Egypt Oil & Gas (EOG) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Subcommittee along with the Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) Subcommittee, in partnership with Ain Shams University, Faculty of Engineering, kicked off the first HSE awareness workshop in Egypt for university students to develop their interpersonal skills.

The event came in parallel with the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources’ annual safety week, aiming to disseminate the HSE culture among students and equip them with the main interpersonal skills that they will need in their practical life.

About 100 students attended two parts of the day; one part worked on developing their soft skills and the other part worked on developing their safe behavior.

Through the sessions, attendees got to know more about the HSE culture, hazard identification and risk assessments. The presentations focused on the life-saving rules and how they can be applied to make the petroleum sector a safer place.

As the lifesaving rules were a main part of the discussions, facilitators talked about what should be done in bypassing safety controls, confined space, driving, energy isolation, hot work, line of fire, safe mechanical lifting, work authorization, and working at height.

Safety driving was also a vital part of the workshops, as participants experienced the importance of using seat belts through a seat belt convincer crash simulator device. During the safe driving awareness presentation, Intelligent Safety Solutions (ISS) provided their driving simulator and seat belt convincer. The device is used to help both drivers and passengers to better understand the forces of a low-speed crash and the benefits of wearing seat belts whenever a vehicle is in motion.

In the soft skills training part, the presenters discussed how to make creative problem solutions. Accordingly, there were eight steps that were elaborated to be followed in order to make the right decision.

The first step is to identify the problem. Then, you have to identify the decision criteria (costs, risks and outcomes), which is the main factor to solve a problem. After that, you have to allocate the importance of the criteria you have just identified in the correct priority order. The fourth step is to get alternatives that enable you to the problem. The fifth one is to evaluate these alternatives’ strengths and weaknesses. Step six is to select the optimum alternative. The next step is to implement the decision. The last one is to identify if the problem is resolved and to what extent the decision is effective.

One of the junior students said, “we learnt from this training how to be safe while driving and how to be safe in the working place”

Meanwhile, a female junior student said, “I am pleased and excited by that training as it is important and useful.”

Another junior student declared, “we learnt from these sessions useful things including presentation skills, how to brainstorm for new ideas, how to identify problems and solve them, and finally, HSE.”

Participants engaged in a pre and post assessment to find out their level of development. All workshop participants have undertaken the same assessment prior to the commencement of the training workshop and later upon the completion of the delivered materials.

All the questions incorporated covered the most important topics delivered by the facilitators throughout the workshop. Thus, the assessment was meant to confirm that the participants have acquired the necessary knowledge level and increased their awareness of the foundational skills pertaining to the addressed topic.

All the participants have shown positive difference in the percentage of knowledge improvement between the pre and post assessments scores; indicating the amount of knowledge gain that was achieved during the workshop. The maximum percentage was 80% and the minimum percentage was 0%, indicating a wide range in the knowledge difference between the participants. However, the knowledge gap was successfully compensated throughout the training workshop.

All the participants have demonstrated a noticeable improvement in their level of knowledge, each individual according to his/her own ability to grasp and comprehend the delivered material. However, as a general indication and conclusion from the data analysis; the overall objective from the intervention was attained as per the improvement in all the participants’ results.