Management and Development of an Assessment Tool in Predicting Competencies of Oil and Gas On-Shore Contractor Workers in Sarawak

Abstract

One active site that is involved with onshore oil and gas activity is Bintulu, which is in Borneo, Sarawak. There is an average of 1800 contractor workers at the site with a size of 276 hectares, an average of 462 Permit-To-Work (PTW) released daily. The site recorded 1 fatality case in every 5 years cycle since 2009. This trend shows that serious attention needs to be addressed, especially on the contractor worker selection process. Due to this, worker's competency working in this industry needs to be strengthened as part of the element in Health, Safety, and Environment Management System (HSEMS) requirement to ensure sustainable and safe operation of the plant as it contributes to HSE performance of the organization. The objectives of this study involve assessing contractor's HSE competency and HSE attitude working in the oil and gas industry in Sarawak, develop a comprehensive assessment tool to measure worker's competency, and propose a specific syllabus for potential workers to work in the oil and gas industry. Hence, a pilot survey has been conducted to assess 88 contractor worker's HSE competencies. A quantitative approach via a Likert scale questionnaire was used to collect the data. The pilot survey results show that education level, experience, and competency played key important roles in HSE. Based on the pilot survey findings and literature review related to competency assessment for the workforce in oil and gas, furthering this study will be able to develop an algorithm for the assessment of contractor worker's HSE competency in the oil and gas industry in Sarawak.