One of our responders, Jonathan Beaumont, has been involved in a wide range of spills across a variety of offshore, shoreline, inland and industrial environments.
Jonathan realised that regardless of the spill size, each time he was called out to a spill, he was confronted with a new, unique, and unpredictable challenge that he and his colleagues would need to overcome.
These challenges need to be achieved in a calm manner as anxious clients and stakeholders involved may not have experienced a spill before and would need a voice of reason to give them assurance.
In dealing with these challenges, the team relies on their knowledge of the equipment and previous experiences to overcome them and ensure they do everything that they can to manage expectations, reassure the clients, and operate with safety at the forefront of everything they do.
The responder's knowledge, familiarity, and past experience with the equipment give them the confidence to come up with suggestions to overcome a lot of the trials that they face during deployments.
A recent example of this took place whilst attending a spill in Saudi Arabia, our responders drew upon their experiences from their continuation training to ensure a smooth deployment and reassure the client during a stressful incident.
The continuation training was an incredibly valuable opportunity for all our responders to refresh their memory on equipment that they may not have deployed for weeks or even months. During the continuation training, the responders gained a lot of insight from senior employees that they may not have worked with previously and taught them new techniques that they were able to implement whilst away on this particular spill.
Continuing to train our responders in this way improves their competency and enables them to achieve a greater standard of response to an incident.
The continuation training is an extremely valuable tool, refreshing people’s knowledge on the capabilities and limitations of the equipment as well as building confidence to help guide the client when using it.