How Casmax drives competency when risk management matters
Managing risks is part of everyday life in every company. In some sectors this is critical; in others, it can literally be a matter of life and death. When so much is at stake, it’s vital for businesses to have a reliable tool to assess and manage the competency of their staff. With Casmax, they’ve got a powerful, four-dimensional tool that works for them. They’ll be able to satisfy inspecting authorities that their personnel are competent to perform their duties. They’ll be able to identify where people need development to ensure that their skills match what’s expected of them. And most importantly, they’ll ensure stakeholder security, however risky the sector they’re involved in.
Considering the lifecycle of wells
We’re homing in on a very small team in a large enterprise in the oil and gas sector. We’ve worked with this company for many years, and they’ve used Casmax throughout their corporation. It is currently deployed across many of their business units, geographically dispersed across the globe. In this particular case, they turned to us after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. That event was a wake-up call to the industry to think more carefully about ensuring the lifecycle of wells, from initial design through to being decommissioned. So, for our client, their well integrity team provides a vital function.
Although it’s small, it’s no exaggeration to say that this is a highly business-critical team. If they can’t prove their competency to such bodies as the UK Health & Safety Executive (HSE), USA Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA), and the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), it could shut down operations. And were they to fail to do their job, it would have catastrophic consequences for public safety. Beaches across entire parts of highly populated continents would suffer disastrous oil pollution, causing untold damage to the environment and the economy.
Assessing and managing competency with Casmax
Ahead of a statutory inspection of the team’s operations, our client was able to use Casmax to assess each individual’s competency. The product provides a four-dimensional view of an individual: core technical activity statements, business process experience, confidence and date last used. Different skillsets can be measured for each team. The client was able to factor in such considerations as well design criteria and construction criteria into the technical criteria for each of the team member’s Casmax profiles.
The strength of Casmax is that the user enters the data about themselves. This effectively tests how competent an individual is regarding the tasks ahead of them. And there are several tiers of escalation from the user to an assessor and manager. It also ensures that the assessment is based on the individual’s skills, and not their relationship with their supervisor. Casmax makes sure that the right information gets through to the right people in the business. They can look in granular detail at an individual, at how a team fits together, or even at aggregate skillsets across locations, regions, or globally.
Looking after your best assets
Our CEO Peter McAteer sums up this approach when he says that “Casmax is all about making the most of the human resources available to a company. Look in the car park at the end of the day, and you understand that your most important assets have left the building.” Valuing those assets is also really important for promoting a good company culture.
The system uses a clear four-dimensional analysis of each individual’s skills and competencies. It raises an alert if there are discrepancies between that individual’s experience, skills and confidence. And we even ensure that we know when these skills were most recently used, to pick up on time-critical information. For instance, a new technology may have become available since the person last performed a particular task. Alternatively, the legislative environment may have changed. By flagging up such an anomaly, the system can help create a tailored solution through individual development plans. Empowering the individual to drive their own career through the visibility of skill gaps they have against roles as they climb the career ladder.
As Peter puts it: “Never underestimate how important it is for an individual to be able to prove their competency and have it acknowledged. Our experience is that this simple step greatly improves employee engagement and growth”
For our client and their well integrity team, using Casmax to assess and manage competency allowed them to pass their statutory inspection. But more importantly, it helped to make sure that everyone on the team was fully equipped to do the job. And it allowed them to sleep at night, knowing that they would continue to avoid environmental disaster.
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