concern rather than caused it per se. There seems to be a number of factors in play: • The societal shift in North America and Western Europe to put less social cachet on manual labour means fewer young adults are interested in this work. The drop in vocational training and apprenticeships, coupled with the growth in the desire for degree qualifications, is one sign of this • The societal concern about climate change has led to a situation where (rightly or wrongly) young adults in those regions view the oil/petrochemical industry as being a bad industry to go into, both for personal social standing and because they don’t view it as having long-term career prospects • Then, finally, the recent pandemic has awoken a greater desire amongst young adults for work that can be done remotely, from home and does not involve a nomadic exis- tence, travelling from job site to job site. In the European Union, the shortage in skilled labour in Western Europe was, until recently at least, partly covered by the migration of skilled labour from Central and Eastern countries within the Union that had not yet de-industri- alised. That migration has slowed as the Central and Eastern economies have grown to the point where the disruption of moving west is no longer offset by a bigger pay packet than could be earned at home. In the near term, the shortages may be covered by higher wages to encourage existing skilled workers to stay in this line of work, perhaps coupled with loosening restrictions on migratory labour. In the medium term, companies may need to set up testing and training courses for their contractor workforce and help improve the training of workers who are not at the right skill level. In the longer term, there may be an opportunity to highlight that the ‘green’ industry will still need craftsmen (albeit perhaps not as many as before). But unless and until society returns to a situation where skilled manual labour is perceived as having social stand- ing, we likely need to begin planning to work with a leaner workforce than we’ve used to in the past. This may include, for projects, accepting longer construction periods, and for turnarounds, reverting to smaller, more frequent events to match the size of the available workforce. A Kevin Clarke, Chief Strategy Officer, Imubit, kevin. clarke@imubit.com: The traditional role of craftsmen has been evolving over recent times, driven both by demographics and the pan- demic. It is becoming harder to encourage school leavers to enter these hands-on, mechanical roles, resulting in plant owners increasingly seeking to use advanced technologies to change how equipment is built, maintained, and oper- ated. The arrival of drones for inspection of remote locations such as flare tips, non-intrusive wireless ultrasonic wall thickness measurements to reduce the need for inspectors to access remote or risky locations, and increasing deploy- ment of robotics and mechanical automation in, for example, warehouse management are symptoms of this change. Today’s school leaver expects facilities to have a high degree of digitalisation, as they experience in their home life – a highly connected plant with data to enable predictive
performance assessment, a high degree of plant automation and optimisation (using artificial intelligence, for example), and easy access to all of the plant information (drawings, design data, live data) in a user-friendly environment, such as a digital twin model of the plant. Leading operators are using connected field workers to assign field maintenance work digitally in real-time across the team, linked automatically to the appropriate work pack preparation in the warehouse, to facilitate efficient execu - tion of preventive maintenance. The benefits are amplified many-fold when incorporated into the deployment of a major capital project or the timely execution of a plant main- tenance turnaround. Finally, within the context of capital project development, this evolution of the craftsman’s role is pushing the consideration of modular construction, with reduced on-site build content. A Marcello Ferrara, Chairman, ITW Technologies, mfer- rara@itwtechnologies.com: Hiring qualified people is one of the major challenges facing the oil and gas industry in the post-pandemic era. Qualified people need experience and long-lasting formation, and the oil and gas industry was already short of qualified people. The pandemic era has exacerbated the labour shortage. In addition to retirements, highly qualified workers frequently move to other companies and sometimes to other industries. Reuters recently reported that 43% of workers surveyed globally in 2020 planned to leave the energy sector over the next five years. Many factors influence the availability of qualified people. First, workers are no longer motivated solely by wages. Many people are readdressing their pri - orities post-pandemic (family, quality of life). Second, the oil and gas industry is no longer perceived as a secure job opportunity. The two industry collapses in 2014 and 2020 led to massive layoffs and project cancellations. The threat of getting laid off or the need to constantly search for a new job pushed workers to seek employment in other industries. Third, there is a perception that the oil and gas industry, and fossil fuels in general, is one of the major causes of climate change. Finally, new generations are no longer keen on energy industry jobs because the model they have from the media is big money with less effort (but this would lead us too far into the discussion). Job offers today include professions that didn’t exist years ago, so younger generations have more choices. All these bespoke factors are exogenous to oil companies. A thoughtful question arises when considering that some oil companies put in place bidding, awarding contracts to the lowest bidder. Lowest bidding has primary practical effects on project execution, namely: a) The lower price bidder may face contingencies not con- sidered during the bid and therefore seek a way to save money b) The contractors generally lack incentives to hire expe- rienced and skilled people and/or invest in forming skilled professionals simply because they will not get any reward for it. On the contrary, they will increase their costs and be less competitive for bidding
8
Revamps 2022
www.digitalrefining.com
Powered by FlippingBook