20 certified in safety and pipeline inspection under EACOP skills drive
Students from Sunmaker Oil and Gas Institute, officials from EACOP, PAU, Sunmaker and CPP group photo after the ceremony
Twenty Ugandan workers on the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project have earned international certifications in workplace safety and pipeline inspection after more than 360 hours of training, as the project works to meet its local skills commitments to the Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU).
EACOP and its Tier 1 construction contractor, CPP, held a certification ceremony for the graduates. Ten received the NEBOSH International General Certificate in occupational health and safety. The other ten were certified in Non-Destructive Testing (NDT), a method of inspecting pipelines and other critical infrastructure without damaging them.
The participants included CPP’s own staff and employees of Tier 2 subcontractors, among them Fulcrum and RIF Logistics. The training was delivered by Sunmaker Training Institute.
The programme forms part of the national content commitments that contractors on the project owe to PAU, which require them to train and upskill Ugandan staff. “CPP, as a company, has an obligation and national content commitments to train their staff,” said Maria Nahabwe, National Content Manager for EACOP in Uganda.
Nahabwe said the obligation runs down the contractor chain. CPP reviewed its pool of staff in the relevant disciplines and strengthened their skills through certification, while EACOP, as licensee, monitors the commitments of its Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 contractors. The National Content Team works with contractors “to make sure that they train their staff,” she said, and all the training hours are reported to PAU under those commitments.
She added that the certifications are drawing interest beyond Uganda. EACOP has received inquiries from as far as Kenya and Tanzania about the skills available that the region could draw on.
For PAU, the programme matters as the pipeline moves closer to operations. “We are moving to the operations phase, and for us to achieve our first oil, we shall need certified Ugandans supporting in some of these aspects,” said Nansubuga Shirleen, Skills Development Officer at PAU.
She said certification helps Ugandan professionals “compete on the international level” and do work recognised by other international refineries. Asked how NEBOSH compares with a university degree, she said a degree from an institution such as Makerere University shows specialist training in a particular field, while NEBOSH is an international credential recognised worldwide. “A student who has achieved NEBOSH is recognized on the same level as that student who has gone to the University of Leeds,” she said.
Prince Dalia, Head of Business Development at Sunmaker, said the courses were chosen to close specific gaps in the industry. “The industry is short of qualified NDT inspectors,” he said, adding that many health, safety and environment (HSE) personnel have no formal certification. “Maybe they learned on the job, but they do not have the certifications.”
Sunmaker designs its training around a needs assessment for each project, Dalia explained, and favours international certifications because they make learners more competitive than local ones alone.
He was candid about the challenges. Learners often expect immediate employment from the companies sponsoring them, and some become disillusioned when jobs do not follow. “It’s important that we manage expectations,” Dalia said, adding that graduates are encouraged to look beyond Sunmaker and EACOP. “If you’re NEBOSH-certified, you can work in manufacturing, you can work in construction. The opportunities are enormous. It’s just about mindset change.”
For NEBOSH graduate Bukwanza Janet Gift, the course changed how she understands her field. “I thought health and safety is all about observing, seeing what’s wrong or what is right,” she said. “But after sitting in a class of NEBOSH, I have come to know that safety is basically a culture.”
She said that culture starts with top management and extends to every worker, much as children learn by imitation. “What you see your parents doing is what you might end up doing,” she said. She also stressed individual accountability: “It’s a personal responsibility to take care of yourself before you even look around or take care of other people.”
