Subsea 7 receives Offshore Support Journal safety award for IMCA Resilience programme

Subsea 7 has won the Safety Award, sponsored by Vroon offshore Services, at the 2019 Annual Offshore Support Journal Awards.

The company was given the award in recognition of its role in driving the International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA)’s Resilience Awareness Programme through videos and supporting materials.

Vroon Offshore managing director Craig Harvie presented the award to Subsea 7's vice president of new markets and negotiations Stuart Smith, who said:"

Thank you very much indeed for this award - on behalf of Subsea 7 I'm deeply honoured and humbled to receive it."

"I think one of the fundamental reasons vessels like DSVs are still around is that there used to be an apalling safety record, and there was a huge amount of work done by a whole range of people [to remedy this].

"That improvement in safety around diving, for example, has been hugely influential in allowing us to continue with these activities.

"Winning this safety award is a great honour and there’s a lot of people in IMCA and Subsea 7 who are really big stakeholders in achieving this award - much bigger stakeholders than I personally am, so on their behalf, thank you very much."

Other nominees for the award included IMCA itself and Guidance Marine, a Leicester, UK-based subsidiary of Wärtsilä.

The resilience concept originated with Shell, who introduced it in recognition of the impact the restructuring and uncertainty undergone in the oil and gas sector in recent years could have on employees. Shell’s programme provided the framework for IMCA’s own, which focuses specifically on the marine contracting sector, and in which Subsea 7 took a lead role. With more than 11,000 staff across 36 countries, Subsea 7 has a safety-centric ethos and aims to build a culture of care and resilience in teams across operations.

The Resilience Awareness programme comprises a series of six video modules along with guidance notes for facilitators and an introduction for those participating in the programme. It is intended to be used by groups of employees to promote discussion and share thoughts to become more resilient, and in so doing maintain operational safety. Filming for the programme took place on board vessels owned by Subsea 7, Saipem and Heerema Marine Contractors. IMCA’s board member companies Allseas, Fugro, Heerema Marine Contractors, Saipem, Subsea 7, TechnipFMC and McDermott International provided sponsorship for the programme.

The programme is free to use for IMCA members and the six videos, each of which is 10 minutes long, cover the following topics:

• What is resilience? – understanding ways to develop resilience to help us stay safe.
• Keeping things in perspective – making safer decisions by learning how to keep things in perspective.
• Change is part of life – exploring how to cope with change and prevent change having a negative impact on safety.
• Looking after yourself – how taking care of ourselves will help us be safer by being more alert and sharper.
• Taking decisive action – keeping ourselves safe by reminding us to always think things through before acting.
• Summary and scenarios – recaps on previous modules with some further scenarios for discussion.

Launched in January 2018, the Resilience Awareness Programme met with success, garnering more than 2,000 content downloads in the first four weeks alone. One user said: “The videos are very interesting and are reminding me about my own positivity and resilience that I can reach for.

“The programme also helped me think about how I can support my team through any change, should I need to.”

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