The Development and Implementation of Environmental Training for Management and Employees

Abstract

This paper describes the design and implementation of an environmental training strategy in a major North Sea operating company. The training events were designed using in-house environmental and training advisers to include all levels of management, operational employees and contractors. As well as designing new courses, material was produced to introduce an environmental awareness produced to introduce an environmental awareness component into some existing courses. Introduction Environmental protection management is supported in industry by a number of activities. As in the management of other quality systems, the key elements in the maintenance of quality improvement are considered to be management commitment, comprehensive documentation, audit and training. This paper is concerned with the development of environmental training which is probably at present the least well developed of the present the least well developed of the environmental management activities. There have been few published accounts of the development of environmental training in industry. However, Frazier has described the planning of environmental training in an oil and gas production company aimed at ensuring employees production company aimed at ensuring employees were made aware of the need for legal compliance. The paper will describe the development and implementation of environmental training for Shell U.K. Exploration and Production (Shell Expro), a major North Sea operator. The scale of the operations to be covered included some 4500 employees, and depending upon activities, a similar number of contract personnel. The operations include in excess of 30 offshore structures and several mobile drilling units, gas terminals, oil and gas pipelines and onshore support bases. The operator pipelines and onshore support bases. The operator is actively developing several new fields, in many cases using new technology. The training system described was developed and is in the process of being implemented in order to meet the company environmental policy requirements while recognising the needs of the business. The North Sea offshore industry is currently faced with making major safety-related investments as well as developing low-cost solutions to enable exploitation of existing and new hydrocarbon reserves against an uncertain oil price. Concurrently, there has been unprecedented interest in protection of the North Sea environment and broad agreement that certain discharges should be reduced or prohibited. The paper starts by expanding on the background to the need for environmental training and describes the company structure and existing training regime which had to be taken into account. The strategy and principles adopted and some practical experience gained during implementation of the training programme are then described. Background Policy Policy P. 509