BP will offer advanced training programmes for its offshore drilling teams under a new global agreement with Maersk Training. By 2016, Maersk Training, which currently is working with BP on training in Europe, plans to open a new state-of-the-art facility in Houston that will feature highly interactive simulators replicating nearly every critical job on an offshore drilling rig.
BP will use the facility to train integrated offshore drilling teams – comprised of BP employees and contractors — in what it calls an ‘immersive simulation environment’. The hands-on, scenario-based approach goes well beyond traditional classroom training. It allows teams to practice events and joint procedures together as an integrated unit, rather than as individual contributors. Like similar BP training programmes already under way at a Maersk Training facility at Svendborg, Denmark, courses at the Houston facility will incorporate human and organisational factors that frequently are cited as a direct cause or contributing factor to offshore incidents. Course instructors will also be able to assess personnel under intense virtual reality, to levels that exceed industry standards.
The new Maersk Training facility will be located in north Houston and patterned after the company’s offshore simulation complex in Denmark, which opened in 2012.
