Megamas was the 1st training provider in the world to deliver OPITO Tropical BOSIET courses
On the 28 June 1999, Megamas Training Company (“Megamas”) Sdn Bhd was successful in being awarded a 5 year contract to provide offshore training courses to Brunei Shell Petroleum Company (“BSP”) Sdn Bhd and their Contractors.
The contract work scope comprised of delivering the “Combined Offshore Safety and Survival Course”, including BSP’s requirement for travelling safely offshore by boat.
This course contractually required internationally recognised certification based on a recognised competency based standard.
In June 1999, there was not a suitable standard that could meet all of BSP’s contractual requirements.
The most suitable standard was the UK Offshore Petroleum Industry Training Organisation (OPITO) Basic Offshore Safety Induction and Emergency Training (BOSIET).
Therefore, a new competency standard had to be written to meet the BSP contract requirements, and this standard should closely follow the OPITO internationally recognised competency standard.
The key objective was to establish a basic competency based training standard, appropriate to the tropical waters surrounding much of the Brunei operations.
BSP and Megamas jointly developed a ‘new’ standard called the Warm Water BOSIET, and this standard, on completion, was given to OPITO for their approval. Subsequently, OPITO approved the standard, and the term applied to the standard was ‘Warm Water BOSIET’, a ‘custom award’ to Megamas endorsed by industry.
Megamas became an OPITO approved training and assessment centre in March 2000. The approval given to Megamas covered the delivery of the OPITO approved Warm Water BOSIET course. This approval satisfied the BSP contractual requirements.
The standard was different from the existing OPITO BOSIET in as much as the requirement for survival suits was removed. The specifics of the UK induction were also removed and replaced with a generic induction element, which provided a framework for the induction to be designed to address the specific requirements unique to each operating region. The standard also addressed the core competencies (firefighting/sea survival/helicopter escape and first aid) required for basic training.
The ‘Warm Water’ BOSIET standard attracted a lot of attention from the regional training suppliers and Operators and they expressed interest to adopt the standard. In 2001, the ‘Warm Water” BOSIET standard was given to OPITO. OPITO reviewed the standard and separated it into two standards:
- Tropical BOSIET, and
- Travel Safely by Boat
Brunei has a requirement for boat transfer training. Titled “travel safely by boat” it addresses the training needs for those persons travelling to and from offshore facilities by boat.
Since its introduction in 2000 in Brunei Darussalam, the number of regional OPITO approved training centres has grown considerably, and today, it is delivered worldwide in 13 countries, including:
- Brunei
- Malaysia
- Singapore
- Australia
- Nigeria
- Qatar
- Trinidad
- USA
- Indonesia
- Thailand
- Philippines
The standard can only be delivered by OPITO approved training providers. This ensures the training is delivered in a safe environment and to the specified criteria of the standard. All training achievements are recorded within a central recording system (Vantage CTR Database), which ensures the validity of certification. The key benefit of training to the standard is that by achieving the core competence requirements within the OPITO structure, personnel will only require additional training specific to each regional operating area and no duplication of the core competencies will occur. Refresher training (FOET) is also contained within the standard.
From the 1st course delivered in Brunei Darussalam in March 2000, at Megamas, 000’s of OPITO TBOSIET courses have been delivered throughout the world.
In conclusion, Megamas and BSP have together made a significant worldwide contribution improving the safety of the offshore worker, which all started in Brunei Darussalam, and, is yet again, further evidence of the very highest HSE standards within BSP, supported by Megamas, arguably leading the way throughout Shell EPA and the Region.