BOSIET: Keeping your head above water

To drive a car you need a driver’s license. And even if you always hope that everything will be OK, you need to be prepared for an emergency: With practical first-aid knowledge and a well stocked first-aid kit in the trunk. Better safe than sorry.

This is also why at OMV we have our employees get a type of “driver’s license” before we send them to work on an offshore platform. In the BOSIET (Basic Offshore Safety, Induction & Emergency Training) they learn how to free themselves from a damaged, rotating chopper underwater – or how to evacuate from a platform via an emergency slide, extinguish a fire and provide first aid. Even though we assume that they will never need to apply these skills. After all, better safe than sorry.

Face-to-face with possible danger

If you hold a driver’s license that means you have completed at least one first-aid training session in your life. But, hand on heart: How likely is it that you could apply this knowledge in an emergency? This is precisely what the BOSIET training is designed for: It makes you experience the possible hazards of an offshore oil platform as realistically as possible so that the participants lose their fear of the unknown and can automatically apply their skills if the worst comes to the worst – whether it’s a helicopter crash, a blind leap from a pitch-black building, resuscitating someone who’s had an accident, jumping off the platform into an icy ocean or surviving on a life raft.

On a training like this, you get personal experience and practice in what to do if there's ever a real emergency.
Chris Veit, OMV Senior Vice President for Upstream Exploration, Development & Production

Once every four years…

Chris Veit and Angela Schorna had completed their last BOSIET four years ago. Now it was time for a one-day refresher course with Falck in Amsterdam, where they could validate their “offshore driver’s license” for the next four years. The two of them may not actually spend many days of the year on the high seas, but they do visit one of the global offshore OMV installations from time to time. And anyone who conducts a safety audit – like Chris Veit – or drops in with a film crew – like Angela Schorna – has to have gone through the training. It is especially important for people who are not regularly offshore to know the rules, the correct ways to behave and what to do in an emergency. Chris Veit and Angela Schorna have spent a lot of stressful, educational and entertaining hours in the freezing water – precisely so that they can keep their heads above water if an emergency ever actually does occur. Take a look and experience it yourself!

Factbox: BOSIET – Basic Offshore Safety, Induction & Emergency Training

The BOSIET at Falck consits of the following training contents:

Safety inductions:
Offshore hazards, their control and consequences. Waste disposal/environmental awareness. How offshore safety is regulated. How offshore safety is managed. Procedures for prescribed medicines. Alcohol and substance abuse policy. PPE requirements. Procedures for reporting incidents, accidents and near misses. Role of the Medic

Helicopter safety & escape:
Pre boarding. Safe boarding. In flight safety. Safe disembarkation. In flight emergency actions. Use of Emergency Breathing System equipment. Practical Emergency escape Breathing System training. Practical emergency ditching and escape training.

Sea survival:
Abandonment theory and practical sea survival training. Actions for mustering and boarding of a survival craft, and actions as a passenger during launching operations. Use of helicopter rescue strops, and winching procedures. Emergency First Aid including CPR.

Firefighting and self rescue:
Nature and causes of fire. Fixed systems and response. Use of hand held extinguishers. Operation of fixed hose reels. Self rescue techniques in reduced visibility and completely obscured visibility. Use of escape hoods.