In keeping with its vision to develop Centres of Excellence to increase in-country spend for training institutes by identifying, developing and maximizing these institutions in Nigeria to meet international standards, as well as assess the gaps in order to categorize them with a view to working with foreign training entities to benchmark their capabilities, the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, (NCDMB) engaged PETROFAC – an international training agency, and Oil and Gas Trainers Association of Nigeria, (OGTAN) in a collaboration to set up a Training Needs Assessment, (TNA) team on the proposed Nigerian Oil and Gas Sector Technical Training Study ‘Centre of Excellence’ by which a Mid-Term Report was submitted recently.
Congratulating the team on the report, the Executive Secretary of the Board, Engr. Ernest Nwapa hinted that the delivery of the mid-term report was crisp and comprehensive as the exercise should be used to support specific areas the Board would further address in a bid to make additional comments without prejudice to the report. He lauded the TNA project as an initiative that assuaged the Federal Government’s determination to create capacity and get people employed through the recently introduced Nigerian Content Employment Initiative, (NCEmI) directly linked to industry skill requirements to fully deepen their participation in exploration and production activities.
Engr. Nwapa indicated the exercise was to grow a service sector training need to push government institutions saddled with the responsibilities for technical training to adopt the needed standards for qualitative training, as the Board would get IOCs to respond to the team’s questionnaire which is one key fact in bringing the industry training needs assessment to bear. He commented that, ‘we have to really work on the major philosophy of what we are going to get at the end of this exercise as the aim of it is not to go too far in writing the report before getting feedback from the Board’. The Executive Secretary enumerated other areas to look into for effective coverage of the exercise to include the Petroleum Technology Development Fund, (PTDF) and National Power Training Institute, (NAPTI), an initiative of the Ministry of Power.
He explained further that, ‘we need to organize a workshop based on the database realized in this exercise, as envisaged in the project scope to show the analyses done by which the Board will use its outcome to find trainers competent to bid for jobs in the oil and gas industry’. The Chief Executive implored the team to come up with criteria that would enable the Board categorize the training programs in terms of infrastructure, size of man-hours, skills categorization and other parameters to be entered in the NOGICJQS such as the amount of spend on training both on JV and Federal Government projects in order to get a statistics as training in Nigeria is currently unstructured.
He further disclosed that the Board is undertaking the exercise to develop the training needs of the industry, and standardize the quality and delivery of training, pointing out that an interim categorization will commence in the last quarter of 2013 as full categorization has been slated for the following year. He enjoined operators to be fully categorized during the interim period as industry standardization will commence January 1, 2014. Engr. Nwapa while thanking the TNA team mentioned that the outcome of the exercise pending its full report will determine how effective the Board will put in place these training standards, indicating that the report is a review of the project outcome and not a brief for the development of Training Centres of Excellence as the essence of the exercise is to categorize the skills gaps with the aim of having an intermediate report prior to the full report to the Board.
He, however, charged the team to escalate non-compliance by respondents, particularly the IOCs to the Board. Speaking earlier, the Project Team Lead for the TNA on behalf of PETROFAC/OGTAN, Mr. Adekunle Taiwo narrated that the presentation was essentially to give an Interim Report from the commencement of the project to its current status based on human capital development fundamental in bringing long term sustainable benefits to Nigeria through a classic ‘hub and spoke’ design model for the Integrated ‘Centres of Excellence’ as vehicle for stakeholder alignment. He noted that the assessment of the study is to check the capabilities of service providers, identify those who have the standards and also identify those who do not, to be able to recommend how to close the gaps.
Mr. Taiwo proposed that the project aims to enhance the training and development of Nigerian graduates and technicians to internationally accredited world class standards, identify industry needs and provide local solutions to close capability and capacity gaps, develop employable skills, knowledge and safety competencies to enhance routes to employment and raise the bar to enhance the facilities available for delivering local training provision. These he further added, would stimulate and leverage business opportunities and create the mechanism that delivers a pool of suitably qualified talent to support strategic staffing requirements of IOCs and other employers.
The Project Team Lead highlighted that the interim findings limits what the project start-off was about as emphasis on the mid-term report is that all available back-up data will be provided the Board while the Final Report will have as its objectives as anticipated at the completion of the study to ascertain the type and volume of human capacity needs within the industry, identify suitable locations where ‘Centres of Excellence’ with the potential to become components of a National Oil and Gas Sector Skills and Training Infrastructure can be established and identify regional institutions that require upgrading to service the skills requirements of the industry.
Other objectives to be met, according to Mr. Taiwo, are conceptual business plan that clearly defines the critical path to realization of the overall vision to establish an integrated ‘hub and spoke’ infrastructure and put in place an initial program of blended learning designed for delivery by an identified Centre of Excellence to a pilot group of trainees which indicates choice of subject matter/technical discipline and Centre of Excellence location to be demand driven as informed by TNA findings. He, therefore, thanked the Board for the opportunity given the team in championing the training needs of the oil and gas industry in Nigeria.
