New and temporary technical personnel who will work at the Chemelot site will receive an extensive onboarding. This includes training in the field of safety and technical skills. This is necessary to be able to work safely. Since March of this year, this training has taken place in the special Safety Skills Center. This improved way of onboarding helps to reduce mutual and joint safety risks at the location.
Need for practical instructions
Every year many people come to work temporarily at the Chemelot site: at Turn Arounds (major factory maintenance shutdowns), but also in factory maintenance.
The old factory safety instruction and Turn Around instruction were quite generic. People who come to work here need solid and practical instructions that will help them in the field. So that they get the chance to do their job properly and safely.
Narcis Mujagic, Asset Engineer at Sitech Services
New way of onboarding
After a successful pilot in 2021 at one of the Turn Arounds, it was decided that the Safety Skills Center should be made permanent. Miel Kusters (Operational Management training app ENTER at Sitech Services): “The training consists of three parts: a theoretical part that uses our self-developed training application ENTER. Then there is a practical part where participants can prove that they have the right skills and finally there is a final test. The training location is located on the fire brigade training area. As a result, we can make use of qualified instructors from the company fire brigade for the practical part. We take care of the onboarding of people who come to work for various companies on the site, which is expected to be about 1,800 people per year. If more companies are enthusiastic, we can further scale up to 3,000 places.”
Customized modules
The training courses are specifically tailored to the Chemelot site and came about after coordination with the companies at the location and their contractors. Narcis: “We have incorporated everything we saw in the past three years about risky situations in the training. So much attention is paid to risk recognition. Furthermore, the ENTER training courses are tailor-made, in the sense that a flange fitter receives a different training than a scaffold builder. There are different modules: some are ready, others are still being built.”
Serious games with VR
Training with the use of virtual reality (VR) deserves special mention. “We have developed special ‘serious games’ for this,” says Miel. “The advantage of this is that you can also train situations in which things go wrong, for example someone who falls off a scaffold because he is not stuck. We also have very realistic VR operator training courses, which are built on the basis of digital twins from the factories on the Chemelot site.”
Striving for Chemelot-wide working method
From March 2022, the central onboarding of Turn Arounds at Chemelot will take place via the Safety Skills Center. And all modules are expected to be ready in September. Miel: “We hope that other companies will also participate, so that this method is really introduced Chemelot-wide. Then we are even better able to reduce the mutual and joint safety risks at the location as much as possible.”
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