Every Competency Management System Project Brings its Own Challenges – The Importance of Continual Learning and Reflection
We have just been reflecting on a very large competency management system project that we have recently concluded.
It has been two years of working very closely with the drilling client across many rigs, in different locations across the world, including the North Sea and Norwegian waters. Working closely together has been key, and our experiences on this project have reinforced the opinions we already held about what makes large and potentially complicated competency management system projects successful, as well as giving us the opportunity to gain new insights.
Competency Management Does Not Stand Still
It is obvious really, but competency management does not stand still and how we approach competency management keeps evolving as:
- People and society change with an impact on how people learn
- Legislation and industry requirements change, with the resultant effect that this has on organisations and their management teams
- Technology develops, with predominantly positive results
- Market requirements, conditions, and expectations change
Yet through this all, 24 years of working on a range of size and complexity of competency management systems has given us the experience and insight to know what is tried and tested, and best practise and most likely to result in a cost effective and workable competency management system, and where the approach to competency management should, and can, keep evolving.
Tried and Tested, not to be Forgotten: Size, Focus and Relevance
So, what lessons have been reinforced by this project? In our experience, the main factors that determine if a competency management system will work are down to its size, focus and relevance: you need to get these three areas right if you are going to deliver a viable and sustainable solution that will work for everyone, and will keep working over the years to come.
Keeping to a Risk Based Approach
In this project, the competency management system model has been built around the barrier management strategy which is a risk-based process. This is a growing trend and in recent years this has been extended to focus on the human element of the risk management approach, competencies, and human factors. The output from this provides a solid basis for the competence management system.
Beyond demonstrating compliance with your safety case, this risk-based approach gives the additional advantage of being asset or location specific, which in turn gives the competence management system a sense of relevance and importance to the users.
Risk Based and Getting Buy-In
The users of the competency management system will also see that the system has been well thought through and in our experience, they will be much more receptive to such an approach.
They are also more likely to engage and feedback if something is not right if they can see that effort that has been put in to try and get the competency management system working well.
Risk Based and Prioritising Competency Areas
The risk-based approach can also help organisations prioritise competence areas, so that the competency management system does not become so large that it is not workable and unusable.
It also gives a basis for reviewing the competencies within the competency management system and a criteria for you to reduce competencies if you are finding that your competency management system is too large, has lost focus on risk or the critical areas of the each job role where you need your people to be competent, or does not feel relevant to the people in these job roles.
On the Job Training
Another approach that helps with buy in and sustainability, is the inclusion of on the job training content within the content management system. We find that this should focus on tools, equipment and systems that are in use on the installation.
The main benefits are that this provides a consistent way of providing familiarisation on the physical environment.
Benchmarking
What has also helped with evaluating the content management system has been to benchmark certain aspects against other systems. This has included options on accreditation, assessor training and accreditation, and, also, verification approaches.
Going Online
Going online with a competency management system brings its own challenges and opportunities. Within this project, our client followed our advice to build the system on paper first and then progress onto on-line.
This is another tried and tested approach as you mitigate the risks of getting two key aspects of the online competency management system incorrect, namely the content and the user interface.
Something New: Worth Taking Forward
So, what is new in this project? These aspects were not entirely new but were still an opportunity to learn new approached
To allow for variations in competencies for different installations, we devised and undertook an analysis of each installation’s operating procedures to identify competencies for inclusion. This was restricted to higher risk competencies.
Cumulatively, the data set covered over 20 different installations and grew into a considerable data set. The development of quality assurance processes to handle this data became one of the most important aspects of the latter stages of this project.
To help keep implementation costs down, we created online learning for assessor and internal verifier which incorporated some of the material created for the competency management system and helped to keep costs down in the development of the bespoke training material.
