have been cer­ti­fied. These in­clude over­all cul­ture change in­clud­ing sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in in­ci­dent re­port­ing, which was of­ten a chal­lenge in the past, lead­ers in or­gan­i­sa­tions tak­ing a more proac­tive ap­proach with the client com­pa­ny and re­quest­ing meet­ings fo­cused on safe­ty and changes in em­ploy­ees' at­ti­tudes to­wards safe­ty in­clud­ing more ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in HSE-re­lat­ed mat­ters. The En­er­gy Cham­ber will con­tin­ue to high­light pos­i­tive feed­back as they are re­ceived.

Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of con­trac­tors

The biggest suc­cess dur­ing 2011 was the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of 40 com­pa­nies as con­form­ing to the STOW HSE re­quire­ments. The En­er­gy Cham­ber is hap­py to an­nounce that in­clud­ed in the 40 com­pa­nies are 11 small com­pa­nies that par­tic­i­pat­ed in the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank pi­lot pro­gramme to re­ceive grant funds and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to­wards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. A to­tal of 43 con­tract­ing com­pa­nies have now been cer­ti­fied, three of them hav­ing been cer­ti­fied in 2010. The STOW im­ple­men­ta­tion board cel­e­brat­ed the suc­cess­es of the 43 com­pa­nies at a cock­tail re­cep­tion at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on No­vem­ber 30, 2011. The event was spon­sored by NGC.

About STOW

STOW is the En­er­gy Cham­ber's flag­ship pro­gramme. It start­ed off as a com­plaint from con­trac­tors to the En­er­gy Cham­ber about the range of dif­fer­ent HSE pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments among client com­pa­nies and has re­sult­ed in a pro­gramme that is chang­ing the land­scape of con­trac­tor man­age­ment in the en­er­gy sec­tor. The board set an ob­jec­tive at the start of 2011, to have an es­ti­mat­ed 150 high risk con­trac­tors ready for the STOW au­dit. With this ob­jec­tive in mind, the STOW board be­gan en­gag­ing the client com­pa­nies and con­trac­tors which ul­ti­mate­ly re­sult­ed in 40 com­pa­nies be­ing cer­ti­fied dur­ing the year. At the writ­ing of this ar­ti­cle, 102 con­trac­tors have ap­plied for the STOW cer­ti­fi­ca­tion au­dit, in­di­cat­ing that they were ready to be au­dit­ed. Forty-three are cer­ti­fied and se­nior as­ses­sors are work­ing fever­ish­ly to com­plete au­dits so com­pa­nies can rest as­sured that they have met the dead­line.