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Back to the Future of the LP Gas Industry’s Training Requirements

With the gas industry currently revisiting training and assessment through Energy & Utility Skills, Gas Safe Register and others, it’s an appropriate time to examine what the lpg industry’s requirements may be over the next 30 years.

Before looking forward to the lp gas industry’s training requirements, let’s look back. What has changed?

Have appliances, regulations and customer demands all changed in the last 25 years? You bet they have. What about tanks, cylinders, regulators, pipework (excluding polyethylene pipework and OPSO protection, etc)?

In truth, practical engineering fundamentals have changed very little from the time of the original LPGA COP1 for bulk vessels back in the 1950s. So, if there have been no real changes in basic lpg gas fundamentals, why have technically ‘ill fitting’ and sometimes onerous assessment modules been developed for the lpg sector?

I believe serious consideration should be given to a ‘back to the future’ approach for an examination of lp gas training requirements in the first half of the 21st century.

For every chartered engineer that graduates, we need many more practical engineers to carry out required work to a safe and acceptable standard. We have an ageing practical engineering workforce. We also have similar problems with engineering expertise, i.e. chartered engineers, trainers and assessors.

We need to encourage people with an engineering appetite to join our industry quickly. We should not be applying academia to qualifications when plainly it’s not required. For example, currently we expect an lpg engineer, when carrying out tests and purging of larger volume mains and service pipework, to hold a quite arduous qualification (TPCP1) that, in the natural gas world, is not required by mains layers and the like. Going back to basics, an office based academic engineer, usually with chartered status, provides the technical specifications to practical engineers who carry out the work. I believe this is just one example where we have all been responsible for raising the bar too high.

In my opinion, the training and evaluation of practical engineers should mirror the task. There is nothing wrong in keeping it simple. After all, our basic industry engineering technology has hardly moved in 50 years.

Some may find that boring and not ‘sexy’, but that is the position, so why not use it as the core of our future training requirements. Keeping it simple does not mean unsafe. On the contrary, overcomplicating a subject can cause confusion that leads to increased risk. A concerted effort is needed to reduce the sheer volume of non-essential documentation and assessments that can be so off-putting to a practical engineer.

Looking back to the 1950s-1990s, we saw significant growth in our industry, supported by a strong technical and engineering skill base. In those days, we kept it simple, provided onsite training that mirrored the task and allowed personnel to develop without suffocating them in systems and documentation.

There was nothing wrong with that! However, since the early 1990s, our industry has been overwhelmed by a raft of industry generated assessments, most of them alien to the lpg industry and at a significant cost to both lp gas suppliers and engineers. Who has it benefited?

The oil industry most definitely – it is surely no coincidence that the oil industry has grown ten times that of the lpg gas sector. Where we have continuously created higher hurdles in the name of safety, the oil trade have sensibly catered for training and assessment that mirrors the task.

So what of the future? Do we really want to carry on the way we have been? Or do we make it clear to those in authority that the lpg industry is a historically safe industry and wants nothing more than to satisfy for the competence requirements of its practical engineers in a realistic manner?

Contact UK Energy Training on 08456 442039 www.ukenergytraining.co.uk

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